Thank you. I have a kid I work with that looooves space. To him, dwarf planets and regular planets are equally interesting. When we watch space videos that point out Pluto in some way, he’s just confused. Like a video about the 8 planets ending in a frowning Pluto.
The kid: “Why is Pluto sad?”
Me: “Well, bud, some grown ups are silly. They grew up thinking of Pluto as a planet and they don’t like that its status changed.”
But to him, Pluto has no reason to be “sad.” It’s got Ceres, Makemake, Haumea, and Eris to be friends with! But nobody makes a big deal over them (if they even are aware of their existence at all. This boy has single-handedly educated many of my coworkers about them.)
Point is, grown ups - let it go! Scientific reclassification doesn’t mean Pluto was ejected from the solar system or something. It’s still there and it’s still loved. It just plays with different friends now.
Thank you. I have a kid I work with that looooves space. To him, dwarf planets and regular planets are equally interesting. When we watch space videos that point out Pluto in some way, he’s just confused. Like a video about the 8 planets ending in a frowning Pluto.
The kid: “Why is Pluto sad?”
Me: “Well, bud, some grown ups are silly. They grew up thinking of Pluto as a planet and they don’t like that its status changed.”
But to him, Pluto has no reason to be “sad.” It’s got Ceres, Makemake, Haumea, and Eris to be friends with! But nobody makes a big deal over them (if they even are aware of their existence at all. This boy has single-handedly educated many of my coworkers about them.)
Point is, grown ups - let it go! Scientific reclassification doesn’t mean Pluto was ejected from the solar system or something. It’s still there and it’s still loved. It just plays with different friends now.