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Planet Pluto to Suffer Further Indignities |
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Recent photos from the New Horizons spacecraft are suggesting another reclassification of Pluto |
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January 11th, 2009 Pluto has certainly had its share of woes recently. In August of 2006 it was reclassified from planet status to merely a 'dwarf planet' by the International Astronomical Union. The New Horizons spacecraft, set to rendevous with Pluto sometime in the summer of 2015, is now beginning to return imagery that suggest a further demotion in status may be necessary. "Pluto's been through so much lately, we really hate to submit it to more humiliation," says Space Cardinal Furtenstein of EPECAN. "I mean, it started out being named after a cartoon |
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Original unmodified image courtesy of NASA |
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character, basically a pet dog owned by a mouse, a mouse who along with his other sentient animal character friends - ducks, geese,and yes even other dogs, can all talk and walk around upright, while Pluto is relegated to a life of yipping and slinking around with his tail between his legs." "Unfortunately for Pluto, recent images are suggesting that compositionally it may be more like a vegetable than anything else. Frankly, if you think Jupiter looks sorta like lasagna well, Pluto looks incredibly a lot like a tomato the closer we get to it." Objections have already been raised against this new classification by some prominent members of the astronomical community. And this development was not entirely unforeseen by the general public, still chafing after Pluto's last ordeal before the IAU. "It's like this", sez Biff Andermander of Poughkeepsie, Illinois, "whenever the subject of tomatoes comes up, some goofus has to stand up and say something like 'well, you know, the tomato is really not a vegetable, it's a fruit'." "If you're planning on making a fruit salad do you immediately reach for the tomatoes? No, you don't. But you know where this is going to end up, and I don't want Pluto to have to suffer any further indignities." |
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