It turns out everything we need to know we really did learn in kindergarten – but it was wrong. These days we know that Christopher Columbus didn’t discover America. That George Washington didn’t cut down a cherry tree. And that Pluto is not a planet.
Pluto was demoted Thursday by leading astronomers who concluded, essentially, that size and shape do matter.
The International Astronomical Union ruled Pluto is being reclassified as a “dwarf planet.” Never mind what every school child has been told since 1930.
The astronomers settled what some consider to be a centuries-long dispute by issuing new guidelines for categorizing planets. Poor little Pluto, now the Dopey of the “dwarf planets,” was cast aside because it’s so small, and because its oblong orbit overlaps with Neptune’s.
What’s next? The earth is flat?
