Keep On Counting

[krpalmer]

I was surprised, but also pleased in a subtle way, to happen on unexpected news that a fifth moon had just been discovered orbiting Pluto, bringing its total to where Uranus was before Voyager 2's visit. To say this will make a difference where certain areas add "nobody should ever forget an old mistake was corrected" to every mention of Pluto would probably be too much; it's already known there are smaller objects orbiting not-round asteroids. At the same time, though, so far as there does seem to be a certain odd combination of the previous comment and "now we can put the mess out there out of our minds," so in some ways it is worth noticing how new discoveries keep putting Pluto in the news. This might help teach, as Alan Boyle put it in "The Case For Pluto," how where some try to paint things as clear-eyed realists and deluded nostalgics but others just see dynamicists and geophysicists, even if "things are different out there" has its own certain resonance right along with old daydreams of "the tenth planet." (In a sense, lumping Ceres in with the not-round asteroids might have meant nobody really thought of the "tenth" planet being in sight already...)