Debated Planets

Debated Planets

A couple of days ago, in its first glitchy fart in months, Blogger ate a post.

Well, retrying, here's one of my favorite bits from John Hodgman's The Areas of My Expertise, in which he talks about Debated Planets:

Many of what we term "Planets" have been observed since antiquity, beginning especially with the Mesopotamians, those dreamers. But especially since the discovery of Uranus in 1781, there has been resistance to admitting new bodies into the "Club of Planets."

The Club of Planets, as you know, is headquqrtered in a town house on East Fifty-first Street in New York City. Its charter maintains that serious people with withhold final judgment until a body's planethood may be personally verified by a visit froma club representative. Thus, Saturn, Earth and Venus are currently listed as "Undeniable Planets." But several others remain up for debate. For example.....

PLUTO: Some scientists now consider this to be a remote planetoid of the Kuiper Belt.

SEDNA: A recently discovered body of ice and rock, most agree this is not a planet, but part of the Oort cloud at the dge of the solar system. It is believed that the Oort cloud is the source of all comets, though no comet factories have yet been observed.

URANUS: Is it a planet, or just a bit of hobo myth?

NEPTUNE: The residents of its thirteen moons believe religiously that Neptune itself doesn't exist. When they purify it from their minds, the "Great Blue Insult" shall disappear.

JUPITER: Possibly just a moon of the largest planet, Gigantor

SUPER-GIGANTOR: A hypothetical mass designed to annoy Jupiter.

MARS: Probably a government conspiracy.

MERCURY: Zero axial tilt? Please. Most agree that this is either a space station, or a self-aware supercomputer.

Postscript: since the Club Verification Committee verified Saturn and Venus via rocket expedition in 1959 and 1967, respectively, each has been granted its own room in the Club of Nations. The Solarium is now called the Saturnium; The Hall of Venus is on the third floor, to the left of the Game Room, and is, in deference to the Venutians, kept at roughly 500 degrees Celsius.

Mostly I am just happy to have my own suspicions about Mercury shared by others. I have always taken that Zero Axial Tilt thing as a personal insult, like when you get a backhanded compliment that is meant to embarrass you.