Word: planeteers
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...Pluto's day was over and it was time to rethink the structure and the form of the outer solar system. Our exhibit was that way for a year, and nobody complained about it until it showed up in the New York Times, Page One: "PLUTO'S NOT A PLANET? ONLY IN NEW YORK." That's when all hell broke loose and the hate mail started...
...Stop talking smack about Pluto or I'm going to slash your tires"? There were no threats of bodily harm. But there were tongue-in-cheek threats. And most of the schoolchildren were clearly disgruntled, pleading with me to put Pluto back where it belongs, as a planet...
What, then, are the criteria for a planet? In our exhibits, we abandoned the word planet as a useful word completely. We don't organize by planet status. We organize by what objects look like compared to what other objects look like. So we look at the family photo of the solar system, and in it, you have the sun, which obviously is its own thing. Then you have the terrestrials - Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars, all small, all rocky, all dense. Then you have the asteroid belt - craggy chunks of rock and metal - orbiting between Mars and Jupiter. Tens...
...when people say, "How many planets are there now?" I say, That's the wrong question. Do not distract yourself over the answer to that question, because that question contains no science. Now I am partly to blame, as an educator, because to third-graders you teach the planets in sequence, and books celebrate this, and kids boast about memorizing planet names, thinking that they've accomplished something. But it would be much more effective intellectually if you tell me what Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars have in common. Or why they are different. That's a much more useful...
...most famous scientists in America? How does one even do that? I've thought about that. I'll tell you what it is. My first-ever interview for national television was in 1995 for NBC Nightly News. And I was interviewed about the discovery of the first planet outside of our own solar system. So, they came to the planetarium. I'm an easy date for them because I'm just up the street. I give them my best professorial reply. I talk about the Doppler shift and the measurement and the spectra, and I say, There's not really...