FEBRUARY 18th - Pluto: The Discovery and Fall



On this day in 1930, Clyde William Tombaugh discovered what used to be known as the planet Pluto, until 2006 when Neil deGrasse Tyson and the International Astronomical Union formally informed everybody that Pluto was in fact not a classical planet-planet but a dwarf-planet. To which everybody, was like, "Whaaaaat?" It is kind of like discovering you were the last living descendant of a very wealthy family from Europe and after the death of Lord Abernethy Nathaniel Dracos, you are given more money than you could ever hope to spend in your lifetime. Things go swimmingly for about fifteen years. You’re living the Life of Riley, yachting with Leo and supermodels, driving Maybachs, vacationing on your own private island. At one point you even thought of becoming Batman--you have billions of dollars and nobody has done it yet. And then somebody comes and tells you, sorry you weren’t actually related Lord Abernethy Nathaniel Dracos and your money is actually property of the tiny government from whence he came. No Batman for you. No more Leo and supermodels. Bye-bye Maybachs. That’s pretty much what happened to Pluto. Except Pluto is a small ball of rock and ice and probably doesn’t give a good gosh darn about supermodels, Maybachs, or Batman. And don’t feel too bad for Tombaugh; he also discovered an asteroid that is named after him as well as the Kuiper Belt of which Pluto is a part. That didn’t change just because people realized Pluto was not what they thought it was. Classifications don’t matter nearly as much as what composes the thing being classified. So just think about that next somebody tells you are a preppy, hipster scallywag.

This day has been Marked.

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