How I Killed Pluto and Why It Had It Coming - Mike Brown [1]
While the astronomers were gathering for their vote in Prague, the news crews and I were arriving in the early morning on the Caltech campus in Pasadena, California, so that we could watch the excitement via a webcast. My job was to provide commentary and analysis for the press and moral support and scientific coverage for the astronomers who were—rightly, I thought—trying to take the bold move of ridding the solar system of the baggage of planet Pluto. I found the webcast, projected it on the large screen, and we all sat back to watch.
Three mostly esoteric and tedious hours later, it was all over. On the final vote, the air was filled with yellow cards with which the astronomers in Prague were voting “no” to Pluto’s planethood. There was no need to count; the vote was not even close. After hours of detailed explanation and analysis and discussion of the subtleties of all the different possible outcomes, I could finally just say: “Pluto is dead.”
The cameras whirred; correspondents talked into their microphones, and on a screen on the other side of the room, I could see myself on some local television station repeating, like an echo, “Pluto is dead.”
Before anyone else could ask a question, I quickly picked up the phone and called Diane, who was now at work. I had made a similar phone call eighteen months earlier, only minutes after I had discovered Xena. Back then, the moment she picked up the phone I said, “I found a planet!”
Back then, her voice had risen. “Really?”
Yeah! Really!
This time, instead, the moment she picked up the phone, I said, “Pluto is no longer a planet!”
Her voice dropped. “Really?”
Yeah! Really! I was still excited about the vote and had not quite grasped her mood.
She paused for a long time. “And Xena?” she finally asked quietly.
But Diane already knew the answer. Xena had indeed gotten the same boot as Pluto, and Diane was already mourning the little planet that we had gotten to know so well.
In the days that followed, I would hear from many people who were sad about Pluto. And I understood. Pluto was part of their mental landscape, the one they had constructed to organize their thinking about the solar system and their own place within it. Pluto seemed like the edge of existence. Ripping Pluto out of that landscape caused what felt like an inconceivably empty hole.
That first morning, Diane was having the same reaction, but for Xena instead of Pluto. For her, Xena was more than just that thing that used to be called “the tenth planet.” She had listened to me enough over the previous eighteen months that she had gotten to know all about the onetime tenth planet. She knew about its tiny moon, its incredibly shiny surface, and its atmosphere frozen in a thin layer all around the globe. Diane and I had discussed the excitement of the search, what to name the tenth planet, and how many more like it might be out there. Xena had become as much a part of our own mental landscapes as Pluto might have been for anyone else. And Xena would be forever linked in our minds to our daughter, Lilah, who was only three weeks old when Xena was announced to the world. All of those memories of the first months of our Lilah’s life—the lack of sleep, the dazed confusion, the questions about what life would be like after this sudden change—were tied up with all of our memories of what became tenth-planet mania—the rush to learn more, the push to discover others, the questions about what life would be like after this sudden change. And now, just a little after Lilah’s first birthday, Xena was gone.
I had to tell Diane: The astronomers did the right thing.
Xena is not really gone, of course. It is now actually the largest of the dwarf planets, which it rightfully deserves to be.
Lilah will probably not learn about