Figure 4.7. View from the Scales of the Universe inside the Rose Center for Earth and Space. The Hayden Sphere, representing the Sun from this vista, is juxtaposed with the gas giant (Jovian) planets Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune, each suspended from the ceiling. Pluto, not being a Jovian planet, does not appear among them. For any given scale, all models are constructed and displayed in correct relative size to each other.
If you want to learn about the form and structure and contents of the solar system, then visit the Planet Zone in the Hall of the Universe. That’s where you will find Pluto, in a transparency, by the way, huddled with its fellow members of the Kuiper belt.
The new Rose Center for Earth and Space opened to the public on Saturday morning, February 19, 2000. We were not unmindful of the potential for controversy over how we had organized the planet exhibits. But at no time during the hundreds of radio, print, and television interviews I gave—for domestic as well as international media—did our treatment of Pluto come up. I didn’t volunteer it either. Actually, the New York Post and t one or two other regional papers, in their preview of the facility, noted the absence of Pluto in our Scales of the Universe, but none of them made a big deal of it. The coast was clear. No media controversy.
But that was just the calm before the storm.
Then one day, a reporter for the New York Times, on his own time, decides to visit the Rose Center and just have a look around. On the Scales of the Universe walkway, the reporter overhears a child asking his mother, “Mommy, where’s Pluto?” She replies with unjustified confidence, “Check again, you’re not looking hard enough.”
The child repeats, “Mommy, where’s Pluto?” Of course, neither of them can find Pluto because Pluto isn’t there. Meanwhile, the eavesdropping reporter is sure he’s got a story. So he calls the paper, and they put Kenneth Chang on the case. Chang, an eager, smart, young science reporter, does some investigating of his own and files a story for the Times.
On January 22, 2001, nearly a year after opening day for the Rose Center, a full news day had passed since George W. Bush was inaugurated as the 43rd president of the United States. The election was controversial. The dimpled chads from Florida’s paper ballots were still flapping in the breeze. One might expect that day’s front page of the New York Times to be filled with stories from Washington and elsewhere, chronicling reactions to the new American president.
Page 1 was indeed headlined “On First Day, Bush Settles Into a Refitted Oval Office—He Greets Public After Touring New Home.” But that article also shares space with other important stories, including one on U.S. intelligence estimates concerning three alleged Iraqi weapons factories, another on the pope’s newly appointed cardinals, and still another that reports on California’s race to build power plants so they may avert their perennial summertime brownouts.
And there it was. Page 1. Kenneth Chang’s article on the Rose Center. Appearing in 55-point type was the headline that would disrupt my life for years to come:
PLUTO’S NOT A PLANET? ONLY IN NEW YORK
The article continued across four columns of carryover, including a photo, and a diagram in Section B.
Chang opened by retelling the frustrations of Atlanta visitor Pamela Curtis, who had to exhume from memory, then recite out loud, the time-honored planet mnemonic “My Very Educated Mother…” to establish that Pluto was, in fact, missing from the display of orbs. Then Chang went for our jugular, portraying our approach to Pluto as both renegade and suspect:23
Quietly, and apparently uniquely among major scientific institutions, the American Museum of Natural History cast Pluto out of the pantheon of planets when it opened the Rose Center last February. Nowhere does the center describe Pluto as a planet, but nowhere do its exhibits declare “Pluto is not a planet,” either….
Still, the move is surprising, because the museum appears to have unilaterally demoted Pluto, reassigning it as one of more than 300 icy bodies orbiting beyond Neptune, in a region called the Kuiper Belt.
Then came the quotes from the experts. This from planetary scientist Richard Binzel, of MIT (see Figure 3.10): “They went too far in demoting Pluto, way beyond what the mainstream astronomers think.” And this from Alan Stern, who we met on the museum’s Pluto panel: “They are a minority viewpoint…. It’s absurd. The astronomical community has settled this issue. There is no issue.”
But if you followed the article to page B4, you learned that astronomers had been reconsidering Pluto for years:
The International Astronomical Union, the pre-eminent society of astronomers, still calls Pluto a planet, one of nine of the solar system. Even a proposal in 1999 to list Pluto as both a planet and a member of the Kuiper Belt drew fierce protest from people who felt that the additional “minor planet” designation would diminish Pluto’s stature….
But even some astronomers defending Pluto admit that were it discovered today, it might not be awarded planethood, because it is so small—only about 1,400 miles wide—and so different from the other planets….
As a planet, Pluto has always been an oddball. Its composition is like a comet’s. Its elliptical orbit is tilted 17 degrees from the orbits of the other planets….
But Pluto continued to be called a planet, because there was nothing else to call it. Then, in 1992, astronomers found the first Kuiper Belt object. Now they have found hundreds of additional chunks of rock and ice beyond Neptune, including about 70 that share orbits similar to Pluto’s, the so-called Plutinos.
Buttressing the case was a diagram titled “To Be, or Not to Be, a Planet,” showing Pluto as a midway point between the planets Earth and Mercury on one side, and the not-planets Ceres and 2000 EB173 on the other; its label stating that “Pluto is bigger than minor planets and has an atmosphere,” and yet “Pluto has an unusual orbit and is made largely of ice.”
Chang quoted me in several paragraphs, where I defended our treatment of Pluto. And in the final paragraph, I got to reprise the concluding words from my “Pluto’s Honor” essay with the comment that Pluto would surely be happier as king of the Kuiper belt than as the puniest planet. One of the later remarks came from a scientist at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science, which was building a new space sciences center but would continue to display Pluto as one of nine:
“We’re sticking with Pluto,” said Dr. Laura Danly, curator of space sciences at the Denver museum. “We like Pluto as a planet.”
But, she also said, “I think there is no right or wrong on this issue. It’s a moving target right now, no pun intended, what is and is not a planet.”
People don’t always read articles to the end. Laura Danly’s candor that Pluto’s classification was a moving target came in the last column. We would later attract Danly from Colorado to become our museum’s director of astrophysics education before she would move once more to become curator of education at the newly renovated Griffith Observatory and Planetarium in Los Angeles.
In the end, it was the Times headline writer who got the last word. “Pluto’s Not a Planet? Only in New York” became the takeaway, rather than the more accurate (unwritten) title “Pluto’s Not a Planet? A Growing Number of Professionals Agree.”
So on January 22, 2001, beginning at about 7 a.m., my phone started ringing. My voice mail filled (I never knew before that day the voice mail capacity for our phone system). My e-mail in-box overflowed. And my life would never again be the same.
It’s always a little scary when the person who hired you calls you up and asks, “What have you done?!” In my case, the fellow on the phone was Michael Novacek, an accomplished paleontologist and the museum’s provost. Keep in mind that I was relatively new at the institution—a youngish upstart in charge of the science content for $230 million worth of the museum’s money.
Of course, the museum, a research institution as well as a place where you find exhibits, is right to be concerned about its scientific integrity. So when it gets dragged through the mud by a page 1 news story about its treatme
nt of a scientific issue, the people on top want to know why. And so, perhaps out of concern that I had strong-armed my own personal view into an institutional posture, Novacek asked whether I had downgraded Pluto on my own or had built some kind of consensus behind the decision. My answer, of course, was that all internal and external members of my scientific advisory committee had reviewed the matter, and the exhibit treatment represented a consensus.
Regardless, the museum sought a quick second opinion from an authoritative source. So Novacek called Jeremiah P. Ostriker, author of more than 200 scientific papers on astrophysics, winner of the U.S. National Medal of Science, provost of Princeton University and former chair of Princeton’s renowned department of astrophysical sciences (where I was, at the time, an adjunct professor), and a recently appointed trustee of the museum itself. What did Ostriker say to Novacek? “Whatever Neil did is okay by me.”
I didn’t learn of this exchange until years later, when Ostriker casually recounted it as part of another conversation. He had treated the media attention like a non-event, the same way Jane Luu had done in the panel debate. To them, the hoopla wasn’t about a scientific question. The organization of the solar system, how the solar system came to be the way it is—those are genuine scientific questions. But the labels you give things—no. You’re having an argument over something you generate rather than what is fundamental to the universe. While you’re sitting around debating, Pluto and the rest of the universe happily keep doing whatever it is they do, without regard to our urges to classify.
Meanwhile, just weeks after Kenneth Chang’s article appeared in the New York Times, the same paper published a second article, this one the brainchild of Mark Sykes, a planetary scientist at the University of Arizona’s Steward Observatory in Tucson and, at the time, chair of the American Astronomical Society’s Division for Planetary Sciences. Well aware of the storm brewing at the Rose Center, Sykes sent an e-mail warning me that the division’s executive committee might be drafting a statement rebuking our treatment of Pluto. He also alerted the Times that he would be in New York on business and intended to meet with me to discuss the matter—and would the Times like to send over a reporter to listen to the conversation? They, of course, agreed.
Sykes came. So did Kenneth Chang, serving as witness and juror, as well as a Times photographer. We chatted around my office’s brass coffee table, retrofitted from a 4-foot, circular, contemporary engraving that had been on display among the history of science exhibits of the old Hayden Planetarium. It portrays the long-defunct geocentric model of the universe, complete with Earth in the center and planetary epicycles looping around it. Not to miss a single word, Chang recorded the entire conversation on tape.
The resulting article appeared with the headline: “Icy Pluto’s Fall From the Planetary Ranks: A Conversation,” accompanied by a short piece about the prospects for a mission to Pluto. There’s also a photo of Sykes attempting to choke me alongside the giant sphere, with the gas giants hanging in the background. The caption reads, “Dr. Mark Sykes, left, challenges Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson to explain the treatment of Pluto in the planet display at the Hayden Planetarium.”
Figure 4.8. Mark Sykes (left) and the author in adversarial, but playful embrace on the Scales of the Universe walkway of the Rose Center for Earth and Space. This photo appeared in the New York Times , accompanying the transcript of our minidebate. Sykes, a planetary scientist and, at the time, chair of the Planetary Sciences Division of the American Astronomical Society, threatened to have his division draft a public statement rebuking the treatment of Pluto in our exhibits. I threatened to toss him over my left shoulder into the Hall of the Universe below.
The published conversation reads like a raw transcription, and as we see from this excerpt, Sykes’s views on the matter are unyielding and unambiguous:24
DR. SYKES The consensus exists. Unanimity may not, but I think consensus does, and the consensus is that people feel Pluto should not—it’s fine to call it a Kuiper Belt object—but we should not remove its designation as a planet. People are thinking not families, not groups, not cousins. They’re thinking planets….
When people come in, they are expecting to see what astronomers think. What you’ve got up here is not what astronomers think….
DR. TYSON It’s what some astronomers think….
DR. SYKES Some astronomers that I can think of, that I can put on one hand…. I would say were Pluto discovered today and known to have a moon and an atmosphere, I think that it would be designated a planet and not just given a minor planet designation….
It’s got nitrogen ice caps. It’s got seasons. It’s got a moon. It’s got an atmosphere. It’s got a whole suite of properties which distinguishes it from what we know about any other Kuiper Belt object, and just to blithely say, Well, we’re just not going to tell you about this and we’re just going to lump it in with these other guys, is, from an educational standpoint, irresponsible….
If Pluto were 10 times its size, how would you treat it?
DR. TYSON I think if it were still ice, we’d still say, orbiting with the icy objects.
DR. SYKES Pluto is thought of as a planet. So why not icy planets. Pluto.
DR. TYSON With a class of one?
DR. SYKES Class of one. Sure. Why not?
I would later learn that in addition to his PhD in planetary science from the University of Arizona, Mark Sykes also wields a law degree from the same institution and was admitted to the Arizona bar. So this, from my point of view, accounted for at least some of his urge to argue.
The media was unrelenting. For every story, every account, and every analysis, the story grew in the hearts and minds of the public, with the Rose Center continually landing in the middle of the credit or the blame. One mailing I received in May 2001 contained 100 pages of typed essays from Mr. James Dixon’s ninth-grade honors earth science class at Silver Lake Regional High School, in Kingston, Massachusetts. Invoking my published writings on Pluto as well as media accounts and other sources, each student pleaded a case. The votes were evenly split among Plutophiles and Pluto demoters—a rare result this early in the debate. Regardless, here was a resourceful educator turning a science controversy into a teaching opportunity—the pedagogical equivalent of using lemons to make lemonade. I applaud his effort as well as that of other teachers who organized their curriculum to include topical discussions of Pluto’s status.
This was not the first time Mr. Dixon had corresponded with me. Two years earlier, before the Rose Center had opened to the public, he and his class had sent in their first stack of letters, in response to my “Pluto’s Honor” essay for Natural History magazine. At the time, I didn’t know I had a Pluto pen pal in the making.
Not much time would pass before people started to see the humor in it all. A February 16, 2001, op-ed for the New York Times, written by Eric Metaxas, a writer for Veggie Tales Children’s Videos, could not resist a tally of abominable headlines to come, but only if our treatment of Pluto started a cultural trend:25
TROPICS OF CAPRICORN AND CANCER TO BE ABOLISHED TOMATO UNEQUIVOCALLY DECLARED A VEGETABLE GREAT LAKES TO BECOME FIRST FRESHWATER OCEAN BEIGE TAUPE AND MAUVE LOSE COLOR STATUS 60S STARTED IN 1963
TEXAS DECLARES ITSELF A SUBCONTINENT EUROPEAN MAPS TO DROP LICHTENSTEIN METER AND YARD SHAKE HANDS ASTERISK REMOVED FROM GERALD FORD’S PRESIDENCY TAB AND ZIMA LOSE BEVERAGE STATUS
Hard to argue with most of them.
Over the next few years, as anticipated by Jewitt and Luu and many other sky watchers, more and more Kuiper belt objects were discovered. Most were icy and traveled in eccentric orbits. Those that most resembled Pluto in orbital parameters came to be called Plutinos. Several of these objects rivaled Pluto’s moon Charon, if not Pluto itself, in mass, size, and properties. For planetary scientists, the region of space beyond Neptune became ever more populous and ever more intriguing.
Let’s look at diameters. In November 2000, using the Spacewatch 0.9-meter telescope at the Unive
rsity of Arizona in Tucson, Robert S. McMillan spotted an object now officially named 20000 Varuna, estimated to be almost 900 kilometers wide.26 In a May 2001 digital image obtained by James L. Elliot and Lawrence H. Wasserman using the 4-meter Blanco Telescope at Cerro Tololo, Chile, a team of astronomers from the NASA-funded Deep Ecliptic Survey spotted the similarly sized 28978 Ixion. And in June 2002, using the 48-inch Oschin Telescope at Palomar Observatory in southern California, Caltech astronomers Chad Trujillo and Michael Brown spotted 50000 Quaoar.27 With a diameter of some 1,300 kilometers, almost half that of Pluto, Quaoar was the largest thing found in the Kuiper belt since Clyde Tombaugh found Pluto in 1930. Quaoar’s discovery was announced to the world on October 7, 2002, at a meeting of the American Astronomical Society, tripping an awareness threshold at the New York Times. Eight days later, the newspaper ran an editorial headed “Pluto’s Plight”:28
Things are looking bleaker than ever for Pluto, the most disrespected of the nine planets that we learned about in elementary school….
Although Pluto’s fans hate to admit it, the ninth planet owes its status more to the fact that astronomers expected to find a planet out beyond Neptune than to any intrinsic merit…. Last year the Hayden Planetarium caused quite a stir by dropping Pluto from its list of planets.
Now, in the latest blow, astronomers reported last week that they have found another dirty ice ball, about half the size of Pluto, that actually behaves more like a planet than Pluto does, with a circular orbit. The newly discovered Quaoar (pronounced KWAH-o-ar) lies among a multitude of small bodies in a region known as the Kuiper Belt….
The Pluto Files: The Rise and Fall of America's Favorite Planet Page 7