The Guardian view on Pluto: the dwarf planet has lost none of its allure
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Version 0 of 1. The demotion of Pluto in 2006 to “dwarf planet” status posed a dilemma to lovers of astronomy. Generations have grown up thinking of Pluto as a first-team player in the solar system, made extra beguiling by its most remote status. But confidence in the scientific method demanded that such romantic notions be banished. If it is too small and its solar orbit too wonky, the decision of the International Astronomical Union must be respected. If Pluto remained a planet, scores of parvenu planetoids deeper in space might be eligible for upgrades. Rules are rules. Now Nasa’s New Horizons mission proves that Pluto has lost none of its allure. Images that take hours to reach Earth, travelling at the speed of light, enthral and inspire. No less impressive is the technical achievement of the mission: a probe despatched across 4.7bn km that arrives at its destination at the appointed hour, with a precision rate of 99.9%. It is a reminder of what humanity can achieve with sufficient patience, investment, collaborative effort and rational inquiry – a tribute to scientific methodology at a time when enlightenment values sometimes feel under siege. Better still, the data beamed back by New Horizons, revealing a level of climatic and geological sophistication previously unattributed to Pluto, raises hopes that it may yet achieve promotion back to the first tier of planets. We would heartily welcome that move. But only, of course, if the evidence supports it. |