Everything You Learned About Pluto May Be Wrong – Again
My husband and I use everything we can as teaching tools to educate our little boy and last weekend, as we gazed at the stars and our three-year-old pointed and asked what we are (clearly, we need to get out of the city way more often than we do), my husband mentioned that maybe it's time to get our little one outside under the stars more often to that we can start teaching him about stars and the planets.
Do you remember the rhyming song your teacher sang to you when you were in grade school to help you remember the names of the planets? This is the question my husband asked me and I couldn't for the life of me think of it. But, as soon as Jay started singing, it all came back. "My very evil mother just swatted uncle's nose..."
I was taught as a child and grew up believing that Pluto was a planet. I even included it in my 5th-grade solar system science project. So, when scientists said it wasn't a planet, it was actually a dwarf planet, and then when they said maybe it wasn't even a dwarf planet, I was oddly upset. Well now, scientists are saying that they think Pluto is actually one ginormous comet- a collection of a billion comets lumped together, flying around the sun.
At this point in my life, I kind of don't care of Pluto is a planet, a comet, or something else, but as I prepare to teach my little boy about the solar system, I wish that science would just make up their minds so that I don't have to re-explain everything to my son.
[via Space]