NASA’s Pluto probe arrives there in 2015. Will it scout out potential sites for a new Capital of New Mexico?
The state of New Mexico could effectively secede from the astronomical community if a resolution to call Pluto a planet is passed.
Joint House Memorial 54 was introduced by representative Joni Marie Gutierrez, who represents Dona Ana County. It states that Pluto, the recently demoted object, “be declared a planet and that March 13, 2007 be declared ‘Pluto Planet Day’ at the legislature.”
Pluto was stripped of its planet status last August when a group within the International Astronomical Union voted to call the diminutive, far-flung world a dwarf planet. The decision was immediately and widely criticized by astronomers, many of whom have said it might not stand over time.
The foundations of planetary science won’t likely be shook if the resolution passes, however. A Joint House Memorial “does not have the color of law,” explained Peter Hay, a staff member at the New Mexico State Legislature. “It is a feeling of the House.”
The resolution is the third item on the agenda “on the Speaker’s table” today, Hay said in a telephone interview, and could be called to a vote at any time. If the House passes it, the Senate would then take it up. No vote by the Governor is required.
That’s a relief, because Bill Richardson is more interested in North Korea than Pluto. No telling what planet Kim Jong-Il seemed to have arrived from. He looks like a cyborg.
What this dufus legislooter doesn’t realize, since M/M Gutierrez wants to introduce resolutions involving planetary science, but evidently has very little education in planetary science, and does not follow recent developments surrounding planetary science, is that a number of Pluto-like objects, one larger than Pluto, have been discovered in solar orbits beyond Pluto. Some, like Pluto, have moons.
