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One of the people on my list to call for today’s rendition of the ongoing Pluto fiasco was Alan Stern, recently departed NASA space sciences chief, principal investigator the New Horizons mission to Pluto, and an outspoken “Pluto is a planet” proponent.
I knew he’d have an opinion about the IAU reclassification of Pluto.
Well, I never got around to calling him (he was busy, I knew, in the same big Pluto mission meeting today as Hal Weaver…), but here’s what Stern told AP: “It’s just some people in a smoke-filled room who dreamed it up,” Stern said. “Plutoids or hemorrhoids, whatever they call it. This is irrelevant.” Stern, now in the running for my first annual Cosmic Quote of the Year award, suggested a rival group to the IAU might get formed. Stay tuned…
