Pluto’s declassification as a planet may have drawn some disappointed murmurs from the grown-ups, but the pain is apparently even more real for a bunch of little school kids.
In his book, “The Pluto Files,” celebrity astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson showcases his collection of hate mail from third graders who were disappointed at Pluto’s reclassification in 2006 to a dwarf planet. The little Pluto fans demanded the immediate reinstatement of their beloved chunk of rock back into the official roster of the solar system’s planets.
The letters start as far back as 2000, when Tyson, as director of the Hayden Planetarium at the American Museum of Natural History, New York, omitted Pluto from a new solar system exhibit because he didn’t consider it a planet.
Seven-year-old Will Gamot immediately noticed the missing exhibit and shot the director a letter with a helpful illustration (see below). Gamot wrote: “You are missing planet Pluto. Please make a model of it. This is what it looks like. It is a planet.”
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What would you tell an extra-terrestrial about life on Earth?
Last week, the social networking site, Bebo, beamed 501 images and text messages into space via the National Space Agency of Ukraine’s RT-70 radar telescope. Where are they going? An Earth-like planet named Gliese 581C that some think may harbor extraterrestrial life. Discovered last year, Gliese 581C orbits the red dwarf star Gliese 581 and has a climate that could support liquid water.
The messages were submitted by Bebo users, who are mostly teens and early twenty-somethings. Aside from the practical (the number pi, the average human height measured in hydrogen atomic radii) and the diplomatic (calls for peace, love, and recycling), they include pictures of Britney Spears, George Sampson, Heath Ledger, and kittens. You can browse through all the messages here.
Gliese 581C is 20.5 light years (120 trillion miles) away, so the digital missives won’t reach their destination until early 2029. That also means we won’t hear back from any alien correspondents for another four decades.
Of course, this isn’t the first time earthlings have reached out to the great beyond.
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