Pluto gets the last word, victory from the American Dialect Society Options

[odave]

This just in - from CNN's website, the term "plutoed" narrowly beat "climate canary" to become the 2006 Word of the Year.

[nprev]

Doug or other admins, if you need to move this post/thread to a more appropriate location please do so...thanks!


Yeah, I was kind of amazed today during my Air Force Reserve duty (of all things!) at the actual depth of popular outrage over Pluto's demotion. One of my co-workers just out of the blue brought up Pluto, and said that she "felt sad" that it wasn't a planet anymore. I explained my opinion, which was that if the "demotion" did not happen we'd soon have dozens if not hundreds of 'planets'...to my surprise, she seemed delighted at the prospect!

I wonder now whether astronomy & space science at large might in fact be missing a bet here. Perhaps the general public would be turned on to space by a cascade of planetary discoveries rather than relatively obscure IAU circulars announcing yet another large KBO. The Pluto issue certainly seems to have captured the imaginations of many people.

[rant mode] I've said it before, and I'll say it again--this quote from The Right Stuff: "no bucks, no Buck Rogers." Savvy PR efforts must not be the exclusive province of commercial hucksters. Although I understand that the concept is distasteful to most of the scientific community (and I share this feeling), the fact of the matter is that space science funding chronically faces criticism and consequent inattention from decision-makers because it's just not on the political radar screen due to a lack of broad public support. Therefore, the space science community would do well to aggessively promote public interest using professional marketing techniques. [/rant mode].