Quote:
Originally Posted by Xist
So, everybody decided to ditch Pluto twelve years ago...
|
Not everybody did. Not even most astronomers did. It was something that was pushed through a meeting pretty much in secret, after most of the attendees had gone home.
The real reason for that vote?
Quote:
|
There was an astronomer named Brian Marsden who for decades had a grudge against Tombaugh. He had public fights that many people observed. Tombaugh died in 1997 and Marsden went on a jihad to diminish his reputation by removing Pluto from the list of planets. He eventually found a way to do that at a convention of astronomers, a meeting with thousands of people, of which a very small fraction – 4% – went to a room where the vote was taken.
|
- Alan Stern, project director of the New Horizons mission, quoted here:
https://www.theguardian.com/science/...uto-debate-row