PP (Poor Pluto)

Poor Pluto!

To derail the planned entry of Ceres, Charon, Xena and several other planets to the Solar Union on August 16^th, the IAU decided to redefine its earlier explanation to what they would call “a Planet”.

These plans date back to the time when heavenly bodies comparable to the size of Pluto were discovered, as fears grew over the union’s capacity to absorb new members.

Because of the hastily made definition, Pluto was forced to lose its decade long identity of a “Classical Planet”. The change comes at a time when Voyager I; set out to explore realms where no human-made object has reached so far; has reached the Heliosphere -where the solar system ends and the interstellar space begins which is more than twice as distant as Pluto.

Pluto was discovered in 1930 and since then fears have loomed by for its status as a planet. With a highly eccentric orbit, this farthest member of the solar system has a bitter tale to tell.

Pluto’s stars have never been right. In Larry Niven’s “World of Ptaws”, Pluto was supposed to be knocked out by an interstellar craft. In Rick Random comic book story of the 50’s Pluto was exploded.

Mickey Mouse’s famous dog was chosen to be called Pluto. While Goofy and Pluto, both are dogs, Goofy can walk and talk like a human being but Pluto cannot!! Also, until the summer of 1974, Pluto used to feature along with Goofy in a comic strip called “Goofy and also Pluto”. But soon after, the comic strip was merged with “Donald Duck and Mickey Mouse” to become “Donald, Mickey and also Goofy” dropping the name of poor Pluto!!

The officials of Pluto were not available for their immediate comment; similar was the case with the other planets of the Solar Union. A Pluto mission has been dispatched by NASA to find out how the Plutonians feel about being thrown out of the solar system. The answer would take 30 years to come, so we can only guess what they (the plutonians) feel about this. “We have lodged a strong protest. We are shocked at the incident; this is not in keeping friendly relations. The response that we expect from the earthlings must be self-evident”.

But similar missions for other planets could not be sent as the Bush administration was not interested in things that do not deal with oil. President Bush declared that Earth is the only planet that really matters and that the other planets were not really needed. He hinted at adopting the Copernican Helio-centric theory. He also said that former outer planets that are unlikely to have oil reserves will simply be relegated to a new class of space objects known as “Stuff we cant see or benefit from, so who cares”.

Prime Minister Man Mohan Singh said that he has Bush’s assurance in this matter. However, if extraneous elements, not envisaged by him, found their way into it, he would draw appropriate conclusions.

Darrell Hair offered to comment if he was given $500,000 which we obviously did not.

The “Pluto Bacaho Andolan” demanded an immediate letter of apology, and threatened to launch a stir, if Pluto was not restored its Planetary status. The Agricultural Minister & chief of BCCI, Mr. Sharad Pawar held that farmers and not spherical objects like Planets or balls were his priority.

Mr. Arjun Singh said that this was a perfect example of why reservation should be adopted for minorities and he urged that a bill be passed in the IAU for reservation of 50% seats of the Solar Union for minority planets.

This statement caused a heavy stir in the medicos and other engineering institutes who got yet another reason to bunk classes and stop going to offices.

The Telangana leaders said that they were already on a hunger strike for the want of a separate Telangana and could not afford another one, as they had not eaten anything for 3 days and were planning to end their strike very soon before the “buy 1 get 1 free” offer of Mc Donald’s ceased.

The Left claimed that as long as Mars is given the status of a planet, it is not their problem. The director of IIT Kharagpur, Prof SKD (who prefers to be called himself by his full name, which I will not) provided us with the following statement (obviously written by somebody else)

“Dear Friends

It is an immense pleasure to be introduced to this matter. I am sure that the IAU has been relentlessly trying to solve this problem of bridging the gap between planets and heavenly bodies of other kind. I wish everyone all the best!

Jai Hind!

Prof SKD,
Director of You-Know-Where”

All our sympathies lie with Poor Pluto as we bid a final adieu to the smallest planet of the Solar Union. “It was a golden planet, the methane rich skies, its equal sized moons, and its tiny and humble nature”, someone was heard commenting. So long Pluto and thanks for the all the fish!!

The writer is a fourth year under grad student of you-know-where who has got no other work than to go around asking people what they feel about Pluto when he has got a hell lot of work to do like study for CAT, GRE or for the time-being say the mid-semesters. If you happen to have you own comments in on this delicate issue, please do comment! Bad remarks will not be tolerated. : P