Pluto is no longer a planet
It was like the Council of Nicaea, but for astronomers.
After a tumultuous week of clashing over the essence of the cosmos, the International Astronomical Union stripped Pluto of the planetary status it has held since its discovery in 1930. The new definition of what is - and isn't - a planet fills a centuries-old black hole for scientists who have labored since Copernicus without one.
What will the astrologers do? Pluto for the last sixty years or so has been regarded as a marker of generations. (For instance, I would be in the "Pluto in Leo" generation.) Now it is a "dwarf planet," like Ceres. Not quite the same thing.
In my vast esoteric library (north turret, third floor), I find Jeff Green's Pluto: The Evolutionary Journey of the Soul. There is going to be some fast thinking in the astrological community, I suspect, but also an opportunity for re-definition and for being the first to say what Pluto "really" signifies.
Update: Salon interviews an astrologer about that very question. (Hat tip: Wild Hunt)
Tags: astrology, Pluto
After a tumultuous week of clashing over the essence of the cosmos, the International Astronomical Union stripped Pluto of the planetary status it has held since its discovery in 1930. The new definition of what is - and isn't - a planet fills a centuries-old black hole for scientists who have labored since Copernicus without one.
What will the astrologers do? Pluto for the last sixty years or so has been regarded as a marker of generations. (For instance, I would be in the "Pluto in Leo" generation.) Now it is a "dwarf planet," like Ceres. Not quite the same thing.
In my vast esoteric library (north turret, third floor), I find Jeff Green's Pluto: The Evolutionary Journey of the Soul. There is going to be some fast thinking in the astrological community, I suspect, but also an opportunity for re-definition and for being the first to say what Pluto "really" signifies.
Update: Salon interviews an astrologer about that very question. (Hat tip: Wild Hunt)
Tags: astrology, Pluto
posted by Chas S. Clifton at 9:15 AM Permalink
3 Comments:
Best commentary I've seen on the Pluto controversy:
http://www.scalzi.com/whatever/004405.html
(video, with sound)
:-)
There's no reason for astrologers to change their minds about anything. I know I won't. Astronomy has never admitted that Pluto was found due to it's effects on Neptunes orbit, though that's exactly how it was found. They always used to say that it was too small, there had to be a larger planet further out that accounted for the perturbations in Neptunes orbit. Well, it's been 76 years now, and no such larger planet evidently exists. Which leaves me with the realization that it was Pluto all along.
The point to this being, that the guiding definition for what amounts to a planet, from the viewpoint of astrologers, should be based on the known effects of the planet-not the planets size. And if Pluto has an effect on the orbit of Neptune-which it does-then it has an indirect effect, at least, on the sun, and therefore on us.
Considering astrologers still act as if the optical illusion known as retrograde motion means anything, I don't think the Pluto redefinition changes anything. Now, working in the planetoid informally known as Xena is going to be what keeps them in new books for years.
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