Book Review - "The Pluto Files: The Rise and Fall of America's Favorite Planet" by Neil DeGrasse Tyson

Since Pluto has recently become the hottest spot in the solar system with new information coming in weekly from the New Horizons spacecraft, I remembered I had this book in my library, unread.  Neil DeGrasse Tyson wrote this book with diagrams and letters from children on the demotion of Pluto from planet status.  The New Horizons probe was launched in January 2006, traveling 9 years to the ‘dwarf planet’ and made its closest approach in July 2015.

On August 24, 2006, just eight months after the launch, the 26^th Triennial General Assembly of the International Astronomical Union voted by a decisive margin (90% in favor) to redefine the word ‘planet’.  Thus, Pluto was demoted and the solar system was back to 8 planets, as it has been from 1841 to 1930.

Public reaction was swift, negative and fierce.  In his book, Tyson includes emails, letters and editorials from people who were incensed by this treatment of their favorite planet.  Although the IAU was responsible for Pluto’s fall from grace, Tyson was the face of the controversy being in charge of the Rose Center for Earth and Space in New York City, which had already excluded Pluto from the other eight planets.

Tyson’s book is very entertaining as he recounts the general populace’s emotions and feelings about an ice-covered rock some 3 billion miles away.  Pioneers 10 and 11 are somewhere in interstellar space bearing a diagram of our solar system with nine planets, but Tyson says the illustration has so many other errors, aliens will be hard pressed to trace it back here.