Pluto TV is making a stand for Pluto years following its demotion. The streaming service is campaigning for it to be acknowledged as a planet again.
(Photo : Wikimedia Commons/PlanetUser)
Pluto TV Wants To Make Pluto a Plane Again
On Monday (April 1), Pluto TV will be celebrating its 10 years of free TV streaming. It will host a "sit-in" to mark its 10th anniversary and review the Pluto planethood controversy. The event is known as "Pluto TV's Rally for Pluto! Make Pluto A Planet!" from 11:30 a.m. until 1:00 p.m. Pacific Time in Bruin Plaza, University of California, Los Angeles. To those who can't attend the event and want to support the campaign to make Pluto a planet again, you can sign the petition "Make Pluto a Planet."
"Join the citizens of Pluto for a rally to spark the conversation around Pluto's planetary status," Pluto TV said in a statement. "It's been 18 years since Pluto was demoted and we think it's time for Pluto to have a vote in its own destiny.
Pluto TV, is a proud sponsor for the petition to make Pluto a planet again. The streaming service always had a unique bond with its namesake. It has become used to shattering stereotypes and exceeding expectations, assisting individuals around the solar system in redefining what a planet or streaming service can be like.
"In honor of Pluto TV's 10th anniversary, we are asking that the conversation to reinstate Pluto as a planet be revived and a new vote takes place with a quorum present," the petition read.
Pluto TV has invited principal scientist Alan Stern, a pioneer of Pluto who led NASA's New Horizons mission, which conducted Pluto's first flyby in 2015, to speak on the planet's behalf. Stern has confirmed that this isn't an April Fools' joke. He will, in fact, be speaking at the function. Stern also disagreed with Pluto's demotion. According to him, the move was "scientifically sloppy and internally inconsistent," which Pluto TV couldn't agree more.
It is anticipated that a video message endorsed by astronomer Neil DeGrasse Tyson, the director of the Hayden Planetarium at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City, will be shown at the gathering. Tyson just opened up his StarTalk TV Pluto TV streaming channel.
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Why Pluto Was Demoted To A Dwarf Planet?
Pluto used to be the ninth planet in the solar system. However, its fate changed in 2006 when the tiny icy world was demoted from a planet into a "dwarf planet."
Pluto is officially classified as a "dwarf planet" by the International Astronomical Union (IAU) because it has not "cleared its neighboring region of other objects," which implies that there are still a lot of asteroids and other space rocks in its path rather than having absorbed them over time as the larger planets have.
Pluto Demoted Day is a holiday the international scientific community observed to commemorate Pluto's historic demotion on Aug. 24.
Some scientists disagree with its downgrade, though. The fact that there are objects in space and that each planet has some in its "neighboring region" is one explanation.
"There are many different ways to decide what is a planet," said Cathy Olkin, a planetary scientist at the Southwest Research Institute. "[Pluto] has an atmosphere. It has moons. It goes around the sun."
She acknowledged that some people are "trying to fight that definition." It's clearly the case with Pluto TV's campaign to make Pluto a planet again.
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