A long time ago, we learned the list of nine planets by heart. Thanks to a useful mnemonic: men very easily make jugs serve useful necessary purposes. Then nine years ago, the planetary system changed, just like in the song. One minute there were nine green bottles (you could say jugs) hanging on the wall then one green bottle (Pluto) did accidentally fall and now there were eight green bottles hanging on the wall. Henceforth we had to acknowledge just eight planets, Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune. Pluto was demoted to the status of “dwarf planet”.
Well, you can’t help having sympathy with the underdog so it is wonderful to see how thanks to Nasa’s New Horizons space probe, Pluto has come back into the news. Fabulous pictures are coming back to us and tons and tons of new information about the snowy planet. Even before New Horizons flew past, the Harvard-Smithsonian news blog commented, “A dwarf fruit tree is still a small fruit tree, and a dwarf hamster is still a small hamster.” So let’s hope the dwarf planet is promoted once again to the premier league, albeit as a small planet.
It was only discovered in 1930. And it was given the name Pluto following the suggestion of an eleven year old girl, Venetia Burney, who lived in Oxford in the UK. On the New Horizons web site we can read the interview she gave in 2006.
Venetia, can you tell us a little bit about the circumstances that happened in 1930 that brought you to suggest the name of Pluto?
“Yes, I don’t quite know why I suggested it. I think it was on March the 14th, 1930 and I was having breakfast with my mother and my grandfather. And my grandfather read out at breakfast the great news and said he wondered what it would be called. And for some reason, I, after a short pause, said, “Why not call it Pluto?” I did know, I was fairly familiar with Greek and Roman legends from various children’s books that I had read, and of course I did know about the solar system and the names the other planets have. And so I suppose I just thought that this was a name that hadn’t been used. And there it was. The rest was entirely my grandfather’s work”.
The minute I read that I thought, three generations. Just like the 3G Kili Climb story! Oscar was talking with his mother Jae when she said that teenagers could from this summer climb Kilimanjaro with Exodus. He suggested that they could climb together. And then Jae had a word with her mother, Sheila, asking if she would like to do it too. And that was the beginning of this amazing adventure.
And there is another parallel. The euphoria the scientists are feeling at the success of New Horizons’ Pluto fly past is similar to what we shall all feel when the 3G Kili Climb team can report back to base that they have made it to the peak of Mount Kilimanjaro. All the way up, Jae will take pictures, and after her recent instruction in Kenya, we know they will send back brilliant photos too. It will have been worth the wait for us lazy bystanders down below.
Note from Jae: I hope I won’t let you down with the photos Leslie – I won’t be carrying a heavy DSLR up the mountain but I’ll definitely try and get some good pics. Also – I saw this super post from one of my favourite Facebook pages this week (IFLS), and it felt appropriate here!
