Owners approve expansion of solar system

The dateline in Wednesday's paper is WASHINGTON. So now we know where the owners of planetary franchises have their headquarters. And the reportage provides insight into how business decisions are made on the macro-level. As predicted by ESPN, NYSE, and IAU analysts, expansion has once again hit the solar system. It seems nine planets don't provide a big enough viewing audience, so we're going to a 12-planet league.

What's next - revenue sharing? Think of how a 12-planet format will affect the playoffs! This could be as influential as the BCS (Bowl Championship Series to the layperson). Or not.

To solar system purists, of course, this is an outrage. Geez, they're letting Charon, Xena, and Ceres in, next every freaking asteroid between Mars and Jupiter will want planetary status. Then it will become an entitlement. What's to keep every large hunk of celestial debris from thinking it's a planet? What was wrong with the nine real planets anyway?

"More planets will be added later," astronomers from the International Astronomical Union (IAU) stated. Ya see? You let three upstart heavenly bodies into the solar system, and there goes the neighborhood. Like Reagan said about the Panama Canal, it's OUR solar system, and we intend to keep it.

Besides, it says right here that two of the newcomers - Charon and Xena - are "distant odd-balls wandering outside Neptune in weirdly shaped orbits," just like Pluto. You know, Pluto never did really fit in. Too small, too peculiar, too far out, it just wasn't like the other, normal planets, and frankly it didn't get along, you know, traveling in an irregular orbit as it does. So now the weirdos are called "plutons" but we have to treat them as if they were regular planets, sort of an affirmative action program.

The other newcomer, Ceres, was apparently treated as a planet back in the nineteenth century, and now it's a planet again. Sort of. Kind of a small-market planet, like Pittsburgh. It's been around for a long time, so we might as well call it a planet, in a marginal, tolerant kind of way, you know, like Milwaukee, even though it will never be in a position to compete with the big planets - your Jupiters, your Saturns, Uranuses.

Speaking of bureaucrats, all this is still very much "up in the air," so to speak. Nothing is final until the recommendation of the Planet Definition Committee is approved by the 3,000 astronomers of the IAU meeting this week in Prague. Imagine the tension in the air. The conditions for planethood include being at least 500 miles wide, and Ceres just barely squeaks in at 580 - much smaller than our moon. It has to be round, and it has to orbit a star.

At least there are standards, like roundness, even though Earthlings are bound to be suspicious of any aspiring planet with an irregular orbit. So don't get any big ideas, you plutons! We'll always know you're different. And those other icy bodies out there lobbying the IAU and their local chapter of Planned Planethood, don't think this leaves the door open for just any asteroid to join the planet club.