Inquiry: MIKE BROWN: How I Killed Pluto and Why It Had It Coming

My very excellent mother just served us nine pizzas. This was just one of the many mnemonic phrases we learned as children to help us learn the names and order of the planets of our solar system. It came as a shock when we recently learned that we have to do without the pizza because Pluto was no longer considered a planet. Who made this decision that changed our childhood vision of our solar system? What gets to be called a planet anyway? Tonight on Inquiry we talk with the person responsible for pulling the plug on Pluto’s planetary aspirations. We speak with MIKE BROWN, the Richard and Barbara Rosenberg Professor of Planetary Astronomy at the California Institute of Technology. His entertaining and revealing book is titled HOW I KILLED PLUTO AND WHY IT HAD IT COMING.