The image above is of Pluto, and was taken this month. Recently, the YouGov Poll to do a survey of Americans about Pluto. The survey was done between April 16th and 20th of this year of a random national sample of 1,000 adults, and has a margin of error of 4.2 points.
I am an older person, and I grew up believing Pluto was a planet. I know that scientists have recently re-classified Pluto, and no longer consider it to be a planet -- but I have to admit I still think of it as a planet. And according to this survey, it looks like most Americans agree with me (see the charts below).
Note that 55% of the population still consider Pluto to be a planet. And when you break it down demographically, there is only one group where more consider it something else, and not a planet -- the young people between 18 and 29. Of course that means that someday most people will no longer consider it a planet, as this group grows older (and the rest of us die off). But that's going to take a while.
What do you think? Is Pluto a planet?
Tomorrow, I'm going to be doing some very infrequent live blogging of the New Horizons fly by of Pluto. It's more to test out some software I'm hoping to use for the presidential debates, but still: I've been looking forward to this for months. When I was in college, I met Clyde Tombaugh. It is too bad he isn't around for this.
ReplyDeleteAs for Pluto's status as a planet, well... When I taught planetary astronomy -- long before it became a dwarf planet -- I argued against calling it a planet. But that was mostly just to get people to understand how totally cool asteroids were. I don't really care. I tend to think of it as space debris -- but really interesting space debris. What's in a name? That which we call a planet by any other name would be as fascinating...
85% of 'mericans still believe in virgin birth, so what do they know about science???
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