Reddit reviews How I Killed Pluto and Why It Had It Coming

How I Killed Pluto and Why It Had it Coming is a great read for anyone to fully understand why classifying Pluto as a planet just doesn't work.

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How I Killed Pluto and Why it had it Coming.

If anyone enjoys reading about this sort of thing, I just finished "How I Killed Pluto, and Why it Had it Coming", a fantastic book about the astronomer who's research directly lead to the demotion of Pluto, and the controversy surrounding his discoveries.

I highly recommend the book. In internet terms, "10/10, would read again."

On a related note there's also a really interesting book that talks about the subject called "How I Killed Pluto and Why it Had it Coming" by Mike Brown, the man responsible for Pluto's reclassification. Very readable and not especially long. http://www.amazon.com/How-Killed-Pluto-Why-Coming/dp/0385531109

I was going with this info:

> whoever made Pluto a dwarf planet

That would be Mike Brown. You can reach him on twitter @plutokiller and he also wrote a book called "How I Killed Pluto and Why It Had It Coming".

I found about this on the podcast No Such Thing As A Fish.

> and designate Pluto a minor planetoid.

I've heard stories about him being not so nice too, but I'm pretty sure you can't hang that solely on him. It was voted on at an IAU conference and while NDT may have been a public face, he certainly wasn't at fault. The one person who (humorously) takes credit is Mike Brown who actually discovered the first Kuiper belt object larger than Pluto which sort of forced the vote. He has a really interesting short book about the whole thing if you want to read it.

> He's a famous scientist, not a saint.

Yea, he's a science communicator or a science popularize.

One of the most enjoyable science books I've read was Mike Browns How I killed Pluto and why it had it coming. He is such a genuinely good person and there's a really nice mix of science and just his life that's really enjoyable to read. Not as hardcore science as A brief history of time, but great for any astronomy enthusiast! (Especially have trouble accepting Pluto's demotion.)

Neil deGrasse Tysons Death by black hole is also a thoroughly enjoyable read, but agian, not as "science-heavy" as Hawking's.

For more on the "screwing over" of Pluto, you might want to check out Mike Brown's book How I Killed Pluto and Why It Had It Coming. He's an astronomer who was investigating the Kuiper Belt objects whose discovery blurred the line between "Planet" and "Not-Planet" so heavily that the IAU had to call Pluto's planethood into question. It's sort of half-memoir half-pop-science, and it does quite a good job of explaining the circumstances which led to Pluto's demotion while also telling an (in my opinion) entertaining story about astronomy.

Neil deGrasse Tyson was not the main guy behind demoting Pluto. Mike Brown, the guy at CalTech whose math implies the existence of the so-far hypothetical ninth planet, was. He even wrote a book about it: How I Killed Pluto, and Why It Had It Coming

Book recommendation time! If you or anyone else perusing this thread is curious, there's a terrific book by the astronomer Mike Brown, whose work was significantly responsible for the reclassification, called How I Killed Pluto and Why It Had It Coming. It's an engaging, approachable read if you're at all curious about the whole thing. Great insight into the life of a working scientist (including things like trying to data mine his newborn daughter's behavior) and the workings of the scientific community.

Read "How I Killed Pluto and why it had it Coming" by Mike Brown. Great book. http://www.amazon.com/How-Killed-Pluto-Why-Coming/dp/0385531109

If you're really interested in it, this book is a good one. It's written by Mike Brown, whose team discovered Eris, another dwarf planet that turned out to be bigger than Pluto.

Basically, people who insist that Pluto is still a planet are taking a big old dump on his life's work.

Quite literally because the whole process the International Astronomical Union goes through to decide these things is political. The choice of words was a compromise. Technically, dwarf planets are not planets or a subset of planets, even though this might defy the common way we use words.

For further reading:

http://www.amazon.com/How-Killed-Pluto-Why-Coming/dp/0385531109

Planet = wanderer.

Technically, if you're an ancient greek, Grubby is mostly linguistically correct, the Moon is not a Fixed Star. Grubby = Ptolemaic astronomer confirmed!

If you're not being technical, it's a crazy-ass Mary Poppins metaphor for picking an unneeded teamfight, what the heck do you want?¯\_(ツ)_/¯


And if you're concerned about proper English language:
>The problem with defending the purity of the English language is that English is about as pure as a cribhouse whore. We don't just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and riffle their pockets for new vocabulary. --James Nicoll

The only REAL reason to really object is if you're concerned that Grubby is secretly lobbying for Pluto to be re-instated as a Planet. A decent book with a great title lays out the argument against the closet crypto-plutonians, though: How I Killed Pluto and Why It Had It Coming