Wow, cosmic
published 5 January 2007
The past year was as colorful as it was grim. It was colorful because of the many things that dominated the national scene. There were real gains—the peso, the stock market and the passing of landmark pieces of legislation. There were real pains, too, mostly in the form of grandstanding politicians who muddled legitimate issues with their personal agenda. On the other hand, the grim factor was brought about by the string of natural disasters. Then again, what’s new?
For me, though, the most significant news was the demotion of Pluto into a dwarf planet.
Earth-shaking, really, except that the matter is literally beyond the earth.
The demotion took place in August. According to a report by the British Broadcasting Co., some 2,500 scientists gathered in Prague, the Czech Republic, to vote whether or not to strip Pluto of its planet status. Prior to this, the International Astronomical Union (think of the collective brain power!) had updated the definition of “planet.”
Sadly, Pluto’s properties showed that it “failed to dominate its orbit around the sun the same way as other planets.” In fact, Pluto was automatically disqualified because “its highly elliptical orbit overlaps with that of Neptune.”
Who the hell cares, right, aside from those geniuses who had tears in their eyes when the final vote was tallied?
Why should the hungry, the homeless, the poorly educated or the abused, or those of us who would like to see them empowered, even trifle with this cosmic development?
I was bothered, nonetheless. Pluto was part of the list of planets I assiduously memorized in grade school. I had a pretty stable picture of the solar system in my mind—and this picture included one sun and nine planets. Imagine the corrections to be made in textbooks already printed. Imagine science teachers telling their students to stop the enumeration with Neptune!
* * *
The Pluto vote served as a gentle reminder that “absolute” does not exist, and that everything is mere perception. What is good for some people is bad for others. What may be true today may be found to be false, or inadequate, tomorrow. What has been the way of life for ages may be challenged, and totally altered, over time.
Overused but true. Is the certainty of change—the only certainty— necessarily threatening? Depends on who’s talking.
I know of someone who for all her life had gone to the same public market, refusing to buy her food ingredients elsewhere. She claimed that the only vendors she trusted sold their goods in that market, that the prices there were reasonable, and that all the meat, fish, and vegetables were guaranteed clean. One day, though, the local government undertook a renovation of the market, and only a few stalls (which did not include those of my neighbor’s suki) remained operational. The renovation went on for a month or two, and during that time, my neighbor felt quite helpless, often feeding her husband and son take-out from a nearby fastfood.
On the other hand, there are those who benefit from changing times. Remember the astronomer who insisted that the earth was neither flat nor the center of the solar system? He was excommunicated by the Church and died a poor man, thinking he was a failure. There were, too, many poets, musicians and painters who remained obscure and desolate throughout their lifetime. Too bad they weren’t around to see how they were eventually hailed as the world’s finest.
Even as I write and even as you read, each of us is spinning around the earth’s axis in a dizzying speed. We just don’t notice the movement because everything else is spinning, too. The miracle is that we don’t disintegrate with the tremendous momentum, and can, in fact, appear to be still.
