Acid flashback

The Daily Galaxy has an item about a white dwarf with a crystallised carbon core – the largest known diamond. They called it Lucy, after the Beatle’s song, Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds . This LSD reminder gave me flashback to my days at QMW in London. Glenn White, who is a molecular cloud freak, got fed up with us extragalactic types getting in the papers all the time just because we had measured the mean density of the cosmos, or found the most luminous object in the universe and so on. So he came back from Hawaii having made even more CO measurements of some cloud or other, and put out a press release announcing that he had found enough carbon to make all the world’s pencils. Err yeah right. Worked though .. Daily Mail lapped it up.

Pluto : the IAU should be very afraid… apparently

Just about every day somebody finds my old blog posts on Pluto through a Google search. One describes being at the IAU vote; one was about the bizarre attempts at legislation in New Mexico and California; and another, a link to the beautiful image of solar system bodies made by Alan Taylor. I got into a rather intense debate with Laurel Kornfeld. So I just went to check on how the “Please Save Pluto” petition is going.

The petition entries keep growing but their standard is getting even lower, and indeed are becoming even more unpleasant. Here are a few samples

• 2056. URL | July 20th, 2007 at 5:50 am

  WE SHALL GIVE IAU A WAR THEY DESERVE ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! !

• 2048. OPAL | July 19th, 2007 at 5:01 pm

  I cant believe the IAU would do such a nasty thing ! I will not let this happen , its time to take them down ! down to hell !

• 2025. JADA | July 18th, 2007 at 4:23 am

  IAU likes to suck dicks !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

• 2007. ULA | July 17th, 2007 at 12:44 am
  I love you pluto. The IAU are just being cock suckers!

• 2000. XANTHUS | July 17th, 2007 at 12:23 am

  PLUTO WILL COME BACK AND IAU CANT DO A FUCKING THING ABOUT IT , THEY WILL , HOWEVER , PAY THE PRICE SEVERELY
  FOR WHAT THEY HAVE DONE TO POOR PLUTO ! ! ! ! ! DOWN WITH IAU FOREVER ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! !

• 1999. QUINNA | July 17th, 2007 at 12:19 am

  GIVE US BACK PLUTO YOU SHIT FACES ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! !

• 1976. SONYA | July 16th, 2007 at 11:16 pm
  THE IAU MUST PAY ! ! ! ! !

• 1957. XENIYA | July 16th, 2007 at 1:53 pm

  THE ASSHOLES WHO WORK AT IAU ETTER GIVE BACK PLUTO OR ELSE ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! !

• 1956. Big Brother | July 16th, 2007 at 10:07 am
  To all of you Pluto Kooks
  WE are watching YOU!
  You have been warned
  DC

Well, I’m convinced, aren’t you ?