Editor’s Note: The following article by Eric Francis was originally published on Aug. 22, 2006. Eric writes, “During the controversy over whether Pluto is a planet, we took the liberty of demoting a couple of other things called planets — first Uranus, then, why not, the Earth. These are not actually true articles, though some people believed them.” Below is the article demoting Uranus from its planetary status. It is now part of the Planet Waves archives, available in its entirety to Planet Waves Astrology News subscribers. –RA
In a stunning surprise move at the International Astronomical Union (IAU) general assembly in Prague last night, some astronomers will seek to have Uranus stripped of planetary status, Planet Waves has learned. If accepted later in the week by the full assembly, this would be akin to a revolution in astronomy, overthrowing most scientific findings in the past two and a half centuries.
“We’re making headway on chucking Pluto, so we thought we would keep going,” said one of the scientists, who spoke from his bunker in the hotel basement, on the condition of anonymity. “Before long, we’ll be back to the solar system of Ptolemy. We would go after Neptune, but we can never find the damned thing,” he added. “In fact, we’re not even sure it exists, so no bother.”
“You cannot see Uranus without an artificial telescope, which is cheating,” one scientist said. “These people had no clue what they were doing back in 1781 when Uranus was ‘discovered’ using this despicable method of ‘seeing’ things. If God wanted us to use telescopes, we would have been born with them sticking out of our eyes.”
In addition, Uranus is believed to be smaller than Jupiter and Saturn, the two well established and fully accepted traditional ‘gas giants’ in our solar system — which came as a shock to most astronomers, and led to the rebellion. It was previously believed that planets got larger as they extended further out from the Sun.