A Quote by Alan Stern

As a planetary scientist, I don't know what else to call Pluto: It's big and round and thousands of miles wide. — © Alan Stern
As a planetary scientist, I don't know what else to call Pluto: It's big and round and thousands of miles wide.
We really just didn't realize the diversity of planetary types in our solar system. Pluto looked like a misfit because it was the only one we saw. And just as a Chihuahua is still a dog, these ice dwarfs are still planetary bodies. They're large enough to make themselves round by self gravity, and they surely pass the test of planethood.
Distance changes utterly when you take the world on foot. A mile becomes a long way, two miles literally considerable, ten miles whopping, fifty miles at the very limits of conception. The world, you realize, is enormous in a way that only you and a small community of fellow hikers know. Planetary scale is your little secret.
I actually started my career in planetary science with a master's thesis on Pluto.
I think that one of the things that will come out of the New Horizons mission is that the public will take a look, and they won't know what else to call Pluto but a planet - and a pretty exciting one.
If Neptune were analogized with a Chevy Impala in mass, then how big is pluto compared to that? Pluto would be a matchbox car sitting on the curb.
We're just learning that a lot of planets are small planets, and we didn't know that before, fact is, in planetary science, objects such as Pluto and the other dwarf planets in the Kuiper Belt are considered planets and called planets in everyday discourse in scientific meetings.
And wow! Hey! What's this thing coming towards me very fast? Very very fast. So big and flat and round, it needs a big wide sounding word like... ow... ound... round... ground! That's it! That's a good name - ground! I wonder if it will be friends with me?
We were very surprised to find out that Pluto is still geologically alive. It has upended our ideas of how planetary geophysics works.
In front of us was not a line but a fortress position, twenty miles deep, entrenched and fortified, defended by masses of machine-gun posts and thousands of guns in a wide arc. No chance for cavalry!
If you go to planetary science meetings and hear technical talks on Pluto, you will hear experts calling it a planet every day.
The Stone trembled and threw herself outward bound, toward Saturn. In her train followed hundreds and thousands and hundreds of thousands of thousands of restless, rolling Stones . . . to Saturn . . . to Uranus, to Pluto . . . rolling on out to the stars . . . outward bound to the ends of the Universe.
There was a lot of work that people don't know about that I did to establish my villain persona. There were a lot of miles on the road that went into it, thousands upon thousands of hours of writing on yellow pads while driving in my car with the dome light on.
One step outside the gate, and we are among the sand-hills that stretch for miles and miles round Vera Cruz.
The only very rugged part of the route is in crossing the Big Horn mountain, which is about 30 miles wide.
All Plutophiles are based in America. If you go to other countries, they have much less of an attachment to either the existence or preservation of Pluto as a planet. Once you investigate that, you find out that Disney's dog Pluto was sketched the same year the cosmic object was discovered. And Pluto was discovered by an American.
The planets. Now footnote, I'm including Pluto in the planets, because I think it's terrible what they did to Pluto. And it's still a planet to me. I grew up with Pluto as a planet, it will always be a planet.
This site uses cookies to ensure you get the best experience. More info...
Got it!