Pickles From Outer Space

My very educated mother just served us nine pickles.

Now, donÂ't go calling in saying that Dan Rather has gone off his rocker. Think back. A lot of you probably learned some version of that sentence in grade school.

The first letter of each word is supposed to help you remember the order of the nine planets: Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune and Pluto.

Astronomers gave the world a real scare recently, with a plan that lead people to think that Pluto was going to be declared NOT a planet.

Concern rose because PlutoÂ's status has been actively questioned in some quarters. Some see Pluto as a minor contender: too small, too light, too different in general from the other major planets for a shot at the title. Others see that as ganging up on the smallest kid in the schoolyard.

Astronomers have discovered a number of other objects which, like Pluto, cross through NeptuneÂ's orbit. What was proposed, according to the International Astronomical Union, was grouping PlutoÂ's movements with the movements of those other Neptune - crossing bodies, basically for observational bookkeeping purposes.

The IAU also says that the proposal did NOT include stripping Pluto of its planetary rank.

Apparently, they have no intention of disturbing motherÂ's nine pickles.

Yuck. NINE pickles?

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