Alan Stern Quotes

It shouldn't be so difficult to determine what a planet is. When you're watching a science fiction show like 'Star Trek' and they show up at some object in space and turn on the viewfinder, the audience and the people in the show know immediately whether it's a planet or a star or a comet or an asteroid.

If you go to planetary science meetings and hear technical talks on Pluto, you will hear experts calling it a planet every day.

Pluto and its brethren are the most populous class of planets in our solar system.

In the mind of the public, the word 'planet' carries a significance lacking in other words used to describe planetary bodies... many members of the public assume that alleged 'non-planets' cease to be interesting enough to warrant scientific exploration.

We're just one rock surrounded by this immense universe.

I'm the one who originally coined the term 'dwarf planet,' back in the nineteen-nineties.

Back before the Kuiper Belt was discovered, Pluto did look like a misfit that didn't belong with either the terrestrials or the giant planets.

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.

I don't mind categories, but it's so hard to find one that fits.

Oh, I don't like labels.

The Kuiper Belt is the largest mapped structure in our planetary system, three times as big as all the territory from the sun out to Neptune's orbit.

I don't pay attention to definitions or titles or try to fit within them.

People know a planet when they see one, and I think that's a pretty darn good test, in fact, for planethood.

Of course Pluto is a planet: It's massive enough to have its shape controlled by gravity rather than material strength, which is the hallmark of planethood.

I think when people see Pluto revealed by New Horizons, its satellite system, its complex surface, its atmosphere, I think they'll have a hard time saying 'That's not a planet' because it obviously will be, and I think most people are already coming to that opinion anyway, but I think that's really going to drive it home viscerally.

I hate being categorized.

It's a blessing and a curse at the same time, the idea of genre.

Why does everyone need to have a label?

If you put Earth out beyond Neptune, you wouldn't be able to call it a planet because it couldn't clear its zone.

We're going to find Marses and maybe Earths out in the solar system's attic of the Oort Cloud and the Kuiper Belt.

There are lots of really interesting little planets out there in the Kuiper Belt, but Pluto's the only one that's got all the cool attributes.

To say that what a planet is doesn't matter would be to imply that a planetary scientist couldn't explain to someone what the field is about.

I don't like labels.

If you ask a woman who she is, she'll tell you who she serves and sometimes what she does. But that isn't the whole story.

Going to the Kuiper Belt is like an archaeological dig into the history of the solar system.