Pluto Is Going To Rocket Through Space And Kick Our Ass

Pluto is turning red. Apparently the funny little 1,467-mile-wide ball of rock and ice that snobby earthlings named after a cartoon dog before stripping of official “planet” status four years ago is entering a new phase in its 248-year-long seasonal cycle. “These changes are most likely consequences of surface ice melting on the sunlit pole and then re-freezing on the other pole,” said NASA, in a statement issued by its Space Telescope Science Institute. Other astronomers, though, aren’t so sanguine. Marc Buie, of the Southwest Research Institute in Texas says, “It’s a little bit of a surprise to see these changes happening so big and so fast. This is unprecedented.” We’ll see what people say when the supposedly negligible “dwarf” starts to quiver and shake and lines itself itself up on a direct angle with New York.