A moment of silence for the solar system as we once knew it.

By now you’ve all heard the news: Pluto has been relegated to the Milky Way ghetto. It’s been voted out of the planetary country club. Reduced to a dwarf, stripped of its status like a performance-enhanced Tour de France winner.

Despite the vote of the International Astronomical Union, Pluto will always be a planet to me.

It will always be that tiny pea-sized ball of Styrofoam on the mobile of life, overshadowed by Jupiter, not nearly as funny as Uranus or as glamorous as Saturn, but a planet just the same.

The underdog that could.

Losing Pluto is like linguists deciding we no longer need x in the alphabet. It’s like theologians kicking Ezekiel out of the Bible. It’s like ABC moving “Desperate Housewives” to Tuesday mornings.

It’s wrong. Or as one Web poster wrote: It’s Goofy.

Not even the scientists could agree on the decision.

Just last week, the 2,500 astronomers gathered in Prague were ready to open up the covenants on planethood by letting any round asteroid with an elliptical orbit into the formerly exclusive club.

But a new resolution this week gave Pluto and its ilk the boot into the black hole of history instead.

“In a scientific sense it makes sense,” said University of Nebraska-Lincoln astronomy professor Martin Gaskell. “But, culturally it’s different … because people like Pluto and they like Pluto as a planet.”

Gaskell’s sources at the conference reported stormy sessions between the planetary scientists and the astronomy faction.

In the end, only 300 members cast ballots.

Scientists came up with a more specific definition of what makes a planet, he said.

It has to be round. It has to be the dominant object in its orbit around the sun.

That’s what really sealed poor Pluto’s fate: An oval orbit that sent it scurrying around that big bully Neptune, and occasionally passing on the inside lane.

Gaskell himself has a fondness for Pluto despite its puny size (1,400 miles across) and its distance from the nearest McDonald’s (4.68 billion miles).

“It’s very faint, but I’ve seen it. I’ve taken pictures of it.”

And its ouster is already changing the way he teaches Astronomy 103.

The syllabus requires students learn the order and names of the planets. Before Thursday he used a mnemonic device to help them along.

My Very Educated Mother Just Served Us Nine Pizzas.

Mercury. Venus. Earth. Mars. Jupiter. Saturn. Uranus. Neptune. Pluto.

Now what?

Students will have to memorize a new tool, the professor said.

He planned to go to class and write his eight-planet version on the blackboard: My Very Educated Mother Just Served Us Noodles.

Talk was subdued in the department yesterday, he said.

“Although one person did joke about what this is going to mean for astrologers and their horoscopes.”

Forget astrologers. What about mobile-makers? School teachers? Encyclopedia sellers?

And just what is Pluto now?

A dwarf planet?

A planette? Now showing Pluto and the planettes, Xena, Ceres and the rest of the gang!

Gaskell reported some scientists sought to placate the displaced planet and its fans by creating a new category called “Plutonian-objects,” which might work for the big icy, gassy rock in space but probably wouldn’t do much to soothe Pluto’s founder.

As for me, I’m looking to start a petition drive to put the Pluto issue on the fall ballot, although Erik Hubl, aptly named local astronomer and board member of the Hyde Observatory, won’t sign.

“I think the classification is a good one,” he said. “The first four planets are rock planets and the second four are gas planets, and then there was weird Pluto.

“Pluto was always an anomaly.”

Easy for him to say.

But it doesn’t do much for property values on poor, poor Pluto.

Reach Cindy Lange-Kubick at 473-7218 or clangekubick@journalstar.com.