By Harold Egeln
Brooklyn Daily Eagle

GOWANUS — Is Pluto a true planet? “Fuhgeddaboudit!� was the Brooklyn word for it when astrophysicist and Hayden Planetarium director Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson spoke to hundreds on “The Rise and Fall of America’s Favorite Planet� at a Secret Science Club program in Gowanus on Wednesday.

The pipsqueak world of Pluto, discovered in 1930 by U.S. observer Clyde Tombaugh at age 24, was reclassified as a dwarf planet in August 2006 by the International Astronomical Union, setting off a meteor storm of controversy.

“This is our first true inaugural event here at the Bell House,� said Dorian Devins, a WFMU radio show host and an organizer of the Secret Science Club, founded in September 2006 at Union Hall in Park Slope. The popular science café monthly series that attracts speakers on all sorts of topics, one of a growing number in the nation and around Earth, clearly outgrew its former space, one-third the size of the Bell House music/event venue and lounge, a Union Hall spin-off.

At the Bell House at 149 Seventh St., a huge enthusiastic crowd filled its spacious main hall with 150 seated and over 100 standing, plus nearly 100 watching on a TV monitor in the bar lounge. Most of the cosmic swarm of Earthlings were in their 20s and 30s — the Space Age science generation, part of the Secret Science Club phenomena.

“To introduce our fabulous guest speaker, we now have a club theme song!� proclaimed club co-founder Margaret Mittelback, author of “Wild New York� with Michael Crewdson. Taking the stage was the Dead River Company rock band of Brooklyn singing about “science addiction.�

Downsized planet Pluto in the solar system’s outer limits can identify with Brooklyn, an “outer borough� of NYC downsized from a city to a borough in 1898. Pluto is an icy rock world orbiting in the vast Kuiper Belt of countless cosmic bodies its size or less, which cannot even clear its path of rocky debris as it orbits the sun every 248 years.

When Tyson was introduced, wild applause and cheers erupted. In the last decade he has succeeded the late Brooklyn-born astrophysicist Carl Sagan, a Cavallaro I.S. graduate, as a much-sought “popularizer� of science, reaching celebrity status literally among the stars, rocketed there partly because of the Pluto controversy and the new Hayden Planetarium building. A crew from Boston public TV station WGBH that produces his PBS “ScienceNOW� mini-series was at the event.

For Pluto, Size Does Matter, Tyson Says

When the new Rose Center for Earth and Space and its Hayden Planetarium at the American Museum of Natural History excluded popular Pluto from its parade of planets in 2000, Plutonian advocates were outraged. Children wrote angry letters to Tyson. Then came the insult when the International Astronomical Union in 2006 re-classified Pluto into a new category of dwarf planets.

Making the case for Pluto’s new classification was New Yorker Tyson, author of a new book, The Pluto Files — The Rise and Fall of America’s Favorite Planet, one of nine books he wrote or co-authored since 1994.

“Pluto discoverer Clyde Tombaugh defended Pluto’s full planet status until his death 12 years ago at age 90,� said Tyson. “If anyone questioned his position, he would raise his cane in defense. Since his death, I would like to tell his widow that Clyde was actually a pioneer, discovering the first of a new class of celestial objects in the Kuiper Belt.�

Thus, suffering demotion, Pluto actually attained a promotion. NASA’s Project Horizons automated space probe will visit it in a fly-by on July 14, 2015, and then travel into the Kuiper Belt’s massive swarm of dwarf planets (one is larger than Pluto!), asteroids and comets composing the solar system’s “cosmic halo.�

Before Tyson’s intensely and lively illustrated presentation, clever animated shorts about Pluto filled the Bell House’s large stage screen, including a sadly crying Pluto sitting at a bar downing glasses of beer. But cheer up! There were photos of Tyson meeting Disney dog Pluto, and they became, Tyson said, “friends for life.�

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