Wonder Is there a fact that fills you with wonder whenever you think about it, no matter how long you've known about it? Something that just gives you a little frisson of excitement whenever you think about it? That's how I feel about Pluto. source NO, not THAT Pluto! This Pluto! I remember learning about the Solar System in grade school. Our teacher told us, with great authority, that we would never get to Pluto because it was so far away. It was just a dead, cold, lifeless planet, anyway. What she was thinking of, probably | source This would have been in the mid-70s. We had already been to space, although only up to the Moon and back. Space travel was still such a relatively young endeavor and Pluto was so terribly far away that I can see how a grade school science teacher in the 70s would totally discount the idea of humans ever getting there. And then, in 2015, we did get to Pluto, by way of the New Horizons interplanetary space probe. Launched in 2006, New Horizons reached the impossibly far away Pluto in 2015. Pluto is turning out to be pretty amazing! Far from being a gray, lifeless rock like our moon, it's colorful! (Although, yes, still lifeless. As far as we know.) It has undergone geological processes - there is evidence of tectonic movements and possibly also erosion and cryovolcanic activity. It has moons! And an atmosphere! And all of this just fills me with wonder and gives me a little chill every time I think about it. To have gone from "Nope, we'll never get there and it's just a dead, rocky wasteland" to this? Truly fricking amazing. When I first started using Zonelets I had Disqus set up as a commenting system but it looked obnoxiously ugly and I ditched it. Some people are happy to not have blog interaction but I'd love to hear from you if you have any thoughts you want to share! You can respond through my guestbook or email. If you found this link on Discord or the 32-Bit Cafe Discourse, you can message me there or leave a message on my Neocities profile page.