A Lot Has Changed Since New Horizon Left For Pluto

Over the last week, I have been discussing Pluto a lot with my kids. We realized last Tuesday that the New Horizons mission left Earth when my daughter was two months old (likely, I was sleep deprived and don't remember it leaving). We spent quite a bit of time figuring out how long it would take to fly there under different conditions and understanding how fast it is moving.

Then came the discussion about how Pluto was a planet when I was a kid, and now it isn't.

Kind of reminded me of how the Brontosaurus was my favorite dinosaur growing up . . . . and then it was declared not a dinosaur at all. Of course, then earlier this year scientists discovered that Brontosaurus was actually the coolest dinosaur.

All this got me thinking about all the things that were given facts when we were younger that are no longer true.

Here are a few highlights:

We thought stomach ulcers were caused by stress: Helicobacter Pylori. We thought Neanderthals and Humans didn't coexist. We thought the difference between Earth and other planets was likely water. We thought diamonds were the hardest thing on earth: ultrahard nanotwinned cubic boron nitride. We thought you couldn't fold a piece of paper more than 7 times: 11 times currently. There were definitely 5 kingdoms (plants, animals, fungi, bacteria, and protists): then we figured out that archaebacteria really don't have much...