That so many binary or quasi-binary KBOs exist came as a real surprise to the research community.
The New Horizons Pluto mission will be the first mission to a binary object and will help us understand everything from the origin of Earth's moon to the physics of mass transfer between binary stars.
I think drag helps move us in the direction of loosening up the man/woman binary. The idea that you're one, or the other, it's false. The more that as a society we become a little looser, more open to laugh about gender, that's the direction the world needs to go in.
I would like to see the breakdown of the binary way of looking at gender and sexuality.
As I started to explore my gender identity, I didn't know how I could claim the title of 'feminist' without subscribing to the gender binary. I thought I had to be a proud woman to be a feminist. Then I came to the realization that I can be proud of women without necessarily identifying as one.
More and more - especially the younger generation - are functioning outside the binary concept of gender. That's just next-generation stuff.
Binaries, whether it's 'man' or 'woman,' or 'black' and 'white,' were created to separate us. So without binary, there is only 'us,' which makes us all equal.
Honestly, from a very young age, before I had the language, really - anywhere that I encountered binary, whether it was in clothing or in toys or in media, it always made me uncomfortable.
I think, in the United States, we talk about race as a black and white issue... We're generally talking about it as if it's a binary equation whereas, in fact, there's more than two races and, in fact, those races blend together. There are a lot of different ways that people identify.
In the animal world, there are all kinds of behaviors that are binary: for example, to flee or to fight. In any evolutionary environment, knowing your opponent's decision would not be advantageous for long because your opponent would evolve the same recognition mechanism to also know you.
