Sublime erroneousness

Here's the BBC, inserting a helpful parenthesis in a quote used in a story concerning the New Horizons fly-by of Pluto:

"Pluto has strong atmospheric cycles. It snows on the surface. These snows sublimate - (and) go back into the atmosphere - every 248-year orbit."

The source, mission chief scientist Alan Stern, was offering a paraphrase of the verb sublimate, "to change from a solid to a vapor." Reporter Jonathan Amos (or a BBC copy editor, assuming those still exist) decided that sublimate means something else.

Well spotted. The BBC are frantically cutting costs after the recent budget. No need to pay for anyone with knowledge of science to edit the science news.

The key characteristic of the physical process of sublimation - pace Alan Stern -isn't simply the change from the solid phase to the vapour phase, but the absence of an intervening liquid phase. Solid carbon dioxide - commonly known as 'dry ice' - is a good example.