Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson: Pluto's Place in the Universe

behavior, you know, sneaking in front of another planet, yeah, that's not cool, certainly, New York found out that that's leaking before the travel line and that's it, you know, keep your

place

on line number one, number two, Pluto is really small, there are seven. moons in the solar system larger than Pluto. I continually polled Pluto lovers and asked them how many of them were constantly aware of this fact, half of them didn't know, which tells me that this information was suppressed by the Pluto Lobby and now also Pluto over its orbit. It's tilted out of the plane of the solar systems, the rest of the orbit, so it's a really strange planet, whereas if you look at the other icy bodies that we've discovered, they have tilted orbits, elongated orbits, they're small, in It's mostly ice in the same way that Pluto is mostly ice, so Pluto isn't so much the ninth planet as it is a reference object in a new category, a new type of object that orbits the solar system and we call it the Kuiper Comet Belt. , named for a mid-century astronomer, a theorist who hypothesized that beyond the orbit of the outermost large planet, if there were no other large planet there to gravitationally suck up the debris, the debris would still be there.

If you're far enough from the Sun, it would be frozen, so here are all these chunks of ice. Pluto does not dominate that orbital or that orbital zone, so you get an They were offended by this because they felt like that was a demotion and I thought maybe it's just some kind of planet like if you're driving a compact car and you're not driving, saying "I am." you're not actually driving a car, you know, you're not thinking this to yourself, you're just driving a compact, you park where it says compact car, park in the garage, so, I'm just some people, but astronomers like to use the word dwarf in your lexicon all the time we do it very much like if there were dwarf galaxies, one of my favorite professional interests or dwarf galaxies, we're not thinking that it's not a galaxy, right, and in fact, that's right, it's just those with a fragile ego shared names that I felt the dwarf actually kicked them out of the room now it turns out there is another term, by the way, according to that set of rules, that asteroid I told you, which is also round, which rose from a simple asteroid to a dwarf planet status, it is the The main object, its round has not been cleared, it is full of the rest of the asteroids in the asteroid belt, so we increase the number of dwarf planets now, if you are beyond of Neptune and I see that there is another word for you. you are a blue tide now some people don't like it that's why then dwarf planet you if you are a dwarf planet beyond Neptune you are an envelope of

pluto

and you are out you are on Pluto now one of the great Pluto supporters in the world Alan Stern doesn't like that word because you said it sounds like some kind of skin disease, you know, thank you, yeah, your Pluto is, oh, there's no medicine for that, you know and I agree, it sounds like something like that. yes, I have to go to the doctor, yes, blue toys, have Pluto taken away, yes, I can't sit down, my Pluto, eh, so Pluto is more like a comet, so that's a comment.

I say that this point no longer exists. there where comets come if the Kuiper comet belt took Pluto, which is more than half ice by volume, and brought it to where the Earth is now, the heat from the Sun would evaporate that ice and its tail would grow now. that's what you know, if you're trying to be a planet and you have a tail sticking out, you know, we have words for tailless things, we call them, comment, we have vocabulary for, so that would be really big, comment, be the biggest . ever was, I mean, maybe we need another vocabulary word because, by the way, most comets aren't big enough for gravity to make them round, so this should create an argument, not if is it a planet or not, but what kind of new word would indicate it.

The fact is that it is a frozen body large enough to be round and that is where the discussion should take

place

. I speak as an educator, well, you certainly say that there should be five kinds of objects. There are five for now. There will be more but what are the classes? Well, I don't have names for them because I'm not going to say it, we could make them up here and now, but I know which ones are more similar to each other than any of them. look like anything else terrestrials terrestrial planets Mercury Venus Earth and Mars small dense rocky asteroid belt steep chunks of rock all orbiting in one area Jupiter Saturn Uranus and Neptune large low-density gaseous rings the Kuiper belt small orbits icy eccentrics in a belt and then there is another area that we call a cloud, it's not really a cloud in the traditional sense, it's just that it's a reservoir of comets that completely surrounds the entire solar system and extends to half of the nearest stars and it is supposed to be there in extremely strong condition. gravitational terrains if you look at comets, they come very close to the Sun, they move very fast when they are furthest from the Sun, they would move slowly, just count how many comets come close to the Sun that have really huge orbits and say, well, if I get five of these per decade, there must be billions of them where they move very, very, very slowly in the farthest reaches of the solar system and this was the hypothesis of a Danish astronomer named Yan Oort to call the Oort cloud of comets and you I could give the Sun its own category, nothing looks like the Sun in our solar system, so that's all I send and teach to the solar system that way, not as an enumeration of objects that you memorize and have teachers give questions exam that they believe is science. like what's the name of the fifth planet from the Sun and then you check your mnemonic, my very educated mother, it's just Jupiter, Jupiter, and you mark it correctly, like you just learned some science that isn't science, so I think part of me believe. part of the irrational attachment went beyond the dog, it was because you learned it as a kind of compact compact system of information instead of a tapestry of discovery that came out of my mouth, okay, okay, do you think we have teachers who can teach ? a tapestry of discovery I think teachers should rise to the occasion and it's not that difficult.

I mean, I'm not asking you to teach the interior gravitational structure of these objects, but Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars are dense as rocks, so bring some rocks. that has that kind of density and the others are big and bulbous and load up and bring some beach balls and you get a sense of density yes it's a big word but I think a third grader can get the point right and the big ones give them all the rings and the things you can learn without just memorizing them and in sequence you can build that dirty snowball demonstration to build a dirty snowball you have Pluto out there and you heat it up and watch it evaporate get some dry ice , you see?

Less than that today, but the ice cream vendor inside, the smoke coming out, is dry ice, CO2. Pluto is most of the ice on Pluto, it's the same thing that's inside ice cream vendors. Look at a nice card, thank you. ice cream itself with that which is to maintain a cold true that it would not be good to chew a little frozen CO2 that would be bad you only do it once and when you do it you will not be able to talk about it your tongue, but about freezing your tongue until it turns into ice , so we should go out and explore Pluto more than we are, yes we do, we have a mission going on there right now, launched quickly before the vote was taken that demoted Pluto for the way the black is thick .

They were worried that some of them wouldn't admit this, but I know it's true, they're worried that while they're getting funding for this mission to Pluto, if Pluto was demoted to just a dirty ice ball, they'd say well, why are we spending thousands? of millions and billions of dollars to visit a dirty ice ball? So the slogans for this mission were: we must complete the reconnaissance of the nine planets of the solar system the first mission to the last planet these were these were the slogans and these are these slogans, they are a subterfuge, you had to speak in a language that Congress understand and what I know, but I would have said yes instead of the first mission to the last planet, well, let's complete the reconnaissance, let's begin the reconnaissance of a new strip of newly discovered real estate in the solar system to me it is a much more defensible position as a scientist than to claim that I found the latest one and that's what I'm going to do and get weird about those things that Are you doing?

That's not how science works, that's how I knew they were trying to maintain major planet status for this tiny dirty ice ball in the outer solar system. That will be the last probe that goes anywhere. The currently funded probe is going to the outer solar system, so a brother who was on the fast track said the probe is relatively small and put it on the largest engines in our arsenal. So if you put some low mass into big motors, this thing goes fast. like passing the moon in about six hours and it was carrying and that's how it will be because the rule is okay if you knew this rule I'm waiting here the rule is if you're a scientist and you're doing an experiment the rule Do you need the results of the experiment before you die?

That's a rule so you can get more funds, as I guess. If you take the slow boat to Pluto, it would take about 20 years and you don't want to now, you don't want to. I want you to hate when that happens, you hate when that happens, so this one was launched at number 6 and it will reach Pluto in 2015, although it will be a flyby, so it's a nine-year mission and you have to for example, get its images as fast as it can and it will go explore other objects in the Kuiper belt, so it should be around the time the Chinese get to the moon.

I think that's actually how it is. The Chinese said to send people to the moon. Me, people. send people to the moon so yeah, do you think we should send people to the moon? I think so. Return to the moon. I think so. I have reasons to defend that if you're interested, but I know I'm very interested in doing so. go there now we can go there now, but I'm just warning you, it's just that it's a warning, let's go there now, did you want to go there now? I only have another hour left, okay, it will take a while. there I think at least three days I wear multiple hats in life if I put on my pure scientist hat then there is no defensible reason to send human beings to orbit or to space if you speak like a pure scientist because because Whatever it costs to send to a person, the problem is that you have to like to feed them and they want to come back, usually you know, little complications like, but you don't want to, they don't want to die on the way, they get in a bad mood, they have these.

So you have to make this spacecraft safe for them and you add up the cost of this, it's the cost of about 30 robotic missions, so you go to the scientists you want to send one person to or 30 different robotic missions, no scientist is going to say send the person, it's just not going to happen and that's it, okay, not even the geologists because you get a better bang for your buck, yeah, it's the return, a scientific return on the dollar, okay, now I get my public hat and I look around and realize that no one has ever named a high school after a robot.

Well, no, no press went to a robot's birthplace and talked to its teacher. they will line up to get your autograph even if they don't even know your name beforehand hmm it's the fact that they are astronauts that people care about and therefore there is value in that, there is political cultural value in that number one , number two that NASA has. Inspired by how many of my colleagues feel about this, it has never been our private funding agency for science right now. 70% and that's the smallest it's ever been. 70% of NASA's budget goes to the man program, which is the smallest it has ever been.

Once it was like 67% as far as the space shuttle goes to the Space Shuttle Space station the man program Houston astronaut training core all this astronaut ice cream yeah, astronaut food and stuff like that, it's never been less than that , science has always been on the coattails of manned missions always the story of human discovery in the most expensive discovery configurations that have ever existed has always been science that happened on the coattails of some other mission today is the 200th anniversary of the birth of Charles Darwin the Beagle the ship he took that went to the Galapagos Islands was not chartered by him that was not the place you want to go today Chuck, okay, he had other mission statements and he just took advantage of that trip for some of the best science that ever happenedIt's one step, much more is understanding something else that is happening, we classify things because our mind is too weak to really understand what is happening, so we have to say, okay, these kinds of appearances we will hold that together until we can know something better and So never think that classification is science, it is not science, it is a means to understand the natural world, not the object of understanding the natural world, so I can't agree with what you are saying, but I I'll let it finish now, you mean the periodic table, like the phylums, all that kind of stuff because we're not just classical.

You just created an entire fake construct and then ask me to explain why that is? Physics classifies particles. leptons, you know, baryons, so everyone has to classify something, otherwise you can't have a conversation with someone, but that's not the goal, the goal is to understand what nature is doing, how it behaves to predict, that is the true understanding of what is happening. and that is why he is the king of sciences because he predicts better than anyone has ever dreamed of. I can use the laws of physics. I can tell you the instant the Sun will rise above your horizon.

I can tell you what time a total solar eclipse will occur. a thousand years from now and in what neighborhood it will take place. I can tell you what a solar eclipse it was. I can even post a dictation. I can tell you what solar eclipse stopped a battle that was taking place in Troy because it was reported that there is a total. solar eclipse can I know what eclipse it was how long that eclipse lasted and check if they really accurately counted what they saw if they sell t-shirts they are perfect that has nothing to do with the classification none of that yes ma I'm get up please, I didn't mean to yell at you, I'm just you, only he doesn't have an off button, so no, you know, that's the good thing.

Hi, yes it is mm-hmm. Okay, I guess he's not from Canada. Noise, ah, whoo. Yeah, okay, so look at what you heard in the question, what is my opinion on the debate that was going on between evolution and biblical creation and that debate typically took place in school systems where school boards were trying to influence the science curriculum, although it was extended? in the blogosphere and other places where people liked to debate this, some simple facts should be considered simple facts, no one in the history of religious literature has drawn on their readings of religious literature and made an accurate prediction of a phenomenon verifiable that had not been done before. known at the time of that literature, okay, in other words, what you find in the religious tax is that there is an account of what is known, so I mean the physical

universe

, if you look at each one, let's take the Judeo. -Christian, the Old Testament, the Torah, for example, you look at Genesis, which is a story of things until science made discoveries independent of the story of things, people used Genesis as a source of the story of things, in each case they were wrong. outside of outside of Genesis in the Bible in general the earth is flat it is theirs it is an earth in the middle surrounded by water they are there the sky is like the stars are these little things embedded in this surface there are this is how everyone universally interpreted the physical

universe

based on the science of scripture, one said no that is simply false and over time the bible became less and less used as a science textbook by enlightened religious people and every more and more as a source of spiritual fulfillment and spiritual enlightenment, so today non-fundamentalist religious people will cite the Bible as a source of their spiritual fulfillment and they don't get their science from the Bible because they know better because those attempts simply fail if they would have been successful, it's not funny. for lack of trying for centuries people tried to get science out of the bible, it just fails, okay, it just doesn't work, everyone does it exactly, trying to make it work, you just can't make it work, it doesn't work.

Even Leonardo tried, well, he noticed that there were fossilized shells on the top of the mountain, long considered evidence of the flood. Okay, but he noticed that the shells were carefully placed there, they weren't in a mess, he said. If there was a flood, this would be flood water and all these fossils would be mixed together, but look at this, so I'll leave it and he started questioning the flood story, this is Leonardo, we're talking about rumors, you know, 15. century then 16th century then it just doesn't work then it doesn't belong in the sign classroom because it's just not science we live in a pluralistic society doesn't mean you can't teach it it just doesn't It doesn't belong in the science classroom anymore, so the scientist should run to Sunday school and knock on the door to tell the preacher what to teach.

There's no tradition of scientists doing that. There is no tradition of scientists picketing outside churches and synagogues saying that. It may not necessarily be true, it doesn't happen that way, we live in a nation that protects freedom of religion, so practice your religion and know what's stopping you, that's one of the best things about this country, but only because you have a religion doesn't mean it's correct science, accept that fact, otherwise you will undermine the scientific enterprise that is the greatest engine of economic growth the culture has ever seen. In fact, I served three terms in the Bush administration, so I saw what was going on.

I thought this was very revealing by the way, okay, I was appointed by the president, okay, appointed by him, so I'm there and I'm watching this happen anywhere when you have duty toys, okay, one was: I have served in a presidential position. Commission to study the future of the aerospace industry in the United States, which had fallen on difficult times, lost half a million jobs in the previous 10 to 15 years and was concerned about how it would affect the security of transportation and commerce. The following idea occurred to me. on the Commission to Study the Future of NASA After the Columbia Tragedy, a third appointment was to select who would receive the Presidential Medal of Science, okay, okay, so these are nonpartisan appointments, they're just trying and they're just trying do good in the world, but I was baptized into a world I had not seen.

Republicans like where everywhere here in New York it's like there's a Republican there, everyone turns around and sees that Republican right there, New York City, oh, now you've got more. of them here on the East Side, I understand, but it's still not like Colorado or anything like India or Indiana or Idaho, so I'm there and there was a court case in Dover, Pennsylvania, where intelligent design was tried . This is the movement where the religious community would say that there are things in the world that are so intricate and beyond all scientific explanation that they must have been enabled by an intelligence higher than the human mind called intelligent design, a way of accounting for things you don't understand what they wanted. get that in the science classroom without ever mentioning the word God because that would be the intersection of church and state and therefore this is kind of a subtree, the way few girls bring God into the classroom, the The judge presiding over that trial was a bush judge appointed this is a school board trying to get intelligence on public schools all my liberal Democrat friends said this is going to go bad and I said Bush appointed him he's a Republican judge he's not going to go wrong I was fine I sat there watching it unfold and in the end the judge expelled him from the court said that intelligent designs are not science, there is no place in the science classroom and I wrote a hundred and thirty page summary.

I guess you wouldn't call it short in that sense. point one hundred and thirty page what is that I'm sure there are lawyers here migaila Miguel I think it's McGill you're right it's you sir exactly Gila like Magilla all Meguila everything really tells Rachel they were like Magilla the gorilla it's true, you don't spend enough time on the west side, sorry, yeah, so it was a 130 page account that actually makes a fascinating decision, that's the opinion decision, the whole 130 page lesson plan above basically about what science is and what it isn't, and now there are schools that use it. that in your science class there is a brilliant story, okay, why did you know it would happen? why did he know it?

It's because while the Republican will resist spending money, the typical guy is the same and it's largely true, but it can be argued on the fringes, a Republican might resist creating a social program serving people in need, they are more likely to do so. invest in industry to drive a capitalist system that could create an employment base that people would then take on, so this is the difference here, okay, which means that Republicans are much more likely, compared to Democrats , put money in places that would later generate more money. bang, okay, no, like it came from the Rd of an oil corporation, this kind of thing, so a Republican judge, one thing I learned above all else, anything else that's true about a Republican, they don't want to die poor and whether intelligent design is allowed in science.

In the classroom you will undermine the foundation of science education in the United States and that would be the beginning of the end of everything we have taken for granted about our economic strength as a nation, so I knew I couldn't decide that without jeopardizing my entire investment portfolio. This is how I found out one night, meanwhile, Bush has to continue like this because his electorate feels that way and that is the one who put him in office, but the judges are not elected, not the one he appoints, so that gives him the freedom of doing things. that has nothing to do with the opinion of the voters, there is a political question, one more question at a time, because we have one in the front row right here, go ahead, stand up, I ask you a question, I bet you say, go ahead , you would like to do? a full set please, thank you, okay, but the first night was how old are you? 9 years great.

I was 9 years old and had my first visit to the Hayden Planetarium and was blown away and have been interested in the universe ever since. 9 years, so go ahead, did you hear that in the back row? So the question, thank you for that question first, do I think Americans care more about Pluto, the dogs, Pluto, the planet, and Pluto's head has been named something other than Pluto, would they have been named by Americans? I cared as much as we did, that's a great question, let's go back in time a little bit, go back to the middle of '17.

I've got the right gears in the book at a time when Sir William Herschel, a very famous and brilliant British astronomer, It had the biggest telescope. of the day if you have the biggest telescope you see things that other people don't see because they don't have a telescope like yours I want one he discovered a new planet no one had discovered a planet before no one had Mercury Venus Earth Mars Jupiter and Saturn discovered a new planet , so I was going to name it. How will you name it? No one had discovered a planet before, so the new rules for naming it did what any good scientist would do. and he named it after his main financier, the person who gives him money, so that was King George, so for about 50 years the textbooks showed Mercury Venus Earth Mars Jupiter Saturn and George was now only nine years old no do this no no no like this like this I don't know, but I would be deeply disturbed by a planet called George, so finally clear ideas prevailed and they said, "Okay, wait a minute, the other planets are named after Roman gods, this one should be a Roman god, but that would get the The British are very angry, they are the most powerful force the world has ever seen economically, culturally, militaristically and everything else Lee, yeah, so you don't want to make them angry. , as a consolation, as a kind of good, how can we not make them angrier than they already are for removing the King's name from the planet, they said okay, we will make an exception for the moons because, although the planets are named after Roman gods, the moons of the planets are named after Greek characters in the lives of the Greeks. counterpart of the Roman god who gives the planet its name.

Wow, then what, if, for example, Jupiter one of its moons is Ganymede. Ganymede is the servant of Zeus and Zeus is the Greek counterpart of Jupiter, that's how it works, so that's our tribute. to Greek and Roman legends and the role they played in trying to map the solar system now the exception to Uranus which is eventually called yeren the exception is that its moons are not named after Greek gods but are named after fictitious. Shakespeare characters, oh my goodness, and six Shakespeare Brits, that was one way to bungee Bob, anything with the chance that it doesn't have a chance, so you have moons like a Porsche and not a Porsche like the car , but a Porsche P ort ia Oberon puck.

Titania Miranda had a lot of things tonight, not much humor butShakespeare had a lot of character, the Greek gods were very careful, they led complicated social lives, there is no shortage of characters to name, so the names of the planets date for the first time what a Roman god would have to be, so the question is, would he be a Roman god? didn't share the name of a dog or a cartoon character, would anyone have cared? I'm sure that would have been the case in In fact, if Americans hadn't been able to name Pluto, Pluto, do you know why it was named after an eleven-year-old British girl in England who was well connected to her father, who ran the Cambridge library and that he was a friend of the astronomer?

Real totally connected 11 year old girl in America, no one could have come up with the word Pluto because at the time there was a widely advertised mineral laxative, ask your mom what laxative called Pluto water with the slogan when nature doesn't mean Pluto. so you will discover a new planet, no one is thinking about the bathroom, okay no, they want to think about something else, which is why Americans wouldn't have come up with Pluto if they had come up with some name like me, which is dumb , they are stupid, right? I've been right Donald Goofy Donald Goofy Mickey so I'm sure if it had been called something else the Americans wouldn't have linked it at all and would have chosen something else, how about we think of another good Greek name?

How about who is it, who is it? The guy who looked at the reflection of him in the north distance pose was named Narciso. You know, kids can barely pronounce. That would have been lost a long time ago and wouldn't have happened. I'm sure of it and, besides, as I said, they are all of them. It's not just because it's small, we have smaller things in the solar system, it's not just because it's frozen, we have other frozen things, it's not because it's the furthest, I mean, because sometimes it's not even the furthest, so that none of those arguments really hold up.

I don't think that's why I blame everything on Disney and there's the whole tracking of if you care, only if you care, all of Disney, the origin of Pluto in the Disney Pantheon is here and you and how disturbing it can end up with that. one, hey, I got it, I got it off my chest and you might be curious. How can a Mickey mouse have a dog? Why is Pluto Mickey's dog? Wow, but Mickey is not the mouse from Pluto. Have you ever wondered? I was deeply disturbed by this. This is an alteration in the mammalian order of things, so I had to look this up.

Wow, I called my Disney consultants, yeah, mm-hm, look at this, you know, you know how you can do this at Disney. pantheon of characters, not the ones they bought later like Winnie the Pooh. I'm not talking about those who draw in their laboratories. If you are an animal that wears clothes, you can have other animals that don't. Mickey has those gloves. balloon pants wears whatever those things are Wow Pluto's butt naked walks on all fours and barks while Goofy wears clothes walks biped pays rent lives in a house, not a dog house I know you were burning to know this , but I had to tell you it's that salad and there's more good stuff in this book the rise and fall of the Pluto file America's favorite plan put there thank you all they'll be on Science Friday tomorrow at 3:00 on WNYC 1 any time thing we didn't cover tonight.

I don't know how we're going to get there, but thank you all for coming tonight and we will. Books outside. I guess books outside of you.