The Pluto Files | Neil deGrasse Tyson | Talks at Google

good afternoon everyone, thank you for coming, welcome here to introduce Neil deGrasse Tyson, which will give you a little bit of information about him. He was born and raised here in New York City, where he was educated in the public schools until his graduation from Bronx High School of Science. Tyson earned his bachelor's degree in physics from Harvard and his PhD in astrophysics from Columbia, in addition to dozens of professional publications. Tyson has written and continues to write for the public, it is a monthly SEO publication, a natural history magazine under the title universe and among Tyson's nine books is his memoir, the sky is not the limit.

Adventures of an urban astrophysicist and origins of 14 billion cosmic years. Evolution, co-written with Donald Goldsmith Origins, is the companion book to the four-part PBS Nova miniseries Origins in which Tyson serves as an on-camera host. The show premiered on September 28 and 29, 2004, and beginning in the fall of 2006, Tyson appears as Tyson, on-camera host of the PBS Nova spin-off show, Nova ScienceNOW, which is an accessible look at the frontier of the entire science that shapes the understanding of our place in the universe, received nine honorary doctorates and distinguished NASA Public Service. The medal for his contributions to the public appreciation of the cosmos has been recognized by the International Astronomical Union for the official name of the asteroid one three one two three Tyson on the lighter side Tyson was voted the sexiest living astrophysicist by People magazine in 2000 Tyson is the first occupant of the Frederick P.

Rose dictatorship of the Hayden Planetarium here in New York, he also lives here in New York with his wife and two children, so please help me welcome him. I think the word is the address of my Hayden Planetarium dictatorship, just in case, yes. I'm proud of you for getting through all that first. I want to know that I have never been to Google before. This is great. Google is now a verb, as you know. Be searched on Google. You tell someone old enough and they wonder. If what you're doing is something illegal, I Googled it the other night, it's like calling the police, you know, let me congratulate you.

You occupy a building that actually has an identified 13th floor. 80% of buildings in New York City are taller. out of 12 they leave out the 13th floor, so I feel like going with a marker and cross out 14 and put 13 because that's the 13th floor, so I just want to be proud of you for finding a building like that, so here I finish to talk about Pluto I like this little chair here it's good this is good Pluto I'm told that this audience has a high geek index so I can go places I wouldn't otherwise go with other audiences so, with your permission , I can, excellent, okay, let's go.

Long ago, back then, you may have hoped that there was a day when there were seven known planets and the word planet had an unambiguous, clear and simple definition, defined by the ancient Greeks. Proof from the Greeks meaning Wanderers, there were seven objects at night in the sky that would move against the background sky so that Mercury Venus Mars Jupiter Saturn the Sun on the moon seven unequivocal everyone could agree that those were the planets and it is those seven names drawn from Roman and Norse mythology that landed as the seven names for the days of the week, their Saturdays after Saturn come if you knew they are named after Saturn Sundays are named after the Sun, yes, Monday, the moon, this kind of thing and you combine Greek, Roman and northern Norse legends, you get seven days of the week, okay, there you have it. for a couple of thousand years you get to Copernicus in 1543, he says well, maybe the Sun is in the middle of all this and if so, the Earth revolves around the Sun like those other things we had been calling a planet, then perhaps the Earth is a planet and so overnight with the publication of the revolutionibus 1543 Nicholas Copernicus Polish astronomer and mathematician practically overnight we went from seven planets to five because we lost the Sun and we lost the moon because we rotated around the Sun the moon goes around the Earth and we gained the earth 27 went down to five down to six and there it was, but that definition of a planet wasn't formal, it was just you go around the Sun, okay, you're good, good enough to all of us right now, by accident, by accident in At the end of the 17th century, William Herschel, a famous British astronomer, had the largest telescope in the country.

He's combing the sky just looking for things and finds a planet. In reality, no one had discovered a planet before, so he denied having discovered a planet. so you read his notes and he says and other people's notes about it say this is aw, the fake discovered a comical fine because he saw it moving in the background of common people, he knew about comets, you could find them, but no you're going to discover it on the planet planet, this has been, you know, if there was a planet, okay, you're not going to discover a planet with your telescope, so you read his writings and he says that because your comic refuses to show a tail or sort of a fuzzy coma around the so it's a comet misbehaving when it had actually discovered a planet, well it was time to name the thing well-being after a good scientific researcher that you want to name after the people they're funding his research correctly, so he named it after King George and so on for about fifty years or so, if you look at the textbooks of the time, in the textbooks of the time there was the list of planets Mercury Venus Earth Mars Jupiter Saturn and George right there It was there it was George so no one had named the planet before so you knew it was wrong but you didn't know why it was wrong and they finally found out that planets are named after Roman gods or goddesses, so we have to go back.

Other than that, but the British were the most powerful force in the world, economically, politically, culturally, militaristically, so you don't want to upset them, so if you're going to give the planet a Roman name, we have to give something up, so even so the tradition for naming the moons of the planets has been to name the moon after a varied Greek character in the life of the Greek counterpart of the Roman god whose name the planets, in other words, take Jupiter as remote. one of Jupiter's moons is Ganymede Ganymede was the servant of Zeus and Zeus is the Greek counterpart of the Roman Jupiter Jay got there this is how it works that has given homage to Greek and Roman history that fills the skies Uranus the planet discovered by Herschel is the only exception to this rule, the moons of Uranus are named after a variety of fictional characters in Shakespeare's literature, the only exception is kind of cool, so if you look at the name, the names of the moons of Uranus, it's like the album Oberon Portia, a lot of the characters in A Midsummer Night's Dream give me a little more of their name when I probably have a moon for you uh titania that's right and there's another one with inania titania helen is a helena yeah so we have moons all of them right now so I always want to take you down this winding path is because now you have this new planet Uranus further away than the planet Saturn and they said let's track its orbit moving slowly, although you can still check its orbit, they found out that you know not .

Following Newton's laws of gravity, we know how this planet should move around the Sun and these laws of gravity do not apply, the law of R squared to force the body of the Sun and Uranus, was not happening, there were slight deviations in it and so. People were worried because no one had ever tested Newton's laws so far from the Sun, perhaps Newton's laws have a functional limit beyond which they no longer apply. How quick are you to dismiss Newton's laws? I'm serious, they're working and Newton was smart. boy, you don't, that's a last resort, you don't want, you don't want that to be your first step, leave your feet, that's an alternative position, so they said maybe there's an object out there that remains to be discovered whose gravity is influencing.

The trajectory of Uranus is perhaps so certain that they checked the equations, inverted the equations and said that we must have a gravity source B to be able to alter the orbit of Uranus in this way. Well, the high-powered mathematicians of the day said it had to be done. Be fair, so they seemed pretty sure, they discovered a new planet that became Neptune, the planet Neptune, okay, it's good to us, now we solved Newton's laws, factorize Newton's laws are good, good for Neptune , well beyond Uranus, you work for Uranus, right now. keep looking at Neptune's trajectory now, now it's the farthest clinic and they say hmm, it doesn't follow Newton's laws hmm, we launched a Newton app now come on Newton is kicking Newton is good, he's good to us so they said he should having another planet out there influenced it and thus the search for Planet let's back up, let's put a pin in that let's back up for a minute 18:01 people know that there is a gap in the solar system between Mars and Jupiter Mercury Venus Earth Mars then there is a huge gap and then you get to Jupiter people said: I wonder if there is a planet there, it started by looking at how telescopes get better and better with every better telescope you get, there are more things you can see in the universe, whether further away which is bright or close which is very dark.

Each of those are thresholds that you can safely overcome. January 1, 1801, a new planet. It is discovered orbiting between Mars and Jupiter, they called it, they got the tradition that is now called Roman gods and goddesses, so they called this one series. I have heard that the planet Ceres is known. The planets are known, you've probably never heard of them. I remember it's in all the textbooks. I'm having fun. page history planet Ceres discovered Ceres cer is that's the Roman goddess of the harvest and that's now the root of the word cereal by a certain cereal is weight how that works look we get it so everyone was excited now they kept searching and then they found another planet and another and another, this went on for sixty years, they found the first four in the first fifty years and then another dozen in the few years, remember that telescopes are getting better every decade and they kept naming them and They said: wait, pause, what so big were these planets, the kind of small where these planets found the weather, all in the same zone, actually, what kind of Warburton am I, they all have the same orbits in this zone, how big is the biggest of these , it is smaller than the smallest of any other planet, we have seen how much smaller, much smaller, a few hundred miles wide, eight hundred miles wide, maybe they are not planets, maybe there is something else, maybe It took 60 years for us to have discovered a new strip of real estate in the solar system befitting its own category, but people finally realized that what had been discovered in 1801 was the first and brightest object in a new place called the Sun Belt. asteroids now there are hundreds of thousands of asteroids that we are passing through and the number one of them has my name a double check before agreeing to accept that it is not heading towards Earth, you are not going to blame me for that, remember that episode of The Simpsons where he, oh yeah, I need my bill, yeah, we need the moon things, the moon, do you remember there Bart Simpson once discovered a comet heading towards Earth and then the townspeople went to burn down the observatory that I had discovered the comment only for when scientific literacy is low, that's the kind of thing that happens, where was that before I interrupted it?

Myself asteroid belt, thanks, that was 1801, meanwhile people are still searching for Planet X as the 19th century draws to a close. There is a wealthy astronomer named Percival Lowell Lowell from New England. You know the Cabots and the lolz, the multi-generational wealthy family. New England families he was a smart fan a little off the wall he was a fan of the universe he got a mountain in Arizona he built an observatory there he called it Lowell Observatory yeah and it had the best observing conditions around Humidity is bad for observing the night sky so you move to the desert and arizona is not famous for its storms so there you go start the plot search modern quote modern search for planet x they said guys give me your best location so i know where You think Planet They have been doing it for a long time.

Nobody could find it. It has the best telescope. Now the best observation conditions, he says, give me my place in the sky. looked can't find look again can't find remains a fan when someone else finally dies is hired to carry out the search clyde tombaugh 24-year-old amateur astronomer from the midwest hired inthousands of other icy bodies as it cleared its orbit because of the way this area was predicted to be there. Mid-century, a solar system theorist named Gerard Kuiper reasoned that if you go beyond the orbit of the outermost large planet , Neptune, then if there are no other large planets that have gravitationally sucked up the remains of the solar system, it should still be there. there and at that distance everything would be made of ice, so of course, look there, everything is ice, everything is there and everything is rubble.

Pluto doesn't dominate that area, too bad Pluto doesn't check that box, you're not a planet, you're the new designation you're a dwarf planet, dwarf planet, this bothers so many people, so now I'm thinking, well, maybe it's not a degradation, maybe it's just a subclass of a planet, you could drive a compact car, you're not telling yourself, I wish. I was driving a real car, you know, you're not saying that to yourself, it's just a type of car, a compact car, so there were those who said it's not a demotion to Pluto and others took it personally and still they're in an uproar about I just do the Internet, of course you can do it, your

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here, so you own the Internet, so check it out, there's this one, there's some kind of underground Pluto, okay, that continues to fight this vote, so I'll have, oh, there's an extra oak tree, so the series becomes a dwarf planet, its orbits are round, the Sun hasn't cleared its orbit, so the series rises from an asteroid to a dwarf planet .

Pluto is downgraded from a planet to a dwarf planet, there are other objects around that are There are also dwarf planets, but I think there is another category for Pluto to feel good, and that is if you are round beyond Neptune, which means that you are mostly ice, then you're a blue tide, some people didn't like that one because it sounds like some kind of skin disease or some have blue tides, we get medications for that, you know, there you have it, the current type of formal anatomy of the system solar and I don't have a firm opinion on the definition of a Planet, we never count planets.

What matters to me is that if you define planet whatever, I want you to admit that it is not the most interesting information you can convey about the solar system if I say that I just discovered a planet around another star. you are going to ask me as big as small as rocky as gaseous if it has rings if it is in the habitable zone there is a tab mood we have to play 20 questions just so that you are satisfied with the answer that tells you the fact that the word planet It's no longer that useful for understanding the identity of these objects, it certainly isn't.

I'm not asking for much here if there is a shelf of some shelf here on Google, that's fine, just check because all their content is online. you know, the bookshelf is there, yes, okay, so you will get a book if I say okay, bring me the book from the shelf, bring me the encyclopedia that is on the shelf, bring me the dictionary that is on the shelf, bring me the booklet that's on the shelf, bring me the paperback that's on the shelf, all those words mean something different to you. I'm not just telling you, bring me the wood pulp that's on the shelf, you won't know what to bring, it's all wood pulp.

It's not helpful for you to have this conversation, so in my pontification for the last chapter I simply encourage people to explore the full breadth and depth of what we've really learned about the solar system and create conversations based on that and you'll get out. with the need to memorize content as schoolchildren do now, but with the understanding of what is the form and content of the solar system that will emerge and that is what all this is really about in the cosmic enlightenment of an audience and that is all What I have to say if you allow me to add one thing about Pluto the dog if I have nothing to do with it and I have to tell you what happened with Planet the camera caught that you got Pluto.

I was, you know, I worked naturally. I'm an astrophysicist who works in a Natural History Museum, so I hang out with people who study animals in addition to humans, as well as those who study humans, they are anthropologists there in addition, so I have a certain osmotic sensitivity towards the realm animal that I otherwise wouldn't have, so when I learned that Pluto is Mickey's dog, but Mickey is not Pluto's mouse, I was deeply disturbed. Something is wrong in the mammalian order of things because dogs can eat mice. , so I had to get to the bottom of it, so I asked.

I called some people at Disney. I said what's going on here, so I learned no. that you asked, but I have one. I spent a lot of time researching this. I have to share it again, whether you wanted to or not. It turns out that in the Disney pantheon there are characters that they created, not characters that they bought later, like Winnie the Pooh talked about the pure Disney character, if it doesn't matter what creature you are, if you wear clothes, you can have other creatures that don't, It's that simple, Mickey has the best or whatever, he's putting his shoes on the glove.

Pluto's bare butt, there's CUDA. on all fours and doesn't talk maybe ARF right meanwhile dummy wears clothes dummy is biped ok dummy lives in a house pays rent no no in a dog house ok there you go I know you were burning to know this okay let's play Let's examine planet X and go to Q. A Planet Let's take another look at this baseline of observations that established that Neptune was misbehaving in its orbit, not according to Newton's theory. laws and now we've tested Newton to the outer limits of the universe, so we're not going to give up on Newton on this one, but no one found Planet So in this endeavor, the guy who discovered this is Miles Standish, by the way, and he's got some Roman numerals after his name, so he can surely be traced back to the Mayflower, where Standish's first mile to walk these miles came. coasts, but he is an astronomer and that's why.

He looked at the data and said, "Wait a minute, one of these tells us that the data from one of these telescopes is a little bit more different from the rest of these telescopes because you combine telescopes from multiple observatories over hundreds of years and it goes into the record book." of this other telescope and find out that I forgot exactly what it's like oh, I'll decide to clean the gearbox tonight, okay, the guy with the telescope clock before taking a measurement, don't do that don't do that in the middle of your measurements, keep everything the same as always if you want a common basis for what was happening, he said, let's just test this hypothesis, remove the fit data that comes from that telescope and I used the data from all the other telescopes in the bank, all the orbital parameters of Neptune fit perfectly into Newton's law and Planet Another way to put it, it was just a hardware artifact of an observatory in the data, so all gravity is taken into account in the solar system everywhere now, that's different from this Planet lately and who is worried that the world.

It will end in the year 2012, these are the people and the world, if you didn't know about this, try searching on Google. I say here Google 2012 website after website after website for the people who are sure the world will come to an end. because a Planet December 21 the center of the galaxy, the Sun, the moon, the Sun and the Earth will align perfectly on December 21, 2012 and if you check your orbital parameters you will discover that this is true, we will get to the exactness. alignment with the center of the galaxy and the Sun, there is a claim that that extra gravity will knock us off our axis and the end of the world will come.

You can calculate how much gravity it is and leaving out the fact that it's not more grass. It's like you leave it aside if you are worried about that same website what they don't tell you is that alignment that exact alignment of the center of the galaxy where there is a black hole the Sun and the Earth that exact alignment December 21, 2012 happens every December 21st every year, they skipped it anyway thanks for your time and attention. I think I talked too much about the questions about Bhutto. Yes, I will ask a question. Thanks for coming. It is a pleasure to have a light like this in the office.

I'll continue with this because it's short, so my question is not technical, but it's about what you do as what appears to be a science evangelist and you're here and I've seen you a lot on The Colbert Report. I know you. you're writing and you're on television, so what do you think is the situation in science and children and science and people who read books and that the United States is not lagging behind all kinds of other countries and what is What do you have in mind when you are? In doing your job, what do you think is your responsibility and what do you think is our responsibility to people like us at a company like Google?

You just pontificate about it a little bit. We have three more hours of tape, right? Thank you. First I will try to be efficient in my answer. I have high hopes for the country. There are many signs of this. One of them is from all the times you've seen me on television. 85% of them did not arise through any action. mine or some marketing group or some product that sells 85 percent, they came about because the universe shook and the producers want a sound bite and my office is 10 blocks north of their studio office, so I'm an easy dater, so it doesn't occur to me that they're still an easy dater.

I try to give you a good snippet that works, is honestly fun to listen to, and makes you want to think, do, and do more. 85% 15% came about because I wrote a book or a guy or a TV show on PBS, fifteen percent, so what's the other 85% that comes from someone deciding that the audience wants to learn about the universe? I'm not giving you news. I'm home, we're in my office minding my own business and the phone rings. I think it's a good sign because the producers feel that way, which means that if they understand their market, they believe that the audience feels that way, so that's about each other.

A long time ago, when I was a kid, you'd have to go months before coming across a science show on TV that wasn't about animals in the jungle or the underwater world, those two. They were regular customers, but for the rest of science you go months before seeing a show on the site. Now, every time you sit down, every other time you sit down, you may land on a television show that's about the universe, black holes, the Big Bang. DNA on the climate, something like that is there, it is available, there are producers, financiers who make these products.

Third point, you say you are worried about the children. I don't worry about the children. I'm worried about adults. Well, these are the ones who vote. These are the ones who tell you that the world is ending in 2012 the children don't say that the adults do worry me the adults who say read my horoscope tell me where you will find money tomorrow the adults say this no the children okay the children don't read horoscopes, it's well, the children are perfectly happy counting to the number thirteen the children are not afraid to go under the stairs they see a black cat cross their path they selma kitty kitty want to pet it they do not run in the other direction the children are not the problem here , I begin, furthermore, children are born with curiosity, they are always exploring.

We spend the first year of their lives teaching them to walk and talk, and the rest of their lives we tell them to shut up and sit down, so there you go Plus Obama. he put science in his inaugural address, so we want them to deliver on that and the early signs in his administration and in Congress show that that could really happen and in the United States, a capitalist nation where many people, if not the Most, they don't. If you want to die poor, once you understand the role of innovations in science and technology as an engine of economic growth, you have no choice but to value and respect not only those who dedicate themselves to the sciences, but also to value and respect the scientific literacy of the nation when it comes time to vote, money supports such projects, so that is my answer to your question, yes, another question, sir, um, okay, I was one of the people who was a bit sad because Pluto wasn't a planet, are you still sad unless I said now that you explained the thing about sweeping the other bodies into the same orbit that makes sense.

What I want to know is if Pluto is going to sweep them away. Good question and maybe then it will be a planet again. Good question, worth eighty. seven billion years you come no, no, Pluto, the only way toon the road and how wide is the Earth at 8,000 miles wide? Do you realize that 11 miles out of 8,000 if you were a cosmic finger and you came to Earth and rubbed it with your finger you wouldn't be there? Able to distinguish mountain from valley from dry from wet because the depth of the grooves in your fingerprint would be greater than the texture on the surface of this planet.

If you reduced the earth to the size of a cue ball, it would be the softest cue ball. ever made, so we are all diluted because the school globe in your classroom that you would run your fingers over, there are the Himalayan mountains and there is a line of them, they are lying, let me tell you how bad they are lying, do you think in our atmosphere? Much like this, did you know that the extent of our atmosphere is thinner than the layer of shellac on that school balloon? So geology has been lying to you your whole life.

That's what not, why did I go there? What would I do? No? Say, wow, I happily answered your question often, now wrap yourself up and what a sweep and I had the roundness right, so if you're big enough, you're round, if you're not big enough, you're not round like Phobos and Deimos. on Mars and Mars, so the hope is that this transition will be sharp enough that it won't confuse our efforts to classify well, but there is concern that, in fact, perhaps it could be a more confusing transition than expected. that we anticipate and that could be another fight later in the rap how good are we at determining who is close and who is?

By the way, we didn't include the fact that if you spin fast you get a little fat at the poles and shorter, I mean a little fat at the poles. equator and short at the poles Saturn is a fast rotator it spins once every nine hours it is ten percent shorter from pole to pole than its width we would still count it as round it is round but affected by rotation that's how we get excited for clearing the zone pretty, turns out it's easy to define dynamically, there's a calculation you can do, whether it's absorbed it or not, you can declare if gravity is actually hitting other pieces and you can, that actually has a nice divisor between who is clearly there orbiting and who is not.

It's not right, but it's an excellent, excellent point and then the other question I wanted to ask is just a two-part version of your first question. Yeah, okay, second question is with all the space exploration going on or planned, etc., what do you think the most? interesting and more valuable in terms of where we could put our resources and efforts and what's planned and all that um, you know, I like life, I want to look to find life out there, it's a huge universe, we've created very common ingredients, you know, life. on Earth it is hydrogen, oxygen, carbon, this is everywhere in the cosmos, it is chemically fertile, it forms molecules with carbon, you already know that, so if you want to believe that life on Earth is the only life in the universe of a way that is inexcusably self-centered, there is no need to account for that attitude unless you have some kind of philosophy that requires it of you, but it is not based on data or evidence.

Unfortunately, many philosophies people carry with them nowadays. I have no basis in the observation world anyway, it's unfortunate because people go to war over philosophies, so I want to search for life and life on Earth, if the we use as a starter kit, it thrives in liquid water, so if you want to find life, we look for liquid water out there and we know that Mars has all this evidence that it once had liquid water, we think it's submerged and now in a permafrost and such Maybe if there are high enough pressures, some of it could have liquefied creating aquifers that we found recently.

Methane emerges from one of the cliffs on Mars. Methane can be produced without biology, but biology does it for free with a species of anaerobic microbes of the type found deep in the digestive tracts of farm animals. Methane is an active ingredient in farm animals. flatulence, not that they are cows on Mars, that would be an interesting fine, wouldn't it, but the active microbes in anaerobic microbes are a wide variety of microbes that thrive where there is no oxygen, so I'm using a gift I want to go to dig in those soils one of Jupiter's moons of Europa Europa stays hot it is very outside the Green Zone that area where the temperature is golden zone where the temperatures are adequate because if you are too close to the Sun and you have liquid water, you will you evaporate too far, you freeze, then there's a zone where it's right where there's liquid, this your rope is way outside this green zone, this lying zone for goalkeepers, but it's an ocean of liquid Ward has been liquid for billions of years.

It turns out that the gravitational stress from Jupiter on that moon combined with the stress caused by other moons is pumping energy to that one or and when you do that, where does the energy go? Melts the ice. I want to go to Europa goes ice fishing cuts a hole and seals anything that swims up to the camera lens and it's called Jimo the Jupiter icy moons orbiter which is currently unfunded or on hold for others upcoming projects that would map the surface to choose from. The orbiters will always map the surface for you for the lander that comes later and then you have to be smart about how you traverse the ice.

You cut well, what do you do? It's probably a kilometer thick and then you melt it. you have to sterilize the spaceship you send there, you don't want someone to sneeze on it while it's in the lab, here, then you go there, hey, we just found, you know, the Rhino virus, you know, they have influenza, you know, note where it came out. Your nose, sir, you know, wipe your nose before you pack up the spaceship, so you want to make sure you're not giving yourself away. Also, one way to melt ice is to have some sort of radioactive heat source, but then not.

I want to become radioactive, you know, so it's a difficult problem, how do you explore a planet, a surface that could have life that you don't want to contaminate? So those are my best, right? I like the super collider that is happening in Switzerland right now as probing the limits of the energy of the universe gives us an idea of ​​what was happening at the Big Bang search for dark matter dark energy in deep areas of profound ignorance and modern astrophysics the 85% of all gravity in the universe comes from something we had no idea what 94% of everything the universe is, that's why we call it dark energy, we measure it, it's there, we don't know what's causing it either, So people say, are you worried?

Are you upset? No, I'm actually quite turned on if your research scientists are attracted to unknown areas, they're not afraid to embrace them, they're seduced by them, so Thank you all for your time and energy.