Neil deGrasse Tyson Debates a Pluto Expert

of asteroids that Pluto orbited. and that it might contain other planets, um, but it was actually beyond the technology of the mid-20th century, telescopes couldn't do it and detectors, yes, and you know you had Clyde Tomell squinting at photographic plates that didn't They had. Data analysis discovering Pluto was fine, so they didn't have big enough telescopes, but they didn't have sensitive enough cameras and they didn't have computers to do the painstaking data analysis, so why didn't they name New Horizons after it? Tomo, why not, yeah, uh, because we like the name New Horizons, no, yeah, but we took his ashes to Pluto, we did that, oh wow, how is it?

Okay, back on track, back on track, let's move on, this is AJ Stavely saying hello to Dr. Tyson. Sir, kind Dr. Allen, much respect. I'm AJ from Atlanta, Georgia, my question is what unanswered questions has the new Horizon answered or discovered about the Kyper belt, uh, that researchers like you didn't already know or were surprised by is also the dance of Pluto. with Sharon why it appears to be so geologically active. Thank you so much. A two-part question, but both very interesting. All that is a lot. We found many discoveries. Okay and you don't have enough time on this show if I came. back or three more, the first three and then the first, a good example is Pluto itself.

Okay, for a long time we wondered if its surface would be flat or rough, basically because we knew that the surface is made of nitrogen ice and nitrogen ice is structurally weak. make a surface that was almost completely flat, so weak that even Pluto's gravity would simply flatten it, exactly smooth, but if nitrogen freezes on a crust of water ice, you could have mountain ranges, canyons, craters, and all that rugged stuff. . topography that we actually saw, so we answered that question on the first day with the first images that came from New Horizons, so PL and then when we got deeper into the coer belt and did the first flyby of a small coer belt object, We found out how they were born, how they formed, this was not an accidental encounter that you are targeting, yes, you are targeting other Kyper objects with that trajectory, it was a mission goal and, a billion miles beyond Pluto, we flew next to this equipment belt item.

True, no one had ever been to equip the Belt item and its shape, it does mean sky in the Indian language poh hatan, okay, yes, I knew that, of course, who doesn't know that, wait, wait, wait, you went to Pluto and then you traveled to another billion. miles, yes, and now we are almost twice as far away as Pluto and we are still exploring well, but when we got to Aroth from its geology and geophysics, we were able to determine that one of the two main theories about how planets begin, how The planetesimals that are form the seeds of the planets were wrong and the other theory was correct and we discovered that essentially these little planetesimals, the seeds of the planets, form very smoothly through a very slow local accretion process in which they can, instead of collisions, and there were decades. in which the computer models were Waring and in one fell swoop New Horizons solves that with the airborne data it showed, you take one out of a bag and you look at it closely and you can say one theory is right, one theory is wrong , beautiful, then it just means they come together, yes, they all come together, they come together, they separate into little pockets and the little pockets end up with little material.

Boulders and hills and mountains that hit each other very gently and just stick together because of self-gravity and build a lumpy object that's not big enough to be round, right, just a lumpy object, right, and tell us about the Pluto dance Sharon oh yeah, that was the other question, so the question was whether Pluto's intense geological activity could be due to that and it turns out it's not because gravity is related to the mutual gravity of Pluto and Big Mo which They are in a very special state called tidal balance. It turns out that because of that balance all those forces that could heat Pluto or cause that geology to change.

They are long gone and you mean double lock yes, yes, that's it, here we go, we know what it is, but that can't be the cause of Pluto's geology, it has to do something else, okay, okay, interesting, very good, that could work. The O that we think is inside Pluto just like the European ocean is not rigid so it can shake things up nicely, it's also um as it freezes releasing heat, oh yeah it's called Latin heat you know, yes, yes, yes, and that can feed the geom. physics 101 so wait a minute what's okay, fail physics 101 freezing gives off heat does it releases heat M okay okay I'm G I'm telling you right now uh I've been on this Earth for a while Although now is the first time I I hear someone say that freezing gives off heat, so I'm going to call.

I have one. I'm kidding. I'm kidding. No I'm serious. I do not have one. I have you ready. you're ready, you're sitting, okay, let's look at the other side, so you have water in the motion and you're heating it up and it's and as you heat it up, the temperature goes up, right, right, so it gets to what temperature, um boiling point, you keep warming up. Yes you do, where does the heat go? It doesn't increase, it increases the temperature, right, it turns into vapor, so the heat just goes and changes it from liquid, so the molecular change is itself, okay, okay, now go to the other one. shit direction, yeah, so now you're going the other direction, yeah, now you're going to suck energy from the water, the temperature drops and then there's a point where you're still sucking energy, the temperature doesn't drop, oh man and man, this change changes the molecular state, damn, that's where it was when you took that physics, tell me better, that could have worked a lot better if I had Neil, yeah, so we call it lat and heat, there are terms for it in physics. late and warm it up is really physics 10 hello how are you all, I'm late and warm up hey okay you personified late and hot I never get out of this I know you can't do it oh god too Sharon just in the in the Trad of the field, uh, Pluto is the Roman god of the underworld, and the moons have not traditionally been in all cases, but in many cases, they have traditionally been named after Greek characters in the life of the Greek counterpart of that Roman god , okay and in that way both there is a tribute to both cultures, so the counterpart of Pluto in Greek is what is his face the underworld Hades Hades is okay, it is also the place but it is also okay and the driver of the boat, the river that takes you across the river, it's called Sharon Sharon, yes, there you are. wow that came from Sharon okay let's get two quick ones come on everyone if we can get both regards Dr.

Kson and uh Dr. Allen um I'm Jasman from wine country here in Northern California . I'm really curious, uh, what is it? How important is Pluto? Does it really matter if he's a planet or not? What's all the fuss about this icy rock at the edge of our solar system? Look at that, oh, can I? Can I guess that it's been with us so deeply in our culture that it's hard to get rid of any adjustments to those well, that's a guess, but as a scientist, the real reason is that, uh, Pluto is the archetype, it's the herald body. of this completely new type of planet, the dwarf planets that we have. discovered in the outer solar system, they are active, they have moons, they have atmospheres, in some cases, far from being a rock, it is a big spherical thing, right, and that's why we call it a planet, we don't know what to call it.

There you have it, well Planet Modified by the word door, just like giant, giant planet for Jupiter, a gas giant, has a problem. I mean, actually, that's where we agreed and one of the correspondents I got when the third graders attacked me because here people, I don't have to tell the backstory here dear Dr. Tyson, why is it so bad? Well what's really sad isn't that he's bad, it's just that he's wrong, oh what happened, geek, fight, geek, no, it's like you failed your freshman physics. he did very well in everything he did up until the doctorate, but he didn't pass his Planet exam, no, so we have the right word paper and we have construction paper, corrugated paper, toilet paper, cardstock paper, so this document It's a very broad category and then we modify it with the next word and we know exactly what someone is talking about, so I don't have a problem with that, just leave it, that's how it was.

I always felt there was a shortage of vocabulary for So, in other words, let me listen. I'm sure we agree here. Jupiter and Earth should not be called the same object orbiting a star. I do not agree, no, yes, they are round, but what is huge in gases and the Earth is smaller. than storms in Jupiter's climate system, so wouldn't it be great if we had a different vocabulary so that when I use the word you know exactly what I'm talking about right now? If only I said I discovered a planet orbiting a star, right? gaseous it's rocky it's big it's small and I have to ask 20 questions just to understand what everyone is talking about that's the interesting part of science and no that's a weakness of science because as a planetary scientist you know that the planet is part of the term what our field is about is correct and then we know what planets are, they are the things, the central objects of our field and they are the big things that orbit the stars and they range from the smallest and great ones who know.

They are big when they become round and gravity dominates and from dwarf planets to giant planets it is a continuum of objects that we all call planets, yes, and planetary scientists agree on that and in the planetary science research literature no there is debate. I have no problem. I'm just a big fan of words. I have six dictionaries on my shelf over there with different errors and I watch the words come and go. I'm just saying that if you have to modify the word planet in To find out what someone is talking about, that is a clarion call for another word, a word yet to be invented that captures both simultaneously, so it is a deficiency of the lexicon that is in the thing that's in don't look at me, see how it is.

Looking at how you see that face, I'm telling you that's why, yes, for example, we have different types of human beings, short, tall, skinny, big, right, we have North Americans, Europeans and South Americans, and that doesn't mean that we need a new term for human beings, it just means that adjectives help in the English language. There are all kinds of ways to add descriptors to planets, stars, and galaxies. We do it through science, and we have to overcome these little fears. We know that the Perck table has 11 elements, right, we are not afraid of a large number of them, no, just as we are not afraid of having 50 states, or countless stars and asteroids, and everything else, we just have 49 states.

Texas is not a state, it's its own country, ask anyone there. I've been to restaurants called Texas is a planet, so we get used to a lot of planets now that we see them around stars and a lot of them in our own solar system. and Star Trek doesn't have a much more nuanced system and nomeclature for planets, yes, because they classify the plan. Star Trek is fiction, we are talking about fact, no, no, but let's imitate fiction. I was on your side until that statement, how dare you? sir, send them away, what factor one, no, so I'm just saying there is a term, a succinct term that refers to a planet with oxygen and nitrogen, there is a gravity, there are ways to incorporate it into the term for someone to say that St Trek has many types. of planets, you see it very well.

I totally agree, we have ocean worlds, right? I totally agree, we have worlds of volcanoes and we have biologically active worlds. Allan it's great to have you back thank you so much Neil it's a pleasure so this has been the consultation edit Star Talk the Pluto Cosmic if I may call it we are GNA we have to get Allan back because we've barely scratched the surface. Here anyway, thanks Alan, long-time friend from college, thank you very much Chuck, it's always good that you have pleasure, okay, Neil degrass, Tyson, here, your personal astrophysicist, as always, keep looking up .