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

well welcome everybody to this hopefully will be a dialogue because we hope that you'll be asking Neil some questions oh I have to introduce to you all know Neil is right I'll just go through it because he's always somebody here yeah I'm going to read the prepared script I was really nothing I can say about him that it hasn't been said before or what he won't say about himself oh by the time we're done he is one of the country's leading science spokespersons at a time really when our country needs them and it's a very good that he he does do these things he is head of the world famous Hayden Planetarium you can see him on TV has his own TV program Nova ScienceNOW and he frequents other TV shows like Jon Stewart and The Colbert Report and every once in a while you show up as a cameo don't you on cables I'm planning in a drama no no okay just once one slip it was a slip okay he's author of many books too many to go through at the moment but this is his latest book they were all hoping you will buy is called the Pluto files the rise and fall of America's favorite planet Neil Tyson deGrasse Tyson welcome to this discussion yes thank you please look it's like ass breakfast cereal America's favorite planet me why is Pluto as America's favorite planet I thought long and hard about that yeah I've tried to understand it and I only arrived at one conclusion it was clear once I hit this conclusion that's all about the dog it's the dog I have no other accounting for it because Europeans don't care the South Americans don't care Canadians don't care you go to Americans you say Pluto is about to be demoted they're ready to fight and because the dog Mickey's dog Pluto right here as shown in the book oh I'm photographed with Pluto photographs with Pluto because you felt you needed to I had I felt that having such an accountability for for Pluto's demotion which I we might get to if we go there that I felt I ought to do a pilgrimage to Disneyland vouch that was Disney World in right in Florida and so I went to Pluto's doghouse because you can visit Pluto and so so I whispered in his ear that I was the first one to sort of publicly demote the planet to a dwarf and then he went now they just have unchanging painted faces on so the fact that he did this told me that it was a surprise face compared with Stanislavski yeah ok so then I got on my knees and beg forgiveness and then it was all ok and that picture in the book is was the fourth in a set of pictures we didn't have room to put all four with me whispering and then me on my knees and then what we're pals now so Pluto Pluto was ok with it it turns out but think about it when do you first learn about the planets you learn about it in early elementary school and if you're a normal kid or average kid you also know your cartoon characters and you haven't yet learned Roman mythology so as as the teacher no no listen I'm serious so as the teacher enumerates the planets and sequent mercury you're not thinking winged and messenger god of roman antiquity it's just a it's just a word to you when you're in first grade or third grade and at Mercury Venus Mars Jupiter Saturn Uranus Neptune puto and then yeah there it is Pluto and you just there the connection is made in the American brain in elementary school and it never separates into long into adulthood so I think that's what accounts for America's love affair at blue because there are smaller round objects in the solar system nobody got excited about them the biggest asteroid is smaller than Pluto and it's round you crying over that his name series probably never even heard of it right asteroid series c ER es named for the Roman goddess of harvest and and and agriculture then the root for the word cereal comes from planet Ceres Wow yeah but you Knight upset you but you know I don't hear you like running around with placards declaring what shooters shouldn't happen to Ceres so I think it's really just the dog that's my answer to your buddy but in your book I was I learned so much from the book and one thing I learned from reading the appendix it was the appendix that the state of New Mexico every time Pluto goes over the state it becomes a planet again yeah Mexico New Mexico was the home state of Clyde Tombaugh the discoverer of Pluto and Clyde Tombaugh now deceased ten years deceased or so they felt they needed to protect his honor so the after they learned that the international community of astrophysicists voted in a way that we across the park at the American Museum of Natural History had decided back in 2000 they just felt they had to do something so the legislature got together and created a resolution complete with all the whereas speak you know whereas Pluto is a and whereas our native son discovered Pluto where at we declare we declare that you step into our state no matter what else is true out there Pluto's a planet in our state these are like grown-ups behaving this way that's their thing this is it's not miss McGillicuddy's third-grade class making this declaration this is tax money at work they have a lot of research and planets in New Mexico I've just well New Mexico turns out is a very state rich in observatories because it's as very good observing conditions you know the VLA the Very Large Array telescopes a set of radio telescopes that are on grids on tracks that they're in practically every science fiction movie you just see them all lined up moving that's in New Mexico as well as a half-dozen other observatories so they wanted to sort of they Clint they felt like they had the right to assert this but it's it's I think it's irrational really yeah yeah I mean and you know that were the only state California got it ranked California California I love doing it why do I feel like Bud Abbott up here huh yeah that's okay a pet in another penny California legislation relative to Pluto's planetary status now you heard the reason why Arizona I mean why New Mexico felt this way because Clyde Tombaugh was their resident right so they're just do right by their man okay stand by your man that's what they were doing California what excuse do they have whereas oh by this is California Assembly bill HR 38 relative to Pluto's planetary status introduced by Assembly members Keith Richmond Republican and Joseph chameleon Democrat this bipartisan legislation here so it starts out kind of like okay they're just trying to - just trying to make a statement whereas recent astronomical discoveries including Pluto's oblong orbit and the sighting of slightly larger Kuiper belt objects other icy bodies in the outer solar system have led astronomers to question the planetary status of Pluto nothing wrong with that it's a statement of fact a little bit of Education there - all for I'm cool then it says and whereas the mean-spirited astronomer is decided in August 24th to disrespect Pluto by stripping Pluto of its planet status and reclassified as a lowly dwarf planet see now that this is what's that is it in in The New Yorker they say they'll always be in England you know right and that that's weird if there's only be a California okay because they're I think they're just nuts in California all right and then it gets worse it gets worse whereas Pluto named after the Roman god of the underworld and affectionately sharing the name of California's most famous animated dog have has a wet has a special connection has a special connection to California history and culture well Disney the cartoon characters so lonely I've been on the e ride yeah yeah so I'm just saying here can you imagine New York City elevating a cartoon character and then calling it our culture but this is California so I I you also you also said there was was it Steven Levy one of somebody who said they wanted to talk to the to Pluto first and sure it or get it's okay who is that I can't remember who was in the book oh oh oh no because all right because the book has I get letters from schoolchildren who learned that we had we had reclassified Pluto back in 2000 actually it's not they didn't learn that from us they learned it from the New York Times okay it took them a year but they came out with a story after they look more closely at our exhibit because all we do is take Pluto and group it with the other icy objects recently discovered in the outer solar system that's all we did we said Pluto kind of looks more like these that either Pluto or they look like anything else that wouldn't that's how you make a category isn't it absolutely then so well so no reason be mad at us New York Times page one story page one Pluto not a planet only in New York and that's where my life went to hell that's it right there that headline page one page one and what was particularly creepy about this was the date of that newspaper January 22nd 2001 what happened two days before that mmm-hmm election mmm inauguration dog George W just got inaugurated you'd think that whole page would be filled with articles on the transition of power in Washington but no there was room for this article the beginning of a three page article Pluto nautical and that's when the hate mail started coming in from third graders and other pissed-off elementary school children that complain about our treatment of Pluto disrespecting their favorite planet and getting back to your point the only difference between the letters from school children and that from grownups is that the grown-ups can spell better other than that they're both filled with irrational emotion I'm glad you're not taking a person robbed just say would you say most of your life now is filled answering this question so it was for six years until the international community of astrophysicist basically agreed with what we were the first public institution to do this so we made it we it got noticed when we did it and then people the international community figure is time they have to sort of straighten this out took an official vote proposed what a new definition of the word planet would be and Pluto does not qualify in that new definition and that relieved some of the pressure because now the whole community of astrophysicists was to blame not just me so they just voted on what the definition of yes who voted yeah that made it a planet or it made it not a plan yeah yeah because the first proposal they they created a planet naming committee they had some interesting names okay and so that committee I saw who was on the committee there's a bunch of Pluto lovers were put onto that committee so I knew that whatever came out of that decision Pluto was going to end up being a planet so at the end you know what the definition was that got voted down and then a new one got put in their original definition was are you round your planet not enough so Pluto yes Pluto's round but so is like the moon right and there's a lot of round stuff out there so we would go from nine planets to like 35 planets and my complaint was so what good is the word to you anymore if I say to you I just discovered a planet you're going to have to ask me was it big as it small does it have rings is it you we have to play 20 questions for you to have any understanding of what I'm talking about it's a very same word can include a small icy body and a huge gaseous object with rings then the word is no longer useful and so all we did at the museum was say the word is no longer useful it's time to reorganize this rich information we've now gleaned about objects in the solar system into a sensible lexicon so you can have an intelligent conversation about what's actually going on in the solar system so what was the so what is the formal definition of a planet it's you need three checks three checks three first first are you round ok Pluto get to check in that box a lot of people could qualify that's right no you have to be ok that's round that's one you have to be gravitationally turned into a round object I well I'd still say that ok it's it's ok all right - are you the principal object in orbit around the Sun this was the moon exclusion clause because if you orbit another object that's bigger than you you're not the principal object so we're not going to call you a planet so that was the moon exclusion clause Pluto has a moon actually a relatively big moon as moons go but Pluto is still a little bit bigger than it Pluto's and main one Pluto gets check in that box third category have you dominated your orbitals orbital zone Pluto does not because out there since the mid 1990s we have discovered countless thousands of other objects orbiting the way Pluto does because you know Pluto has all these weird properties in its orbit it's be long gated so that it crosses the orbit of Neptune no other planet crosses anybody else's orbit what a context sometimes it's not the this plan exactly in fact for 20 years between 1979 and 1999 Pluto is not the farthest most of the traditional nine planet Neptune was now that's kind of that's a miss B that's that behavior that I think should be you know that's bad behavior right you know sneaking in in front of another planet yes that's not right certainly New York that's found that that's leaking ahead of the line travel and that's it you know keep your place in line number one number two Pluto is really little there's seven moons in the solar system bigger than Pluto I took straw polls continuously among Pluto lovers and asked how many of them even knew this fact consistently half of them did not know which tells me that this was suppressed information by the Pluto Lobby now also Pluto its orbit is tipped out of the plane of the solar systems the rest of the orbit so it's a really odd planet whereas if you look at the other icy bodies we've discovered they have tipped orbits they have elongated orbits they're small they're mostly ice the way Pluto is mostly ice so Pluto is not so much the ninth planet as it is a benchmark object in a new category a new kind of object that orbits the solar system and we call it the Kuiper belt of comets named after there was an astronomer at mid-century a theorist who hypothesized that beyond the orbit of the outermost large planet if there's not another large planet out there to gravitationally vacuum up the debris the debris would still be there if you're far enough away from the Sun it would be icy and so here's all these icy chunks Pluto does not dominate that orbital or that orbital zone and so it gets an X there not a check and therefore Pluto is not a planet there's a new word for it called a dwarf planet and the Pluto lovers took umbrage at this because they felt that that was a demotion and I thought maybe it's just a kind of planet like if you drive a compact car you're not driving saying I'm not really 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 parking in the garage so so I'm but some people but astronomers like to use the word dwarf in their lexicon all the time we do it a lot like there's dwarf galaxies one of my professional favorite interest or dwarf galaxies we're not thinking it's not a galaxy right and in fact the so so it was only those with with frail ego shared names that felt that the dwarf really just kicked them out of the room now turns out there's another term oh by the way by that rule series that asteroid I told you which is also round that got elevated from just a simple asteroid to a dwarf planet status it's the primary object its round has not cleared its own it's littered with the rest of the asteroids in the asteroid belt so that so we grew the number of dwarf planets now if you're beyond neptune and you're I see there's another word for you you're pluie tide a blue tide now some people don't like it for it then dwarf planet you if you are a dwarf planet beyond Neptune you're a pluton wrap and you're out you're at Pluto now one of the big supporters of Pluto 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 it's oh there's no medicine for that you know and I kind of agree does sound like something yeah I've got to go to the doctor for yeah blue toys get your Pluto is removed yes can't sit down my Pluto huh there so so then is is Pluto more like a comet then is it a comment I say this point it's out there where the Comets come if you if you if the Kuiper belt of comets if he took Pluto which is more than half ice by volume and brought it to where earth is right now heat from the Sun would evaporate that ice and it would grow tail now that's you know if you if you're trying to be a planet and you got a tail sticking out you know we got words for things no tails we call them comment we got vocabulary for the so it'd be really big comment be the biggest there ever was I mean so maybe we need another vocabulary word for by the way most comets are not large enough for gravity to make them round so this should create an argument not whether it's a planet or not but what kind of new word would indicate this fact about it that it's an icy body big enough for itself to be round and that's where the discussion should be taking place I speaking as an educator well you certainly are you say that there should be five classes of objects there are five for now there might be more but what are the classes well I don't have names for them because I'm not going to I mean I we could invent them here and now but I'm I know which ones look like each other more than any one of them looks like anything else the terrestrials terrestrial planets Mercury Venus Earth and Mars small rocky dense the asteroid belt craggy chunks of rock all orbiting in a zone Jupiter Saturn Uranus and Neptune big low-density rings gaseous the Kuiper belt small cockamamie orbits icy in a belt and then there's another zone which 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 that extends halfway to the nearest stars and it's hypothesized to be there on extremely strong gravitational grounds if you look at comets they come very close to the Sun they move very fast when it's farthest away from the Sun it would move slowly just count up 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 trillions of them out there where they move really really really slowly out in the farthest reaches of the solar system and this was hypothesized by a Danish astronomer named Yan Oort to call the Oort cloud of comets and you might give the Sun its own category nothing looks like the Sun in our solar system right so that's all I send it and teach the solar system that way not as some enumeration of objects that you memorize and have teachers giving exam questions that they think is science like what is the name of the fifth planet from the Sun and then you go through your mnemonic my very educated mother just it's just Jupiter Jupiter and get it marked right as though you just learned some science that's not science so I think part of I I think part of the irrational attachment went beyond the dog it was because you learned it as some kind of compactified close system of information rather than as a tapestry of discovery who did come out of my mouth okay okay do you think that we have teachers who can teach a tapestry of discovery I think teachers should rise to the occasion and it's not that hard I mean I'm not asking them to teach the interior gravitational structure of these objects but Mercury Venus Earth and Mars are dense like rocks so you bring in some rocks that there has that kind of density and the other ones are big and bulbous and Load and bringing 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 all right and the big ones give them all 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 got Pluto out there and heat it and you watch it evaporate get some get some dry ice you see less of that today but the ice cream vendor inside there the smoke that's coming out that's dry ice co2 Pluto is most of the most of the ice of Pluto is the same stuff that's inside the ice cream vendors check a nice card thank you right not the ice cream itself with that which is keeping a cold right that would not be good to chew on some frozen co2 that'd be bad you only do that once and and right and when you do it you won't get to speak about it your tongue but about freezing your tongue to ice so we should go out and explore Pluto more than it we are yeah we got it we got a mission going there right now quickly launched before the vote was taken that demoted Pluto by the way black is thick they were worried that some of them were they wouldn't admit to this but I know it's true they're worried that if while they're getting funding for this mission to Pluto that if Pluto was demoted to just a dirty ice ball they would say well why are we spending billions and a billion 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 the these were the slogans and these are these slogans are they're subterfuge you had to speak in language Congress understand and so what I know but I would have said yeah rather than the first mission to the last planet well let's complete the reconnaissance is a let's begin the reconnaissance of a new swath of real estate just discovered in the solar system to me that's a much more defensible posture as a scientist then claiming that I have found the final one and that's what I'm going to and bada-bing weird with that stuff that what are you doing it's not how science works so that's how I knew that they were trying to keep give retain a major planet status for this diminutive dirty ice ball in the outer solar system is that going to be the last probe that goes anywhere uh there's no probe funded at the moment going to the outer solar system so that one brother that was on the fast track that the probe is relatively small put it on the largest engines at our arsenal so you put something low mass on big engines it goes fast this thing like pass the moon in like six hours and it was hauling and so it'll because the rule is well 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 is you need the results of the experiment before you die that's a rule so you can get more funding like I guess so you if you took the slow boat to Pluto would take 20 years or so and you don't want now you don't want that I hate it when that happens you hate it when that happens so this one it was launched to no.6 and it'll get to Pluto in 2015 it'll be a flyby though so it's a nine year mission and you got to like get your images as quickly as you can and it'll go and explore other objects in the Kuiper belt so that should be about the time the Chinese get to the moon I think that's actually that's right Chinese said send people to the moon I people send people on the moon so yeah do you think we should be sending people to the moon I think so I back to the moon I think so I have reasons to defend that if you're interested but I know I'm very you want to go there now we can go there now but I'm just warning I'm just it's just it's a it's an alert let's go there now did you want to go there now I only have another hour left okay it's gonna take a while I get 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 ever to send human beings into orbit or into space at all if you're speaking as a pure scientist because because whatever it costs to send a person problem is you have to like 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 out there get cranky have these so you got to like make this spacecraft safe for them and you add up the cost of this it's the cost of like 30 robotic missions so you go to the scientists you want to send a person or 30 different robotic missions no scientist is going to say send the person it's just not going to happen period okay not even the geologists because you get a better bang for your buck with yes it's the return a scientific return on the dollar it's okay now I put on my public hat and I look around and I realize nobody's ever named a high school after a robot okay no no press ever went to the birthplace of a robot and talked to its school teacher right this doesn't happen so that there's not only that an astronaut is the only celebrity I know where people will line up to get their autograph even if they don't even know their name in advance hmm it's the fact that they're an astronaut matters to people and so there's value to that there's political cultural value to that number one number two NASA has inspired of what many of my colleagues feel about it has never been our private funding agency for science right now 70% and that is the smallest it's ever been 70% of NASA's budget goes to the man program that's the smallest it has ever been so it was once like 67% as to the space shuttle goes to Space Shuttle Space Station the man program the Houston astronaut training core all of this astronaut ice cream yeah astronaut food and the like it's never been less than that the science has always been on the coattails of the manned missions always the history of of human discovery in the most expensive configurations of discovery that ever were has always been the science happened on the coattails of some other mission today is the 200th anniversary of the birth of Charles Darwin the Beagle the ship that he took that went to the Galapagos Islands was not chartered by him that wasn't where do you want to go today Chuck all right it had other mission statements and he just piggyback that trip some of the greatest science that's ever happened simply piggybacked other mission statements that had geopolitical motivation and it's how the Titanic was discovered you know that story Bob Ballard in Titanic he was uh he was on a research he was on a research mission for the federal government to find the thresher was some submarine he had a couple of weeks left over he found that early said can I borrow this can I borrow the equipment it's already paid for anyway because no one would have given the money just that that's right that's how that so the reality is the geopolitical reality is were not for the man program there'd be no science done in space it's that simple the history of human of this kind of kind of projects indicate this and so to say you're wasting money don't spend it on the I say just let it be what it has to be as long as we're there on the coattails I'm fine so I say send people back to the moon onto Mars because the science will be there right alongside it but but they're astronauts perm anything else is sort of politically naive that's my point yeah but right now they're astronauts in orbit around the earth and in the space station no one knows anything about the pays any attention I think that's a good sign isn't that what we were after in the 60s that we become such a spacefaring nation that you would no longer pay attention to it if you knew the names of those astronauts that meant going to space would still be like a special rare thing the fact that you don't know their names is evidence that we are in fact a spacefaring nation consider that that which is your culture you might even define it as that which you don't no longer recognize that no it's something that you no longer pay attention to and I did the study and you don't occurred to me I was in Italy in a grocery store and I'm walking by I forgot what I was buying and I pass an aisle the entire aisle is pasta pasta with shapes and numbers I never even heard of and I said wow I'm in Italy so of course is a whole aisle of pasta then I asked an Italian is there anything in our grocery stores that strikes you this way that's what the way it strike he said yes this we have the soft drink aisle nobody else has an entire aisle of soda nobody but you don't even notice it do you it's just the soft drink aisle you don't come up to say damn is this this is America for sure you know you know we act you don't notice it anymore I said is there anything else yes we have you ready for this they're ready to eat breakfast cereal aisle we pioneered those two products it is our invention so we have entire aisles of them that we don't even notice so I submit to you that the fact that none of us can recite the names of these astronauts is an indication that we are a spacefaring nation and you know when you'll notice you know how you notice so the culture is that which you don't notice and the way you know it's culture is if we take it away people freak out dare you ever walk into a store and there's no soda aisle to be a riot no ready to eat breakfast cereal aisles there be a riot if people didn't care they wouldn't notice that it wasn't there but you know they're going to notice if that's the case just as when the Columbia space shuttle broke up coming out of orbit the nation stopped all TV programs got we repositioned the memorial services nobody complained that they couldn't see their soap operas that afternoon and the nation regrouped to try to understand whether we need a new mission for for NASA and it's one of the times I got I got the call from the White House to go help and decide where NASA should go next so I was like connected genetically with how that ultimately unfolded but are they still calling it is Obama calling you mean yes I'm not unknown to the Obama administration but I'm not like looking for jobs in Washington I'm perfectly happy here in New York yes and we got a whole lot of the people climbing over each other to get there and serve in that in the administration there so to hear that yeah good to hear that you brought up by an interesting so do you agree with me that you don't know well I agree with you I agree that it no I don't totally agree with you I agree with you about it being part of the culture but I I think that it has to be as an adventure oh I do I so let's accept just because you don't know their names doesn't mean okay not that is anything wrong with that you're mixing there's an apple there in an orange there the Apple there is we can't recite names that doesn't mean we're not interested in space that's Apple that's the Apple the orange is should that be what we're doing in space and I think we need to be advancing a frontier in space and right now we're not doing it right now we are boldly going where hundreds have gone before very well please it's time to have every next space mission advance a space mission and that's not going on right now but on the books there's the plans to do that but it's under fire at the moment well we're just going around in circles now so I'm sorry that's who I am I don't wanna get off this is great topic but I want to just go back to something you said that I found you have spoken about well I think of great interest then I always dig up stuff about people an terview and my well my producers do and if you miss any of this Nina's gonna be on my show tomorrow live so you can listen again on WNYC they heard it all here they know well the you you really like paid a lot of money to come into this no I don't think that any money left to buy the book after they pay this you-you-you wrote an article and your show is free right it's your nan the radio well if they have to pay this hopefully they give money something to the radio stage okay that one person who gave it 50 the demographic one in ten gives a little bit um you wrote an article about Darwin's Hunt's 200th birthday that you brought up and you talked about why Einstein was held up in such high regard by so many Americans but not Charles Darwin you remember whether you remember that oh no I was an interview you know MSNBC yes interviewed right for this and I needed this ah it's online and you made a very good point about that that the physics is more of a better predictive science than biology is more exact so yes so the question was why is it that I'm Stein is a practically a cult icon is embraced and relativity is just part of what we know is there and is true but Darwinian evolution somehow continues to get resistance from certain school boards across the country the number one reason why the number one reason given for the homeschooling of children is so that the parents can bring religious principles into them that they feel should be happening the school and is not and so it's the number one reason for homeschooling so in America so I just offered to that question came kind of out of the blue so I just sort of came up with two reasons for it and I didn't deeply research these but they did resonate a little bit one of them was that first of all Einstein doesn't really conflict with any literal readings of the Bible the Bible doesn't say thou shalt not have relativistic forces right and then there's relativity and then you got to fight that all right there's just no it's just not there anywhere all right whereas it explicitly says in Genesis God made man okay and then made woman out of man's rib and this is not what goes on in Darwinian evolution so they're issues there that people have because it conflicts directly with Scripture and that matters to people who are fundamentalist which by the way are the statistical minority among religious people in the country but they have the biggest mouth right so there you hear them and what they do and what they say so they're their presence is much greater than their numbers would indicate and their influence is much greater then what numbers would indicate a second reason I gave is that physics is basically it's the king of the sciences and I mean that not to be brash or anything but it's just true good no that's it's true physics is the foundation operations of the universe and then you have chemistry built on those physical principles and biology built on the principles of chemistry and so physics is at is at the base of that pyramid and the power that physics grants you the predictive power is extraordinary and to be able to predict a from B from a and C from D and sit down and watch it happen is the most powerful evidence that you know what's going on in the physical universe that you could ever put forth biology doesn't have sort of the mathematical rigor that physics does and so the biological predictions are if this continues under this radiation field you'll get mutations that will pass on to the but you can't predict in advance what the mutation would be or whether it'll be harmful and so there's more slop in there that that gives people sort of people who didn't want to believe it in the first place does their sleep in there and say oh you don't know what you're talking about or you know you're you know what will be the next species and they want that you want to be able to predict that and they can't right now right but they do use it to estimate what direction mutations are taking place in certain viruses so for example the influenza virus the vaccine you get from one year to the next is based on an evolutionary model of what's going on to that to that virus it's not just it's not the same virus every year because they're tracking what the changes are so Doonesbury had a fascinating comic ones where a person comes in who says I'm you know I'm fundamentalist Christian and they said oh okay alright do you want the medicine that existed before we took the evolutionary models and this is what you would have been given a hundred years ago just rub this herb on your cheek you know so so that gives a whole list or if you so it gives a whole list of what medicines they might take given the religion that prevents them from taking the latest available to them how did you how did you get I mean how'd you get to be as stay as interested in science as you are a lot of kids start out interested in some totally cute what happened to you that didn't happen to them I had parents that did not get in my way they supported the interest and let me clarify that allow me to clarify if I if I had a nickel for every parent that said how do I get my kids interested in science my answer is they're already interested in science that's what it is to be a kid you explore things you look at what's under the rock you pull pots and pans out of the cabinets and bang on them with the spoon what's the first thing we do as a parent Junior's stop making that racket you're dirtying the pots and pan and so you would spend a year teaching them to walk and talk and the rest of their lives tell them to shut up and sit down that's the problem that's the problem and so so what you need to do is allow them to make the mess that is the consequence of them exploring their environment don't stop that let that go right now I'm researching what will be my next book called how to raise a scientifically literate child and I have two kids on whom I'm experimenting but it's not you don't want to say that in this I shouldn't say Internet world that could be misquote the neil tyson experimenting on his kids details and electrodes didn't hurt right they did not hurt it don't go there they know what I mean by experiment metaphor what I mean by experimenting is I by the way I'm not here to turn them into scientists or what matters to me is science literacy and science literacy is not memorizing how your microwave oven works that's I don't care about that I don't that's not what matters it's fine if you know that that's how you know not to put your poodle in the microwave oven so it's it's useful knowledge to know how your microwave oven works but if you don't that's not what concerns me what concerns me is how is your brain wired for thought and it's the brain wiring that is the consequence of the environment in which I'm judging to be the consequence of the environment in which you're raised and this is the experimenting I'm doing so I'll give you just an example in my house I have a lot of sort of measuring things because that's one aspect of science people think science is what you know science is measurement it's measurement that's the source of knowledge so I've thermometers all over and measuring tapes and things so one of them is an instant-read thermometer in the kitchen so my son was like seven and I'm preparing a pot of water for spaghetti and I said Travis you know go check to see the temperature of the water I want to know so he goes and gets the thermometer puts it in now he's got to read it's one of these sort of dial someone he's got to read what's between 70 and 80 let's must be like 75 old-fashioned old-fashioned right right no you don't have numbers just come at you no you got it all on this figure this one out okay so I said thank you Travis in ten minutes go but could you check again he sees there's at 90 degrees could you check again hundred and twenty 150 keep coming back now it's a little project right he's doing this he's helping me learn this gets to 200 I said well is it boiling yet no still not boiling okay I need to know when it's gonna boil so it goes back five minutes later is it boiling it I said yes it is okay so I said check the temperature it's just it's not it's a little bit above 210 I said okay can you tell me get it said one it's a one that so maybe it's 212 I think okay fine come on back so I let the water keep boy said check it again ten minutes later he goes back is it hotter no it's still 212 so I said Wow okay all right that's cool well we're going to put the spaghetti in now I don't explain anything that's not the point here the point is he experimented and noticed that temperature on water will raise it until it hits boiling and then it stays there maybe I'll get back to it later but I just wanted that measurement to be in him somewhere and this measurement forces them to ask questions of others so my daughter for example who's a big fan of moderate fan of who's the woman with the two color hair Hannah Montana oh yeah Hannah how do you know him well yeah Hannah Montana but pops kept along pink ponytail drink no but this loads cheap I'm looking at somebody else okay so Hannah Montana is a pop star big big with like the tweens if you're between age 10 and 13 she's the biggest star like there ever was in the history of the you know I don't know this girl my kids are Pippi Longstocking yes okay so I told her I said Wren I just saw a poster of Hannah Montana who's like as big as a wall she said well how big was the wall so that's this that's let me not call it skepticism but let me call that not content with incomplete information which I would submit is the consequence of always taking measurements of the world around you so I have to say oh okay well the wall was like there was this big and not this big and I'm submitting to you that it's that's the brain wiring that I'm looking for and that I'm after so you asked what do you how do you how do you stay interested in science I think you get out of the way and you nurture it you don't try to prevent it and when my daughter was well she was still in a high chair and she spilled milk on the table we're trying to get her to Weiner from a sippy cup to a cup with an open top so kids barely have any coordination in supporting she's trying but she tipped it over and it rolled across the table I don't know about your floors but ours are like slightly not level right so the water rolls this is the east side so you got really level stuff over here West Side stuff is anything so so the milk went between the eaves of the table and it didn't cross the eave and go to the other eat that's kind of interesting it just disappeared so she then leaned over and saw it drip down so I came back behind her and I cleaned it up put more milk Bennett then she accidentally knocked it over again had checked it out again I think most parents would have said you're wasting milk stopped that and cleaned it up and prevented you but I view that as an experiment in fluid dynamics and milk is cheap so and the cost of that milk while you say well you're wasting food first at least in America there's no shortage of food first of all so let's just remember that okay yes if you came from like the depression and the Holocaust and you have all this memory where food was really scarce I can't fault you for resisting wasting food however there is no shortage of food and if the act of the food doing this brings a lesson plan along with it that is cheap compared with the actual cost of education out there in fact the president of Harvard is one screw the former president of Derek Bok quoted as one saying if you think the cop because people said why does Harvard cause so much if you think the cost of education is expected is expensive try the cost of ignorance hmm all right so I'd so what was it it was couldn't been more than 40 cents worth of milk you don't even bend down and pick that up in the street no and there's a whole lesson plan so how you doing so this research I'm doing is it's about how much of a mess you can make it with your house and then you have kids who are ready for the world and they're they'll help you out doing that making them man and one other I got to add one other thing one other things someone said you know what do you do to teach kids do they see me and they they say what more can you do to help kids get interested in science it turns out there is nothing that I do that's ever directed towards kids there are kids who can do it who can read what I write right this is very readable by practically any age but I don't target kids I always target adults always this why don't you spend time with kids because kids are not the problem I want scientifically literate adults out there because adults vote and it's it's it's not the kids who are saying what's my horoscope today young enough kids they don't ask about horoscopes then kids don't if you're like 12 and under they're not asking will the world really end in 2012 they're not asking that they're not they're asking real questions like well how come they know dinosaurs and what's why is their flower and why is the how can the worm breathe under the rock those are the kind of questions they're asking so the kids are not the problem it's the adults we need more scientifically literate adults let's give them a break and bring up the questions if we got some questions from the audience I know there are quite a question circulating in the audience little card someplace I don't want to enter a card I want to like to see people who asked the question okay can I do that I want to like feel who ants ask the question let there be light yeah okay stand up sir first then we'll move down as well yes stand up and sign in please ooh he's trying to earn Oh doesn't feel strongly about love is actually if he was from the brook from Brooklyn or the Bronx he was said so what do you say about that right there would have been like a hand gesture forget about it you wouldn't forget about it yeah so it was very polite of you where you where you from originally [Applause] so just to calibrate your understanding that was a really pissed-off Canadian right there okay that's a pissed off as they get so all right here goes the International Astronomical Union the folks who created the committee and then took the vote they actually do this all the time because what happens is as on the frontier of science you discover something you name it somebody else discover something they named it something else later on you find out it's the same thing and the nomenclature gets a little confused so every few years they tidy up the nomenclature so that we all are speaking the same language and we understand what we're talking about internationally so they take a look at which words are working better or more widely used and they vote on it just so that we have coherence in the case of the word planet it had not been defined since ancient Greece it just hadn't been ancient Greece there were seven planets Wanderers against the background stars planet this means wanderer in Greek by the way that's an indication that they had no idea what they were doing hence they call The Wanderers there were seven wonders Mercury Venus Mars Jupiter Saturn the Sun and the moon to which we trace the seven the names of the seven days of the week each one of those through Roman and Norse mythology's so Saturday comes from Saturn sunday comes from the Sun you sound very tentative here let's try again sunday comes from the Sun Moon day comes from that that sort of thing Copernicus comes along 2,000 years later says maybe the Sun is in the middle and we on earth go around the Sun maybe that's what having two moon goes around so we went from seven planets down to five and then back up to six because then Earth came in and so a planet just kind of maybe something it just goes around the Sun but no one formally defined it because it wasn't a chore there was no need to challenge it we just said it goes around the Sun fine we're happy 1801 we discovered a planet between Mars and Jupiter we called it series then we discovered four other planets and then twelve others and in 20 others and we said well maybe there's something else going on here and so the textbooks that were counting planets rising through the high teens once that zone was reified as a new place with new kinds of objects asteroid it's the asteroid belt the planet count went right back down again because we learned something new so it was controversial to those who discovered what they wanted to have been planet Ceres but clearer heads prevailed and recognized that it was a new swath of real estate in the solar system so the IAU is just trying to have foresight about the trend lines and the discoveries and they take a vote like they always do but now you have some scientists who would just were attached to Pluto because it was a dog in my judgment and so so by the way the first Kuiper belt object discovered in the 1990s when you think about it was actually the second Kuiper belt object do we have a formal name for any and besides numbers of these new objects some of their names yeah we have a quarries one Sedna is another and there's a bunch of others they're named after gods from different mythologies of the past and you know it's funny since it also - named after gods I was what I'm waiting for one of them just to be named God you know just if you're naming him after there's there's one you've left out like God you know that or some people Brett Farve or something like so so anyhow so so here's what makes it controversial the fact is those who got outvoted feel so strongly that they're still fighting it and normally that wouldn't happen so the vote was not so much a vote on science but a vote on nomenclature and it's we all agree Pluto is we all agree with the parameters of Pluto that's not what we're voting on but these and these opponents have not gone quietly they have not gone quite they've sent around petitions they're going to like storm the next meeting of the IAU which is in Brazil this year now it's I think it's in Rio so they might be other distractions they could buffer yeah you had a question yes stand up please Brian Greene Brian right if it's tennis Brian Green okay I'm sorry Steve but if it's a tennis match we'll put you on the sidelines I'll play with Brian green I would say Brian Green I think we're we are fellow New Yorker first were fellow New Yorkers he he grew up on the Upper West Side actually I grew up in the Bronx but with he went to cybersyn high school I went to the Bronx High School of Science we both went to Harvard afterwards I majored in Astro actually I majored in physics but knowing I would do astrophysics he majored in physics all the way and his books far outsold my books unless you do something about that tonight with whatever money you have left over after having bought your ticket to get in here so I just we resonate he has strong educational missions he's one of the main organizers of the World Science Festival that he holds here in New York he n is and his wife so I just we have enough resonance and when you're playing in a Davis Cup doubles tennis match you've got to know what your partner's going to do even before they know so that you can work as a system Rubik cube would not be useful in this regard let me just say you mentioned a few times tonight the word astrophysicist what's the difference between an astrophysicist and an astronomer oh the problem is if I say astronomy 70% of the time the person hears astrology and so that it's and then I got it like dig out of that so so okay but apart from that what we all do today is astrophysics the astrophysics was born in the late 1800s when we learned we can deduce physical laws about what's going on in the universe it's the application of the analysis of light in the form of spectra to cosmic objects and that's the birth of s so we're all astrophysicists even if we use the word astronomer but even but once we get to a planet like Mars we now have their geologist who studied they don't need the astronomers in well yeah so you put geologists there but geo means earth of course and so I'd rather they'd be Mars ologists or solid okay this is the need for new nomenclature you see that's how you get that bring that up at that meeting yeah when does who how about women would they be okay when when digging when are people gonna get to Mars I went oh so I notice your accent is not from these parts you from Mars yes hahaha Staten Island I think I wish that where's the accent from South Africa okay so um that's interesting because I've never heard someone from South Africa say that they're African I was losing treat by that because people from Europe say they're European or something but you are African have you ever said that no yeah okay I just thought it was just kind of cool try it breakthroughs here tonight say your Africa so so when will Madden get to Mars a man actually the origin of the word man means manual that we had dexterity as a species it's only later on where sewed it became this gender split and then people's a man and woman you know so that man never meant woman in the first place so he had to sort of work that you know when they said all men are created equal at when they wrote that the intent was all people that was the intent you sure know okay okay so what's going to go out of your expertise right there's the three-fifths clause description Constitution so when are we going to get to Mars so Mars so it'll it'll be a while it's a long trip it's dangerous we don't know we don't know how to bring enough survival material there to survive the length you need before you come back so nASA has a new goal in their mission statement and it's called is are you in situ resource utilization which is just code for wherever you go try to find water there try to find fuel there so you can refuel your gas tank and then fly back on what you found there now that sounds weird but in fact we're pretty sure there's water on Mars and the water molecule has hydrogen and oxygen which if you separate them you need a factory to do that by the way to do it in large amounts if you separate them put them in two different tanks then have nozzles reconnecting them it is an exothermic reaction huge amounts of energy are is a huge amount energy is released and you make rocket fuel that way the shuttle main engine the big orange thing actually has two tanks inside of it one tank is twice the size of the other the one that's twice the size contains hydrogen the one that's half the size contains oxygen to hydrogen atoms come out and bind with one oxygen atom the exhaust is water plus energy so the Institute resource utilization would require that either we use the resources there or have cargo-ships bring it there in advance and so I would say we're not going to get to Mars before 2030 and I'd like to be alive by the time that happens and but it's not I don't think is going to happen soon trying to get leased back to the moon the moon by the way happens on a on a news cycle you get to the moon in three days play around come back and back in within two weeks Mars is a nine month trip there then you're there for a year until the configuration of Mars and Earth is restored that allows you to come back with what we call a minimum energy trajectory and settle the whole round-trip is three years so they are they are actually studying human interactions on such a long trip aren't ya and in fact you want people who are very comfortable with each other you know that you now in if you look at before we ever went into space there was a lot of science fiction written about what space long-duration space travel would be like and they were concluding that if you were away from other people for a long time that you might go crazy and the deep concerns about that until I met people who don't even want to be around other people and I thought well they would make excellent astronauts you know just give them books and like CDs and DVDs and just there they Gratzer only made a living on this kind of yeah oh yeah somebody else yes let me go here then in the back yes sir stand up please yeah yeah she did the way right you could have teachers who also carry that right so it's John Allen Paolo's he's still professor at Temple University and he actually has a column he writes for ABC comm any comments on the mathematical illiteracy of the nation right I agree so what they did yes so so he's got a series of books his first one was I think therefore I forgot all right that's that's a good title that could be I think therefore I forgot that's for other people uh-huh that was his first book his second book was a numeracy which was a New York Times bestseller he made his book that followed that was a mathematician reads the newspaper right and then he has a couple of others after that I'm friends with him I'm good friends with him and he's right he doesn't propose solutions he's showing us our weaknesses our mathematical weaknesses I'm coming so he's coming to it as an observer like almost as an anthropologist would observe a culture I'm coming to it as an educator who's who's working to try to find a way to not have that happen in the first place and part of the science literacy definitely includes numeracy definitely includes that it's just part of how to think and so I mean we'll see but I write I'm not hold I'm not requiring of him that he has the solution part of ever having a solution is knowing that it's a problem in the first place and for us to have like headlines local headline once he had I gave a whole talk on this by the way on local headline in a newspaper I think was a New York Post said half the schools in the district are below average that's kind of what kind of what an average is isn't it about half but you kind of need that right otherwise the average makes no sense at all so that would be a mathematically illiterate journalist or a headline writer so it it's it's it's in a lot of places and so I'm trying to solve that problem yeah I'll tell him that you complain that he's not putting up solution he'll be fine with it okay yes that they're linked who's in the pen yes because it's a wiring of the brain it's not teaching someone math or science it's steeping them in circumstance we're thinking that way is required to solve their problem yes sir in the back yes go ahead the Pluto strategy I think you just created something oh oh I got you I see uh well it turns out Sponge Bob Squarepants planet ha ha fascinating you should bring that up because I an astrophysicist in my field in part because we had we were pretty organized with our nomenclature and since Americans have dominated there's that we're domination again he's from Canada so he feels American domination there it's true right America is like in your face all the time I'm not I'm gonna say - I'm just saying it's it's it's it's real the domination Americans have dominated cosmic discovery in the 20th century which is the growth of really huge telescopes which means we got to name things we just get to name things and that has contributed and since we don't have this Linnaean legacy that the biologists and chemists have where everything needs a Latin root with the formal structure and twelve syllables we just call it like we see it that's all what are you suggesting you don't know given all of it okay just literally hear me out hear me out sorry hear me out okay I'm meeting them halfway okay okay okay what do we call what's our official term for spots on the Sun Sun spots our official term for big red stars red giants regions of space you fall in you don't come out light doesn't come out it's a black hole okay the birth of all time space energy NEVEC Big Bang one syllable words what is the most important molecule to the biologist deoxyribonucleic acid you can't have a conversation with a biologist a camera and certainly not a geologist without being completely snowed over just by their lexicon I submit to you that the accessibility of the cosmos to the public is magnified by the fact that the vocabulary is not in the way the vocabulary is fun no we don't call them spongebob planets but I call it I say what is that thing around Saturn it's a ring what does it look like a ring what's that red spot on Jupiter it's Jupiter's red spot okay this is so the universe is hard enough I don't want it to put up a smoke screen think about it you can't if what does a doctor tell you if you have an ailment you have a like a orbital contusion well that's you got a black eye okay that's what that is why don't they just tell you that and then you go prescription and the pharmacist writes in cuneiform you can't even read it give it to I mean the doctor writes the far only the pharmacist can read what the doctor says it's this whole smokescreen so so I claim that this Pluto thing where the dog is that we're kind of already there but our vocabulary is simply accessible and so they come beating down my door to get to learn more about the universe because it's so cool and so there is no shortage of appetite for the cosmos in the public and you want to know whether it's an evident flow you believe it's been ebbing and flowing but in fact is has not been stopped yes there's small blips but overall science funding in America has been a slow but steady upward trend ever since the end of the Second World War even under President Bush who was widely regarded as being anti science but if you actually analyzed that if you say if you said he's not anti-science the person who say they are would tell you what ways he's anti science and they're really only list two things his stand on the environment and stem cells well there's a whole rest of the country science portfolio that had to was with it was not wit okay how about the rest of that in fact the rest of that the NIH budget tripled under Bush under President Clinton the budget for NASA dropped by 25% historically science funding has gone up under Republican presidents for an interesting reason by the way if we have time I'd be happy to tell her no but but my point is that science funding has been generally on the way up what you're probably referring to is not science funding but the public's attitude towards it and under Bush since Bush was nobody was like ever accused him of being a deep science thinker there was a it was he was not sort of the protector of scientific thought in the nation and so it gave a lot of top cover for non-scientific philosophies to rise up among us and try to work its way into the science classroom but that doesn't change the fact that science funding has been there for the National Science Foundation the NIH the Department of Energy and and NASA okay yeah sorry it's okay alright good more questions yes sir earth is to feel that way did you all hear the question yeah why can't we spread spread our genes to multiple planets protecting the species that way you won't protect the individual you protect the species if there's a catastrophe a virus an asteroid nuclear total nuclear holocaust that sort of thing I used to feel I used to feel that way and then I thought a little more deeply about it by the way Hawking came out with just that statement recently Hawking has reached a point where he's like not human anymore he's like an Oracle like if he says something the media just rushes to him to find out what he says Yoda and then read like Yoda and they and then they report that smartest man in the world says it and you all sort of have to believe it because he's touted as a smartest man in the world but what he said was just sort of culturally naive he said something he said we need to be multi-planet species because the energy because the asteroid might come here's the problem here's the problem you tell me if after this you don't just agree ask yourself what is the relative cost in energy effort human capital financial capital to ship a billion people to a terraformed Mars terraform where you seed an atmosphere turn it into like an oasis a bill people to a terraformed Mars or to deflect the asteroid yeah that's what I'm saying well what's it to move a billion people to Mars or to invest heavily in biology so that you're ready to attack any virus that comes out we're still victims of biology here there are other things we're not victims of we're not victims of what are the things we we can control streams now you know we don't have flooding the way we once did because we control streams they're within our power to control we don't control volcanoes we run away from volcanoes one day I want to come in and tap a volcano put in a like a spigot to get the energy out use the energy D nature of the volcano we have a nice relationship with the forces of energy within the earth we're just not there yet but whatever that is it's got to be easier than moving a billion people to another planet so that's my point so what we should do is not is think about not moving people to another planet but learning how to deflect an asteroid get the best biology and chemistry going that there is learn how to not have nuclear war this sort of thing global warm two very fertile people then hiss okay get this woman who just had eight babies sent her amorous right there you go ah yes over here yes sir you're not from Canada I know he's sitting now okay sitting next to the Canadian guy okay not that is anything wrong with that yes it is it's more predictive than any other science that's the way to say it oh no no no wait that's in a field where you're learning information faster than your vocabulary can keep up with it there comes a time when you need to sit down and then get your nomenclature straight and that right now is happening with planets it's not happening with galaxies we went through this exercise 70 years ago with galaxies so so I'm not saying that's our reason for existence in astrophysics I'm just saying right now that's what's going on on a side part of the people studying the solar system I think that's the least interesting thing no because there's a book here that witness a hold that's what I mean if it's because that hit the news I don't care about I don't care but in fact in fact the last comic here until you'd get me started here look there's like comics and stuff in here that we got permission to put in the last comic here okay this is the last comic it's on the very last page okay newsflash this is a news flash light from Earth rising up and this is Pluto and with a little voice bubble above Pluto responding to this news flash now Pluto is not a planet read Pluto's reaction like I'm supposed to give a ha ha I can't read the last word this audience here so so classifications just to help us communicate that's not what science is about science is about understanding phenomena go on it is not about contract I swear to you it's not the classification is a step much more is understanding something else that's going on we classify things because our mind is too feeble to actually understand what's going on so we have to say okay this kind of looks like that let's hold that together until we can know something better and so that don't ever think that classification is science it is not science it's a means to understanding the natural world not the object of what it is to understand the natural world so I can't agree with what you're saying but I'll let you finish now you mean like the periodic table like the phyla all those sorts of things because we're not just classic did you just created an entire false construction and then ask me to like explain why it's that way it's physics classifies particles there's leptons there's you know baryons there's so so everybody's got to classify something otherwise you can't have a conversation with somebody but it's not the goal the goal is to understand what nature is doing how it behaves to predict that's the true understanding of what's going on and so it's the king of the sciences because it predicts better than anybody else has ever dreamed possible I can use laws of physics can tell you the instant the Sun will rise above your horizon I can tell you what time a total solar eclipse will happen three thousand years from now and in what neighborhood it off take place in I can tell you what solar eclipse was I can even post dict I can tell you what solar eclipse stopped a battle that was taking place in Troy that because was reported that there's a total solar eclipse I can know what eclipse that was how long that eclipse lasted and verify whether or not they actually had accurate retelling of what they saw if they sell t-shirts they're perfect that has nothing to do with classification none of it yes ma'am stand up please I didn't mean to yell at you I'm just you just he has no off button so no you know that's the good thing hello yes it is mm-hmm okay guessing she's not from Canada right noise ah whoo yeah okay so look what you heard the question what's my thinking about the debate that was going on between evolution and a biblical creation and that debate typically took place in the school systems where school boards would try to influence the science curriculum although it would spill out into the blogosphere and other places where people liked it to debate this you should consider some simple facts simple facts no one in the history of religious literature has ever based on their readings of religious literature made an accurate prediction of a testable phenomenon that was not previously known at the time of that literature okay so in other words what you find in religious tax is that there's an account of what sort of is known then I'm referring to the about the physical universe if you look at every let's take the the judeo-christian the Old Testament the Torah for example you look at Genesis which is an account of things until science made independent discoveries of the account of things people would use Genesis as their source of the account of things in every single case they got it wrong out of the out of out of Genesis in the Bible in general earth is flat it's theirs it's a it land in the middle surrounded by water they're there the sky is like the stars are these little things embedded in this surface there is this is how everyone universally interpreted the physical universe based on based on Scripture science comes one said no that's just false and over time the Bible became less and less used as a science textbook by enlightened religious people and more and more used as just a source of spiritual fulfillment and spiritual enlightenment so today non fundamentalist religious people will cite the Bible as a source of their their their spiritual fulfillment and they're not getting their science out of the Bible because they know better because those attempts simply fail had they been successful it's not funny a lack of trying for centuries people tried to get science out of the Bible it simply fails okay it just simply it just doesn't work they they all do exactly trying to make it work you just can't make it work it doesn't make it even Leonardo tried okay he noticed that there were fossilized shells in the mountain top long regarded as the evidence for the flood okay but he noticed that the shells were just sort of carefully laid down there they were not sort of in a jumbled mess he said if there were flood this would be flood waters and all these fossils would be mixed together but look at these so I'll lay down it and so he started questioning the flood story this is Leonardo this is we're talking rumors either you know 15th century so a 16th century so so it just simply doesn't work so therefore it does not belong in the sign classroom because it is simply not science we live in a pluralistic society it doesn't mean you can't teach it it just doesn't belong in the science classroom anymore then the scientist should run by the Sunday school and knock on the door to tell the preacher what to teach there's no tradition of scientists doing that there are no tradition of scientists picketing outside of churches and synagogues saying that might not necessarily be true it doesn't happen that way we live in a nation that protects freedom of religion so practice your religion know what's stopping you that's one of the great things about this country but just because you have a religion doesn't make it correct science accept that fact otherwise you will undermine the scientific enterprise that is the greatest engine of economic growth culture has ever seen in fact I did three tours of duty in the Bush administration so I saw what was going I'm like this was very eye-opening by the way okay I was appointed by the president all right pointed by him so I'm in there and I'm watching this go on anywhere when you hold toys of duty okay so one was I've served on a Presidential Commission to study the future of the aerospace industry in America which was on hard times they lost a half a million jobs in the previous 10-15 years and it was worried of how it would affect Transportation Security and Commerce I got the idea next one was on the Commission to study the future of NASA after the Columbia tragedy a third appointment was to select who would be awarded the Presidential Medal of Science okay okay now so these are nonpartisan appointments they're just you try and just trying to do good in the world but I was sort of baptized into a world I'd not seen I the Republicans like where everywhere here in New York it's like there's a Republican right there everyone turn around and see that Republican right there the New York City oh now you got more of them over here in the East Side I understand but still still it's not like Colorado or something India or Indiana or Idaho right so I'm there and there was the Dover Pennsylvania Court case where intelligent design was on trial this is the movement where the religious community would say there are things in the world that are so intricate and so beyond scientific account that they must have been enabled by a higher intelligence than the human mind called intelligent design a way for accounting for things that you don't understand they wanted to get that in the science classroom never mentioning the word God because that would be the crossing of church and state and so this is kind of a sub-tree few girl way to get God in the classroom the judge presiding over that trial was a bush appointed judge this is a school board trying to get intelligence on in the public schools all of my sort of liberal Democrat friends said this is going to go badly and I said Bush appointed him it's a Republican judge it's not going to go badly I was cool I just sat back watched it unfold in the end the judge kicked it out of court said intelligent designs is not science there's no place in the science classroom and wrote like a hundred and thirty page brief I guess you wouldn't call it brief at that point hundred thirty page what what's that sure there are lawyers in here migaila Miguel I think it's McGill is that right are you sir exactly Gila like Magilla a whole Megillah the whole really tell Rachel were like Magilla the gorilla that's right you don't spend enough time on the west side sorry yeah so it was 130 page account that makes actually a fascinating decision opinion that's the opinion decision both all of the above 130 page lesson plan basically on what science is and what it isn't and there are schools now using that in their science classroom is a brilliant account okay now why did I know that would happen why did I know I'll tell you why I tell you why I'm waiting I tell you why because the reason why science funding is higher under Republicans is because while the Republican will be resistant to spending money the typical type goes and it is largely true but you can argue it on the edges a Republican might be resistant to creating a social program in the service of needy people they're more likely to invest in industry to boost a capitalist system that might create a job base that then the people would take on so this is the difference here okay which means Republicans compared to Democrats are much more likely to put money in places that would later on make more money bang okay no like came over the Rd of a corporation oil this sort of thing so a Republican judge one thing I learned above all else whatever else is true about a Republican they do not want to die poor and if you allow intelligent design into the science classroom you will undermine the foundations of science education in America and that would be the beginning of the end of all we have taken for granted about our economic strength as a nation so I knew he couldn't possibly decide that without jeopardizing his entire investment portfolio that's how I knew all right one night meanwhile meanwhile Bush has to carry on that way because his electorate feels that way and that's who put him into office but judges aren't elected not that one he's appointed so that gives him the freedom to do things that have nothing to do with the opinion of voters there's the politics of it one more question at the time for we got one in the front row right here go ahead stand up give you a question that the betcha you say go ahead can you like make a whole set in please thank you okay but first night were how old are you 9 years old cool I was 9 years old and I had my first visit to the Hayden Planetarium and I was starstruck and I've been interested in the universe ever since 9 years old so go for it [Music] 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 and Pluto the planet and head Pluto been named something other than Pluto would Americans have cared as much as we do that's an excellent question let's back up in time a bit let's go back to mid 17 I've got the gears correct in the book at a point when Sir William Herschel a British astronomer very famous brilliant had the biggest telescope of the day if you got the biggest telescope you see things 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 ever discovered a planet before no-one ever there was Mercury Venus Earth Mars Jupiter and Saturn he discovered a new planet so he was going to name it it's gonna name it what do you NIT no no one ever discovered a planet before so the new rules for naming so he did what any good scientist would do and named it after his principal funder the person who gives him money so that was King George so for about 50 years textbooks showed Mercury Venus Earth Mars Jupiter Saturn and George now I was only nine don't do this no no no so so so I don't know right but I'd be deeply disturbed by a planet named George right so clear heads eventually prevailed and they said okay wait a minute the other planets the named after Roman gods this ought to be a Roman god but that would get the British very angry who are the most powerful force the world had ever seen economically culturally militaristically and everything else Lee yes so you don't want to get them angry so as a consolation as a sort of alright how do we not get them more angry with us than they already are for yanking the Kings name off of the planet they said all right we'll make an exception for the moons because while planets are named for Roman gods the moons of planets are named for Greek characters in the life of the Greek counterpart to the Roman god after whom the planet is named Wow so so what so if for example Jupiter one of its moons is Ganymede Ganymede is the man servant of Zeus and Zeus is the Greek counterpart to Jupiter so that's how that works so that's our homage to Greek and Roman legends and the role that they played in sort of trying to map the solar system now the exception to Uranus who is ultimately named yeren it's the exception there is that it's moons are not named for Greek gods they're named for fictional Shakespearean characters oh my god and six Shakespeare's British that was a way to just sort of bungee Bob anything on a chance it doesn't have a chance so you have moons like a Porsche and not Porsche like the car but Porsche P ort ia Oberon puck titania Miranda they had a lot owns two tonight not a lot of mood but but Shakespeare had a lot of character the Greek gods had a lot of care they were they led complicated social lives there's no shortage of characters to name them after so the names of planets first date what they would have to be a Roman god so the question is if it was a Roman god that did not share the name of a dog of a cartoon character would anyone have cared I am certain that that would have been the case in fact had Americans could not have named Pluto Pluto you know why it was named by a British girl eleven-year-old girl in England who was well-connected her father like ran the Cambridge library and and her and that he was friends with the astronomer royal totally connected 11-year old girl in America no one could have possibly come up with the word Pluto because at the time there was a widely advertised mineral laxative ask your mom what laxative means called Pluto water with the slogan when nature won't Pluto will so you discover a new planet nobody is thinking bathroom okay they're not they want to think something else so Americans would have not come up with Pluto had they come up with some name like me who's goofy around they're goofy right that would've been right Donald goofy Donald goofy Mickey so I am certain that had it been named something else that Americans would not have linked to it at all and pick up another how about a think of a good another Greek name how about who's uh who's the guy who looked at his reflection north distance pose was named narcissus you know kids can barely even pronounce that that would have been lost long ago and wouldn't would not happened I'm sure of it and so plus like I said they're all it's not just because it's little we got littler things in the solar system it's not just because it's icy we've got other icy things it's not because it's the farthest I mean because sometimes it's not even the farthest so none of those arguments really hold water I don't think that's why I blame it all on Disney and there's the whole tracing of the if you care just if you care all the Disney the origin of Pluto in the Disney Pantheon is in here and you and what disturbing can end with that one hey I got I get off my chest the and you might be curious how is it that a mouse Mickey can own a dog what why is it that Pluto is Mickey's dog Wow but Mickey is not Pluto's Mouse have you ever wondered I've I was deeply disturbed by this this is a disruption in the mammalian order of things so I had to I look this one up Wow I called my got Disney consultants yeah mm-hm check this out you know you know how you can do this in the Disney pantheon of characters not the ones that they bought later like Winnie the Pooh I'm not about ones that they sketch out of their labs if you're an animal who wears clothes you can own other animals who don't Mickey's got the gloves those balloon pants he wears whatever those things are Wow Pluto's butt naked walks on all fours and barks whereas goofy wears clothes walks bipedally pays rent lives in a house not a dog house I know you were burning to know this but I just had to tell you that's that salad and there's more of that good stuff in this book the Pluto file rise and fall of America's favorite plan put over there thank you all you'll be on Science Friday tomorrow at 3:00 on WNYC 1 anything we didn't cover tonight I don't know how we'll get to that but thank you all for coming tonight and we'll do it books outside I guess books outside you

Channel: 92nd Street Y

Views: 154,679

Rating: 4.8096571 out of 5

Keywords: Neil deGrasse Tyson, Pluto, Science

Id: e98L6mftkNU

Length: 101min 56sec (6116 seconds)

Published: Fri Mar 15 2013

Reddit Comments

[u/thebobstu]

Could you provide a timestamp?

[u/Demithus]

Nice, New Mexico. :)