Neil deGrasse Tyson - The Pluto Files

fora tv' the world is thinking speaking of hard times though things haven't been easy for an old distant friend of ours I'm speaking of Pluto of course what is it about that little guy way out there discovered in March of 1930 that has captured our imagination so is it that he represents the lonely outer reaches of our solar system a kind of pilgrim planet roaming the outskirts of the known universe and why did Disney name a dog after him I'd hoped to find a clever Mickey Mouse quote regarding Pluto by googling Mickey and Pluto but to no avail Pluto of course is also the Roman god of the underworld before he was a planet and now it seems that Pluto isn't even really a planet anymore but our solar system's second largest dwarf planet a member of the Kuiper belt with a highly eccentric and inclined orbit them are some strong words strong words that have left a few Pluto fans out there a little miffed to explain the current plight of Pluto for us tonight we have with us mr. Neil deGrasse Tyson author of the Pluto files the rise and fall of America's favorite planet which is on sale in our live Lobby and which he'll be signing after the program he is rather well qualified to lead us in such a discussion as he is not only an award-winning author and a monthly columnist for natural history but an astrophysicist with the American Museum of Natural History and the director of the world-famous Hayden Planetarium in conversation this evening with mr. deGrasse Tyson is dr. Laura Danly curator curator of our very own and acclaimed Griffith Observatory where she develops all educational theatrical gallery and telescope related programs she holds a PhD in astronomy and is a spectroscopist spectra Hoppus spectroscopist from what I understand is one who performs spectroscope II with a spectrometer which I gather means that she analyzes the chemistry of objects in space remotely with a kind of telescope she specializes particularly in ultraviolet observations from satellites this evens program will conclude with a question or answer period about 10-15 minutes please wait to be called on and wait for the microphone to arrive ladies and gentlemen won't you please join me in silencing your cellphone's and in welcoming Neil deGrasse Tyson and Laura Danly to the los angeles public thank you for thank you for that introduction and oh and we're so happy to be here and thank you to all of you coming this evening it is a real thrill to be here with Neil Tyson we've known each other for many years that I won't number but since we were both grad students so that's a while and so it's a real pleasure to be here and try to moderate this controversy that has brewed around him so I think in I'll speak for everyone when I ask the first question which is what did Pluto do to you have a bad experience as a child with Pluto well had it coming that's all I want to say Bluto Pluto what a Pluto do to me no I like Pluto I have nothing against Pluto well then why have you championed that Pluto should be removed from the roster of planets well actually I haven't I think that's a big misconception of what of where I stand on this issue and it all began back in the late 1990s when we were trying to think about how to present the solar system as well as the rest of the universe in a newly rebuilt Hayden Planetarium in New York City that's where I hail from and so we notice that a couple of things but things were being discovered in the outer solar system that had not been discovered before other icy bodies in the outer solar system oh by the way I have to say if you ever use the phrase icy bodies to like kindergarteners they look like because they imagine like dead bodies frozen in the outer so you just have to be careful how you use the word body so icy bodies has replaced heavenly belieber so so anyhow so we saw that these icy objects were being discovered in the outer solar system with kind of similar properties to Pluto all odd properties Pluto was an odd planet but it's a normal version of what these other icy bodies are and we realized maybe Pluto is not the ninth planet maybe it was the first object discovered of this new class of objects that are out there predicted to be there by a astronomer at mid century called Gerard Kuiper he's a solar system theorists who hypothesized that beyond the orbit of Neptune that where there's no large planet then there's no sort of gravitational nothing to sort of gravitationally vacuum up all the debris that would have been left over from the formation of the solar system so it just still be out there and there and there was the prediction for 50 years until someone actually not someone but some two astronomers and using the Keck telescope in Hawaii you got to need a big telescope to see dim things and found the next object in this zone who then was held as the first Kuiper belt object but it's really the second if Pluto was the first so all we did there getting back to your question all we did was take Pluto and group it with the rest of these other icy bodies and then we said well if we're going to group objects by like properties let's kind of do that with the rest of the solar system so we looked at the gas giants Jupiter Saturn Uranus and Neptune put them together presented them we looked at the the rocky small object mercury just like a Venus thank you Mercury Venus Earth and Mars a testament to counting planet okay Mercury's Earth and Mars so we grouped those together because all small dance and rocky and that was the new family photo of the solar system at no time did we count planets and no time did we say there are only eight at no time do we say we're kickin Pluto out even though the press kept trying to get a quote when he soundbites out and they said so how many planets are there so how many planets and I would not give it to him and what I said was is that it's it's always say oh what I wanted to say because they would like pissing me off after a while I want to say yeah we kicked Pluto out there's too small to make it in New York you know I wanted to like give him give them something to chew on and so but what happened was after we did this than a year later the New York Times broke the story I mean was that exhibit was that way for a year and we thought oh everybody's cool nobody wasn't in a ruffle any feathers story and out came a page-one headline in the New York Times they said Pluto not a planet only in New York and that's what started that's that's where the planet count adjustment got saddled on my shoulder and that's where you became the hit man the Hitmen target and I got the newspaper right here Oh wonderful okay okay right there okay now this this is a newspaper that should have been filled with events of the day not Pluto oh this is yeah do you want to tell us the date yeah the date is January 22nd 2001 so what happened two days before like President Bush just got elected president and it's still counting Chad's in Florida so you think they'd be news related to that completely on this so we got Bush we got some Cardinals got appointed some brownouts in California some weapons factories in Iraq and right here that right there there you go Pluto's not a planet only in New York there it is and that's when the phone just started ringing and my inbox flooded and the hate mail started coming in from third graders that's how that happened so tell us a little bit about that email you described it in the book and it's very entertaining but what what were some of your favorite threats they were pissed I mean I never seen angry I could was a third grader have to be angry about they were angry about this and one letter said oh dear dr. Tyson please put my favorite planet back in and here's what it looks like and drew squirt and some letters are transcribed but the cutest ones are actually for the Pluto files are scanned in so you can see the crayon and and the bad spelling and the and and and one of them says and here's what it looks like so that you can make your exhibit on it right right and it said write one of them says write back soon but not in cursive I don't know how to recursive yet signed love you know right right there's no other Sincerely Yours you know that's not built in the solar system love Susie that's right so the that was not the only correspondence that came in some came in from colleagues angered colleagues most of those who were angered are those for whom their entire professional identity flowed out of Pluto being the ninth planet others were were pretty cool about it actually but I got email from school teachers and from science teachers and it became clear after a while that science teachers were making this debate a unit in the class and all so I got like it wasn't just single letters from students but whole packets full alright and they all just sort of give their case so it really it was a complete distraction of my life for years years and is it still is there still it's not so bad no thanks for asking it's not so bad now because because so all these years go by and it still goes on and it goes on it goes on and then finally like the international community of astrophysicists decided to bring it to vote the International Astronomical Union not a labor union but a society and in their triennial which i think means every three years that's what I intended to mean triennial assembly they took a vote but not until they had assembled a committee to decide the definition of a planet so that they can then decide whether Pluto was a planet or not now this sounds like what do you guys idiots or something you're asking me I'm sure it's not that the astronomers were all idiots it's that no one had ever officially defined the word planet since the time of ancient Greece that's why there was the debate see if it hadn't been defined it's okay if no if there's no objects to test the definition that didn't exist but all of a sudden were starting to get objects that sort of force you to think deeper about what you had been assuming all along an original definition of planet planet there's the Greek plenty that's meaning wanderer and in ancient Greece there were just seven objects in the sky that wandered against the background sky and they're only seven it was Mercury Venus Mars Jupiter Saturn the Sun and the moon and we traced the names of our seven days of the week to those seven objects through both Roman and Martin here in the West and Roman in Norse mythology so Saturdays after Saturn Sundays after the Mondays after the moon that sort of thing so those were the seven planets unambiguously defined no argument do you move your planet period but that Copernicus came along well maybe the Sun is in the middle rather than earth and we're moving around the Sun like the rest of these objects so then we must be whatever we call those other objects so we earth must then be a planet so earth got added to the count of planets the Sun got subtracted and so too did the moon so it was seven planets initially perfectly defined then became minus two plus one six and then it was just kind of stuff that went around the Sun so this isn't the first time flew to a pardon me that planets have been demoted we've we've planets before there's a yeah and and I think the most telling case here is an 1801 where did you know that in 1801 the planet Ceres was discovered did you notice planet Sirius yeah over here planet Ceres but if you're an astrologer you have astrologers know about this oh yeah they've got serious insurance I was going to ask you about that why why aren't the astrologers engaged well they are soldiers were as pissed off as the third graders that Pluto got the motor so that's it that's another I guess I talked about that in the book um was this microphone lowered in intensity could I have it back up could I have it up a little I really so I just bring it closer then I'll bring it closer then how about there closer were you ever a radio no it wasn't no got the voice for it no that's that's the planetarium director voice said if your voice is coming out of the dome it can't sound like there's a Clio so that doesn't work you got it you got to get you got to get deep in it you know and then then it works its cosmic talk on cosmic talk so so where was i before I interrupted myself so 1801 planet Ceres was discovered everybody was excited and then a couple years you know within a few years three more planets were discovered in orbit around the Sun between Mars and Jupiter because it was a big gap there that was not understood for a long while and so if you have books in the early 1800s the planet and they discovered a bunch of these the planet count was up to 13 for a while did you know that 200 years ago thirteen planets then people said no wait a minute these objects are kind of small in fact it really really small and they're there like there's tons of them and they all kind of have in the same orbital zone that be they have properties that are not like these other objects we've been calling planets and so it took 50 years but in the early 1850s it was widely decided that maybe we were not discovering planets were discovering new objects a new kind of object in a new swath of real estate in the solar system which then became known as the asteroid belt now you say widely decided how did it differ then till now because the people who discovered them wanted them to be planets I mean the discoverer wanted woods not was not happy about the movement to say these are just little craggy chunks of rock let's find something else to call them well what's different now that we have an international body that holds a vote I mean that's is there a precedence for that or is that something that just is really more of a symptom of 21st century not so good question vehicle light I think in the International Astronomical Union they vote on stuff all the time and you know as you know we're here in America we if we discover something because we have a bigger telescope than the rest of the world which remains the case we have the largest optical telescopes in the world we'll see things discover new objects we'll find some name some lexicon to apply to it it's usually a fun playful lexicon or very transparent lexicography that's how we do our that that's what we do in astrophysics one of the things I think we do well so for example you know spots on the Sun are sun spots see that's how we do that the Red Spot on Jupiter is called Jupiter's red spot say uh the biologists and the chemists and the geologists they're just out of control with their words way too many laid that way too many syllables they lay them down and that becomes a barrier you can't even get to the subject because the words are in the way so the universe is complex enough I'm not going to put big words down just and they gotta get through that before you get to me you know I'm just not my defense mechanism here it's just a that so it in biology the most important molecule deoxyribonucleic acid right in the universe the most important event Big Bang see we are mono syllabic people right we are simple people in astrophysics so because the universe is complex enough so so anyhow so actually if we discover something and we name it and then Europe discovers maybe the same thing but we don't know yet and they name it and we to find out it's the same thing what they do in these committees is sort of regularize the vocabulary and that's a service to the community so we all speak the same language and it's hardly ever controversial you never you don't hear about controversial votes that they take yet they're taking votes all the time so just turn out that they felt compelled to define what a planet was six years after we had to actually go through that same exercise but we did it first we were the first public institution to represent Pluto in a way unfamiliar to the public a way that did not match however you learned it in third grade so we were the first to do that publicly because we would cut in metal 200 million dollars being invested in a new astronomy museum and when you know you don't want the exhibit to go out of date three months later we check the trend line in what the research where the research was going and we follow that trend line and it turned out to have the foresight that mattered that everyone else sort of came in to later so so they voted it turned out to be controversial because there was still there was the underbelly of that vote the 10% of the people who voted to retain Pluto status as a planet they're a very vocal animated lot and they started sending circulating international petitions and they were you know complaining on web blogs and it was it there it was and they're still out there there's still at it and will there be another vote kind of the next it's not a scheduled vote but I think they're gonna they're gonna like they're they're amassing the troops because the that vote was taken in 2006 and this is 2009 and triennial right the meeting again this year I think in in South America yeah well now not know as tell Brazil yeah yeah Rio de Janeiro oh cool I should go yeah I miss Prague too right yeah so so what so getting back to the question that started this in 2006 the official vote was taken and that actually reclassified Pluto not as a planet but as a dwarf planet now why is a dwarf planet not a planet well that's why I'm you know I don't actually care what the definition of a planet is as long as it has a definition everybody can like unambiguously assign so the so the way it works now is to be a planet you need a check in two boxes the first box is are you round okay actually it's three checks first are you round or pluto's round so it's there it goes alright second check are you the primary object that's in orbit around the Sun so you can't be a moon even if you're round and be called a planet got there gotcha okay so the moon is not the primary object in our system going around the Sun so the moon's low round would not be a planet and is it so Pluto put you get a check there Pluto has a moon a relatively big moon but it still is the biggest in the system so Pluto gets two checks and the third the third checks the third check is have you cleared your orbit of orbital have you cleared your orbit of orbital debris and Pluto has not it is in a crowded zone with countless other icy bodies in the outer solar system the Kuiper belt of comets in just the same way there is a one and only one round asteroid Ceres by the way named for the Roman god goddess of harvest and that's a root word for the word cereal okay you don't with library people so you know this stuff but if you don't I think you maybe even appreciate it right this is like the kind of stuff library people like right okay well it matters very much you can say well it's just a word but no but it's got this gun meaning it's got context history and if you so series is round it is it is its own dominant object it doesn't have a moon that we know around the Sun but it hasn't cleared its orbit it's littered in the asteroid belt so Pluto fails that third check it remains a dwarf planet now you make lawyer you make an important point why should a dwarf planet not be a planet if you drive a compact car you're not thinking I'm not driving a car no it's just that maybe you are car let's just say SUVs done very well that's true yes you're just more dead in an accident that's different doesn't mean you're not driving a car you're just driving a more deadly car dead left to yourself a dwarf car so you get to spark in the you know compact car spaces of the you know you still in a car so I don't have a problem with that I come to this as an as an expert in galaxies we have dwarf galaxies and they don't have a stick they don't they don't have a identity complex no one thinks oh you're less of a galaxy there in fact dwarf galaxies outnumber quote regular galaxies in the universe by as much as 10 to 1 so they get respect alright so we've heard it here tonight Pluto is a planet well it's a kind of planet it's a car by the definition put up by oh oh now I think there was a little concern about Pluto feelings so so so there's another sub subcategory of round object that Pluto is where the benchmark version of and Pluto is the prototype Pluto so a Pluto is a round object in primary orbit around the star that has not cleared its orbit that is orbiting beyond Neptune and made of a lot of ice so if your big round icy object beyond Pluto beyond Neptune then you're a poo toy and you're a Pluto this is what was voted on 90% approved 10% dissented and that is currently the official definition of it but let me make it clear I actually don't care how you define planet because I got phone calls after 2006 that's when the letters dropped off because now the entire community of astrophysicists were to blame not just me so so the letter-writing tailed off and so what happened then is I got phone calls from the press saying so you're going to change the exhibit now you're going to change the number we never counted planets to begin with ever so the exhibit was just fine in fact that was the point you made the exhibit so you wouldn't have to do that that was the entire principle of the exhibit and may I say that no matter how you define planet I submit to you that that's not the most useful way to think about what orbits the solar system orbits the Sun if one word even if little were a planet you have Pluto described by the same word that describes Jupiter and I'm thinking of what value is that to the listener if I say I just discovered a planet around another star you're going to ask me is it big is it small as it rocky as a gas just does it have rings is it in a habitable zone does it have moons does it have magnet field you can ask me 20 questions and why because the word planet did not provide enough information to satisfy your curiosity and any good lexicon or to have the precision of description so that you shouldn't take 20 questions after that if I come to a library I said I pulled a book off the shelf I pulled the pamphlet off the shelf I pulled in a cyclopædia off the shelf I pull we have words where you kind of understand what I'm talking about without multiple questions that follow so I claim that the vocabulary that has been voted on in Prague that's where the vote was taken first of all is narrow minded because it really only applies through our own solar system and if you're going to be classifying objects in orbit around a star why not start taking cues from the 300 plus exoplanets that are now in the catalogs that we know orbit other stars why not allow that to inform the thinking but it did not I was going to ask you about the exoplanets because there they come in all kinds of shapes and sizes and things we've not seen in our own solar so it's likely to change again uh and I think it should not have to have changed again it should have thought about that from the beginning would it be nice the way I think of this not that you asked but I'm gonna tell you planet was okay as a word when all you knew was that they were dots of light on the sky even with primitive telescopic observations we didn't really know that much about them physically so planet was a nice kind of word because there was not much else to talk about but we've had probes go by and orbit them hang out there plunge into the atmosphere Rovers roll on the surface we've got close-up photos well I got a lot more to talk about these objects and I want the vocabulary of communication to reflect this fact so I imagine a day when we have and this is a little inelegant at the moment but it'll convey my sentiment you have a grid of data one could be is a planet orbiting so you have all that all the objects orbiting the Sun including moons and comets here they are and then you have criteria is it in the habitable zone for example that zone we where you're not too close to the Sun where your water if you have it would evaporate not too far away your water would freeze so it'd be like Goldilocks would be just right and life as we know it requires liquid water so if you want to look for life first you know out of the gates you might start there so isn't it handles own does it sort doesn't its orbit cross the orbit of another object is it rocky is it does it have rings so you have all of these cat are there storms and then you say to yourself I want to study rings today so you take a cut through the data and find all the objects that have rings and that becomes your organizing principle I want objects that have really well-preserved craters take another cut through the data the moon will be in that list and you'll have the moon and Mercury I don't have a problem with that because the craters are your subject at that time how about storms storms Venus Mars Earth the the Jovians or Jupiter Saturn Uranus and Neptune and I think what's the one with the atmosphere a Titan I bet Titan some stories got it it's the only moon that has an atmosphere that was actually this week rain on Titan rain on Titan you got whether you got weather there that's another cut through the data yeah and so that's how I like cut and by like one of those cuts will be are you round okay but don't lead with that don't let that be your organizing principle don't let that define and then the elementary school exercise of counting planets and memorizing their sequence from the Sun that's a perversion of the science that's actually available to be learned at that age in school now one of my favorite quotations in here from the scientists were accusing you of revisionist science which I thought was a wonderful oxymoron because isn't science actually supposed to be revisionist isn't that's kind of the whole point we're making discoveries right that's what kind of let's yeah but some people you know you know what I think it was because I'd put a fair amount of thought into this when you learn something early in elementary school and you hear it you you didn't learn what things were you just memorized something that's really what happened there and if you memorize something and then later on that breaks you feel like you feel like something attacked you you feel that the memorization of the planets was kind of like an intellectual version of comfort food right it was just all was well in the world because there were nine planets and the ninth planet was Pluto and you memorize it had you learned that these are dynamic bodies that have these properties and then you learn that there are new objects that have new properties I don't think people would have gotten upset so I blame I think we are participants in this blame because it's we or our professional brethren who wrote the textbooks that presented the information this way so I don't want to implicate elementary schoolers uniquely in this we all share this blame but my hope is that in the textbooks to come there will not be an exercise in memorizing planets that you'll group them by like properties and teach them as as any normal scientific subject would be addressed I do want to remind you pardon me that you are in Los Angeles in just a few blocks from Disney so this is a kind of sacred territory what is me to discussing that yeah well Disney well I hit Disney comes into the picture because first I don't know if you know 1930 was when Pluto the cosmic object was discovered same year Walt Disney first sketched the dog that would bear that name and so the dog and the cosmic object have the same tenure in the hearts and minds of Americans not only that the age where you first learn the planets you are a fan of cartoons at that age unless you're in a household of academics where there is no television okay then you're deprived of that background but for most kids then so and you learn to play Mercury Venus Earth Mars Jupiter Pluto oh my gosh that's the same as the dark and then there's a link dis like this oh yes the cutest one - it's the cutest planet totally oh yeah there's a complete emotional link so the emotions are in place and it's a recipe for clutching tightly to this ossified information so broadening just a bit what do you think is next on the horizon for revisionist science whatever what are the new discoveries are gonna change how we see okay I'll tell you about it but before I answer that cut just one little tidbit about Pluto because I've worked hard to get this information I can't keep it contained I have to share it uh the Pluto again you all are learning folk so this is there's a very low level information for you but you still might not have known it and you still might think it's interesting so grant me a moment to share it with you I work now in the Department of astrophysics at the American Museum of Natural History which has multiple departments of mostly zoological departments there's a department of entomology which were an astronomer to have named it would just be called bug ology right um there the bird ologist the bug ologists the knowledge the Dino gist the Dino largest side weather Dino so that's what we would have called them but now you got to find some obscure Latin root and name it that so people then have to ask you what the frickin word means so anyhow I'm closer to people who think about the order of animals in the world and so I got it got me thinking here's Pluto the dog owned by a mouse so how is it that Mickey owns Pluto but Pluto does not own Mickey that disturbed me that's a disruption in the mammalian order of things and so I found out in the Disney pantheon of characters that they created not the ones they later bought that were preformed like Winnie the Pooh that's different oh I'm sorry I meant to turn off my cell phone you can turn this off ok Pluto calling this Pluto call I heard you hi just down the street Oh Pluto just came out of his good kidneys tie him down he's a taxi right up yes so it turns out in the Disney Pantheon if you are an animal that wears clothes then you can be in possession own any other animal that does not and Mickey wears that stupid shorts and gloves and I think sometimes has a bowtie on I'd seem to remember and he can own puto who's butt naked that's what it is and the other famous dog goofy wears clothes and speaks and walks bipedally Pluto does not speak he only barks and walks on all fours I know you were burning to know this share this do so other things on the frontier one of my favorite uh-oh one last I got to tell you one one do you have the book you got this is like the the readers preview copy it is yes ok ok I got I don't if you guys knew this but California passed proposed legislation regarding the demotion of Pluto did you know this your attacks money at work yes ok I have that entire legislation reproduced here ok oh that's the resolution here we go if you california's legislation relative to Pluto's planetary status a california assembly bill HR 36 introduced by assembly members keith rich richmond md republican district 38 north west los angeles if kent chill miele the democrats with bipartisan legislation whereas recent astronaut this was by the way this is past like minutes after the vote was taken in Prague to demote Pluto it's like two days later so this must have been in the making for a while and it's got all the where as speak that resolutions typically have we're as recent astronomical discoveries including Pluto's oblong orbit and the sighting of slightly larger Kuiper belt objects have led astronomers to question the planetary status of Pluto and whereas the mean-spirited International Astronomical Union decided on August 24th to disrespect Pluto by stripping Pluto of its planetary status and reclassified as a lowly dwarf planet and Pluto was the square as Pluto's discovered in 1930 by an American Clyde Tombaugh in Arizona and the discovery resulted in millions of Californians being taught that Pluto was the ninth planet in the solar system and whereas Pluto named after the Roman god of the underworld and affectionately sharing the name of California's most famous animated dog the special connection with California history and culture whereas downgrading Pluto status will cause psychological harm to Californians who question their place in the universe and worry about the instability of universal constants let's go your tax money at work I'm skipping something resolved if there's more we're asses I'm skipping them resolved by the I'm skipping I got a skip that I can't read that out loud I won't read that out loud because you'll just move out of the state if you heard what this what this thing says O'Neill I think you have to know I have to know you've said that the second-to-last whereas whereas the downgrading of Pluto I gotta be okay here before the one where you might think of moving out of state I got to read this one because it's so out there whereas the deletion of Pluto as a planet is a hasty ill-considered scientific heresy similar to the Copernican theory too simple to questioning the Copernican theory drawing maps of a round world and proving the existence of the time and space continuum and here you go the downgrading of Pluto reduces the number of planets available for legislative leaders to hide redistricting read legislation inconvenient political reform measures be it really this goes on this is good God flew here you guys live in it I'm just telling anyhow back to your question I had to get that one Rochester Oh another other right the cartoons in it because once that happened it wasn't just the school kids and and the legislation there was like cartoons and op-eds and the onion the you know we all know the onion the newspaper my favorite article in the onion was they're all fake articles right but they're brilliantly written what NASA decides to send a console or probe to Pluto and filled with with this sort of office office protocol speak it's like the the consoler probe will only approach Pluto on a Friday to alert them of the downgrade so that he has the weekend to recover okay because you don't fire people on a Monday you fire them on a front it's all this psycho psycho speak to how the consoler probe will address Pluto and another one my favorite comic of them all it's in here yes it costs a small fortune but I got the rights to put in all these really cool comics that that Pluto inspired one of them is Pluto is this orbit its personified orb you know with eyes nose and mouth on a street corner holding a beggar's Cup right and there's a gluttonous the sad Pluto holding up a sign that says victim of downsize the cutest well it certainly struck a nerve it apparently yeah so so other things I think interesting about changing paradigms or changing how did you phrase it the well I've stole from don brownlee of the science revisionist revisionist science yeah so a couple of interesting things for the longest while we identified what I mentioned to you as the habitable zone around Stars it's really the Goldilocks zone we're a little biased but knowingly biased that we want to look for life we you want to start with life as we know it and life as we know it includes dependence on liquid water you start with life as we know it because who knows how many lifes as we don't know it are possible yet there's no evidence of any one of them existing so why don't we start with one for which we have an example and that's ourselves so you just start there if that fails badly then we sort of broaden the catcher's mitt so we would look in the habitable zones around stars we are most likely to find liquid water but recently last you know decade or so we discovered that one of Jupiter's moons Europa one of the big four that Galileo first saw four hundred years ago almost to the week I mean it was this these these weeks Galileo is observing the night sky taking notes the first to see what today we call the Galilean moons of Jupiter so there's Europa it is an icy body that would be if it was icy we put a cut through the data and Europa would be included among icy bodies an icy body yet close-up photos of its surface show cracks in the ice where it looks like liquid seeped up between the cracks and then refroze if I held up a picture of the Arctic sea and the ice sheets and the patterns of the broken and recently frozen ice and I hold it next to the shots of Europa you barely be able to tell the difference so we conclude that beneath this frozen upper surface is an ocean of liquid warder that is perhaps been liquid for billions of years I gotta say that the way Carl would have for billions of years let's all say that together just as a homage to Carl put your chin out together on three you say with me ready one two three four Carl Sagan that is if you didn't you just moved out from under a rock Carl Sagan so so of the way was I good I keep oh you open it so you're open so hot so now Jupiter's well outside of the habitable zone the Green Zone well how does this happen because Jupiter's gravity in in in symphony with the gravity of the other jupiter moons are tugging on Europa in such a way that it actually distorts the physical sphere that Europa is it's physically distorts it and we and reshapes it and if you've ever played racquet sports they always say let's warm up the ball for a few minutes before you start the game that's literally true you're smashing the ball the ball squeezes and it pops back into shape so you're pumping energy into the ball and the book temperature the ball actually goes up on Europa the physical stressing the stressing of the physical body pumps heat into the object into the moon and it has melted that ice beneath the surface and so I want to go ice fishing on Europa cut a hole in there look down and see if anything swims up and licks the camera lens that's what I want to do and on top of that the point here is if you want to look for water liquid water you are no longer restricted you no longer need to be restricted to the habitable zone because there are other mechanisms that can liquefy water that do not depend on the Sun and that's a broadening of the net that we will cast in search for life but what adds to that is in recent past we've discovered life forms on earth that thrive under conditions that would kill us posthaste for so long we said well what life needs is like a a room repond no we like room-temperature alright wait if you put a polar bear at room temperature you'd be dead you know their whole not not all life in the world likes room temperature so bacteria comes at all shapes and sizes and varieties not all subtle sizes but definitely all varieties and there are bacteria that thrive in acid acid mixtures in basic mish mixtures and high temperature low temperature you can freeze dry some bacteria and we constitute it later you can some bacteria is thrives under conditions that we are finding on other cosmic objects and so what that means is you no longer have to restrict yourself to room temperature if life on earth thrives under those conditions bacterial life though it is I don't care what kind of life you 5 is life at all that yet that's a that's a magical day in the history of science even if it's just microbial life so now when astronomers say we're looking for life in the universe typically take the astrobiologist when they say that they're not saying you know take me to your leader kind of life just any kind of microbial life will do now given your recent foray with the Sociology between the public and science if that fish came up and licked your lens would would you think there'd be a positive response or a negative response but people be elated and feel somehow part of something greater or fearful and now just one of many those psychological that's an excellent question those who in my judgment and that's I don't I didn't do formal research on this reply but I've had enough encounters with enough people that I think I can have some insight I declare that those who say or who feel threatened by this fact rather than enlightened by this fact that they are now part of an even greater biological system in the universe if you feel threatened by that it meant you are not properly educated to begin with it meant somewhere in your educational path your ego was boosted based on the assumption that you are separate and distinct from the physical world around you and only under that construct could you possibly take that information as a threat or as something that undermines your place in the universe and I like my sense of this is that the cosmic perspective which the entire sort of astrophysics community has because we live it so I share with you not something that is unique to me it's something that's common among those who think about the universe daily is that when we look out into the universe we know we are connected to it because the very elements in our body are traceable to these stars that manufactured them exploded scatter them into the galaxy out of which we form the stars and planets even dwarf planets on which you then find ingredients for life so we look up we don't feel small we actually feel quite large because we are participant in a much larger story than ourselves and so yes there'll be issues there's talk about whether sort of religions would object there's a whole theology scholarship theologians so theology scholars theologians who are thinking about what to do if they find sort of intelligent life on another planet particularly Christian theology they worry will that life is that life saved that are they subject to original sin these are theologically theological questions being tackled right now now that they see sort of the Astrophysical frontier coming you know on the on those shorelines ready to sort of snap into the reach out into those domains so I've had some people say well will religion go away well religion didn't go away when Galileo showed that Earth is not the center of all motion and that religion huge institutions with a lot of money invested and a lot of sort of so what I've seen happen in the past is that there's there rethinking of this the religious text and they sort of adapt to the new information and push on so there will be change in society but it's not going to I don't think as a uproot society any worse than the Copernican revolution did in terms of the institutions that thrive within it I do recall that when NASA announced life in the meteorite that fell in Antarctica alh84001 that it was the second news story on the news that day and Robert Dahl was running for president and the first story was his plank on abortion which he announced that day so the announcement of life on Mars didn't actually make the number one story on the news that night which is kind of an interesting though we tend to think it'll change everything but right yeah but yeah I don't think it'll change everything it'll be important and by the way I think what matters there though if I if I may say um I've been on TV a lot lately but you guys are readers so you wouldn't know this okay um I let me just tell that split test this how many here in this room watch Annie weekday night sitcom raise your hand oh okay we got some TV readers here okay so I'm 82 readers TV watch it oh yeah and PBS yes some people that TV station never goes off a PBS that that's the rest of you perhaps those of you we have a Daily Show person there yes good The Daily Show uh I'm a little worried because I had a Rubik's Cube moment on The Daily Show in the someone in the front row who brought a Rubik's Cube right here test me on that later I solved the Rubik's Cube in the green room of The Daily Show and that I was alone when I did it but they came by and saw it and then they became a subject the next show and they talked about it and so now that's all I get my emails is web but so what I want to say is I've been on TV a lot lately but I but I keep data on this of all the times I'm on television because it's I'm being interviewed right because I have this expertise and I'm ten blocks away from all the major news gathering headquarters so I'm an easy date for them they'll have to fly anybody in for half of what they do 85% of them of these encounters with the media are not initiated by some marketing group or because there's some product that comes out 85% of them are unsolicited by me or any other part of me inquiries because the universe flinched and they want to soundbite and only 15% is because of some product what that tells me is that whatever makes the top story I'm happy to report that the universe consistently does make some kind of headlines and that life on the Mars meteorite story well was not the top story it did get an announcement from the White House from the White House lawn President Clinton announced that story from the White House lawn he did not announce Bob Dole's position on abortion from the White House lawn and that story stayed in the news for much longer than others of these so all told I'm actually quite happy with the trends that I've seen the public appetite for the universe is large and and many of us in Laura included who works at Griffith Griffith Observatory and planetarium are servants of that public interest and so we're happy to play that role ultimately that is a wonderful segue to the fact that I know there are many questions in the audience and I've barely even asked any of mine but I can't hog all the time so I think we have a few people with microphones and if you have a question for dr. Tyson please raise your hand oh sure there's a fellow right in back with this hand up he's the first one I saw right there thank you dr. Tyson I find to be very engaging and entertaining and you make science accessible but when you pulled up the but there's the back when they pulled up a headline from The New York Times reminded me of the beginning of the Dark Ages as I call them and I was wondering if you'd reflect on the damage if any done to scientific research and education and the fact that we had to have a president actually say he is restoring mine's to its proper place in our society okay uh that's not a quick answer I had it I started life I mean I grew up in New York City my parents were active in the civil rights movement New York is basically a liberal town Liberal Democrat anti-war town statistically in New York City that is not the state and so these are my political leanings I would ask me I had left I'm left of liberal okay um meanwhile over the past eight years during what you just referred to as the dark ages I was three times appointed by President Bush to serve on two commissions these are high level studies that are conducted requested by the White House Congress can also call for a commission I was on a White House Commission appointed by Bush on twice a third appointment was on the committee I served on the committee to select who would be the winners of the Presidential Medal of Science the highest award our government gives a scientist that's an award that's then bestowed around the neck by the President himself so this was kind of a baptism into the world of Republicans because I barely knew any Republicans right you're in New York you say oh that's a Republican back there in the last red one look can you see the Republican that's that's how often you run into a Republican in New York and so what one of the Commission's was on the future of the aerospace industry which was on hard times they had lost a half a million jobs in the previous ten years and no one really understood why and we knew that if we lost our aerospace industry it could affect commerce could affect transportation it could affect security that sort of thing the next commission I was appointed to was on the future of NASA after we lost the Columbia space shuttle coming in everyone paused and rethought what is our mission Bush called for Commission to study the future of NASA while there I'm meeting Republicans I mean II educated Republicans intelligent Republicans they're probably to have thought through issues and problems I also found that coming to meet them the only way I can have a conversation is if I sort of walk my way into the middle okay and they too so wall in the middle is happening when I say middle I don't mean compromise in that sense when I say middle I mean they're issues that affect all Americans and we all want the best solution for as many American Americans as possible so there is a huge middle that goes so I come to learn there's a huge middle that goes on daily in Congress that you never hear about because it doesn't make interesting news stories because it's not it doesn't issue forth from conflict it issue for because it's just the right thing to do that any sentient American would choose to do among them is let's fix the aerospace industry these Commission's turn out to be basically nonpartisan not even bipartisan but nonpartisan it turns out support for NASA is not predictable based on your political affiliation so NASA is not even bipartisan it is nonpartisan and I'll give you an example right when Bush says I want to rejuvenate NASA send people to the moon and on to Mars and beyond immediately the Democratic Left said let's send Bush to Mars we got enough problems here on earth so that's the posturing that you can only make if you're standing out here but after a few months people just thought about it's actually a quite sensible program it was completely sensible any any person thinking about what was written there and divorce yourself from how much you might have disliked the Bush administration just read the thing you realize this is kind of makes a lot of sense so a few months later Congress voted 340 to 25 in favor of the resolution that supported that document that's that's again a nonpartisan vote basically that when you have those kinds of numbers so so now so that's my preamble to something simple I want to get to as many questions as we can but this is important I'm in Washington what is your measure of support for science is it what anybody says or is it where money gets spent basically in Washington it's where money gets spent sensibly because that's kind of the only point of Congress to spend the three trillion dollars that of the budget each year and that how you spend it is the portfolio of what defines this nation period if you ask people someone from the far left tell me about Bush insight oh eight sides the Republicans hate science in it you go on and it's like and so well all right well what about it so to give me examples and you get basically only three examples you get his record on the environment and stem cells that's pretty much kind of it and that's given as the example of the Republicans having a war on science meanwhile over that time the budget for the NIH the National Institutes of Health tripled over that time the budget for the National Science Foundation went up by like 40 percent over that time the budget for NASA went up by about 20 percent not as much as we all wanted but it went up during the Clinton administration the budget for NASA dropped by 25% over those eight years so then you look at the issues that Bush was resistant to scientifically and they were all traceable to his the fundamentalist Christian electorate that helped to get him into office in the first place so it makes complete sense that that's what his posturing would be I wasn't even surprised by that remember standing in the middle now just watching politics unfold that's the politics of it he can't go to Washington and say oh that's politics the courts and politics it's Washington DC as an academic I came to it first as an academic and I said that there's a problem here because the it's gets so political you know to an academic politics is a boundary is a barrier between where you are and where you want to land in Washington it is the currency so once you understand that then navigate that okay the Dover Pennsylvania trial on intelligent design everyone on the left was worried because the judge presiding over it was Bush appointed I'd spent enough time with Republicans by then and understood the system said I was not worried at all if to remind you there was a court case where the the school board wanted to introduce what's called intelligent design into the science classroom an intelligent designs the premise that there's some things in nature that are not accountable by scientific means and they must have a divine or they would say the sorts of intelligence greater than humans that made it happen which which is not science is religion basically okay so therefore it doesn't belong in the science but put it wherever else it doesn't go in the science classroom so that's a whole other conversation if you'd like to have it but we start here with Pluto so I just wanted to and I'm almost done believe it or not with your answer so I wasn't worried at all I just sat back I just chilled out funding for science under Republican administrations has been historically higher than under Democrats knowing this and knowing that in innovations in science and technology are the engines of economic growth as they have been since the Industrial Revolution I knew above all else there is a truth that no Republican wants to die poor therefore if you start bringing things that are not science into a science classroom you undermine the science curriculum preventing America from being leaders in science ever more and then you end up dying poor and if you read the the court case as written by the judge it is an example in in scientific pedagogy I recommend you dig it up online it's brilliantly written it says what science is and what isn't and why ID is not science so so I don't think it was the black hole of science that everyone says the what one should argue is one should not politicize science and that's a different argument from saying that science was not treated with higher budgets because in fact it was that's a long answer but I had to I'm in I stood in the middle I didn't know I could stand in them and I stood the mill and saw what I didn't see before okay by the way there's hotter on both ends of the spectrum so you want to get rid of the hot air and then we can actually have a real conversation and do what's in the interest of the nation rather than in the interest of the fight that you'd rather have because it sells papers hi good evening do you know anything about the planet X yeah what is that well do you want the planet X of yesteryear or the planet X that people talking about today today oh I know a little bit about yesteryear okay the planets today is a marvelous work of fiction oh yes yes there is no such thing as planet NIM boo boo or whatever they it's just it's just fiction and that and they cite sources that cite NASA sources they don't cite NASA check the websites you'll see and it's all related to the doomsday predictions of the year 2012 yes that's what you're getting at that's behind your question isn't it yes yes yes you want to know if the world is going to end on December 21st 2012 because the same website that tells you about Planet X this secret planet that will has a strongly elliptical orbit that will come into our zone in 2012 and knock earth off its axis combined with on December 21st 2012 that the center of the galaxy the Sun and the earth will come into perfect alignment and the excess gravity will then also tip earth off its axis and will be end of the world as we know it this is what these web pages will tell you turns out if you go to December 21st and look at the star chart it's true the center of the galaxy the Sun and the earth will come into perfect alignment it will it's true it's true what the site does not tell you is that that happens every year on December 20 they left that out of the account so it's a fun work of fiction birth will be here before during and after 2012 I will add that the movie 2012 that's being marketed right now that's going to come out in 2012 and they want you to do all the homework for the movie so they say just google it and if you google 2012 it's filled with thousands of webpages on doomsday written by people who didn't take enough science in school they so you google it I saw some of the previews for it and I was worried that I we would you know all of us in this business would just be inundated with having to sort of correct misconceptions then I saw what what they actually show in the movie and the movies like aliens come and they take over the Capitol that's all that's just another sort of like the movie Independence Day that's fine it's just Hollywood there's a question in the front here thanks for coming doc preciate you wanted to know are there any theories circulating about the planets accelerating in their orbits and thus accelerating time or is it just fiction as well well any any object that does not move in a straight line is actually accelerating it's not a familiar usage of the word accelerate but in fact it's you're accelerating anytime you accelerate you you will feel some kind of a like in a car if you see if you floor the accelerator pedal your head jerks back if you make a quick left turn your body tips to the right so your body's going to react any time a system accelerates abruptly if it accelerates so we accelerate all the time and Earth by its motion and by the acceleration there is a slight what we call time dilation as predicted by Einstein's theories of relativity but it's it's small and it's not it's not even interesting to measure you've got to be apprecia belief you need speeds that rival the speed of light for that to this effect to be interesting so oh yeah you can measure this with very precise tools in fact the GPS satellite system factors in relativity to get the time correct because it has very high precision precision on the level that none of us would really know about or care about but so it's there but no there's not nothing to worry about you're not gonna wake up into next week you know tomorrow just you know where you're fine okay but wake up one morning with a beard you know it's like this young woman from MIT I'm 10 years old and I want to be an astronomer when I grow up do you have anything any advice for me uh Laurie you could take that one to go for oh my uh you know certainly if you already know that that's you what ecology then I went to you to Yale okay she she she went to the fancy colleges too yeah so you have it wearing an MIT sweater like show everyone showing on your yeah she's better it might be less familiar in these parts because you have the California Institute of Technology here in that shirt the M stands for Massachusetts yes okay yeah then I think you have all the ingredients because passion is the first and foremost important part and if you're lacking that then you know you need to find what your passion is and go for that but if the passion is there it will drive you to study I don't need to tell you to study because you'll study and I don't need to tell you to learn to write because you'll learn to write because you need to write proposals to get funds to do research and you know all those things will will fall in line so you know the one thing I do your tens alone on the young side but to high school students I do advise that they select a college where they will be feel comfortable and happy and want to learn you know so it may be that MIT is the right school for you but but an undergraduate education is essential for really learning your physics so you need to be where there's a department that you feel comfortable with professors that you like if you're out there struggling your own and kind of alienated in your college environment that's not so great grad school is when you want to go for the big-name places but if you do well as an undergraduate and a college that suits you and where you're happy and of course you do the work then then that's that's the one piece of advice I do give to to young folks is really focus on that College its selection for you to nurture you grad school will take log2 on your career and I was nine years old when I had my first sense that I wanted to do astrophysics and beginning at age eleven is when it was cemented and I got my first telescope on my 12th birthday but you already have a telescope so you like already there and if you have if you're passionate as you are you will not be among those who will one day not be an astrophysicist it will never come and let me just unabashedly say and come to griffith observatory many programs and further ways to further your effete your interests there's no way in the back in the corner thank you for thank you both for being and today I was just going to ask because you recommended that we expand the vocabulary of astronomy to include planetoids and all that stuff and if you do that what will you get away from the whole idea that you know astronomy is full of these simple words and wouldn't it make it harder for third graders to understand it and really appreciate it write you letters that's an excellent question it goes two ways if there aren't many objects then you could just make a fun word for them that are sensible and you just stick with that the moment you have objects beyond what is can be sensibly named then you have to go into a more formal classification scheme our stars for example are classified in a slightly arcane way but but precisely with high precision and so the Sun for example whether or not you knew this is a capital letter G Arabic numeral two Roman numeral okay g25 that's what it's called and so it's a G star so each of those things mean something okay for its class and we needed that because the stars were coming in at us from every direction and so the stars are lettered there's at any one of eight letters that they can have and their numbers subcategories of those letters and then the Roman numerals can go one through seven and so it gets it gets our cane and it then that that removes some of the romance but I can tell you that some of the brighter stars in the night sky still have regular names if you look in a journal we're not going to call the brightest star in the night sky Sirius we're not going to use the that designation for it we'll stick to to the the romantic labels that they've had from antiquity so it may be the day will come that solar systems and their contents have enough diversity that we'll need a more formal less romantic scheme and right it'll become less accessible in that way to elementary schoolers so you pick some of those things that are just fun like what's dance like a rock or or big and bulbous like like like beach balls and you bring in a beach ball in a rock you know you pick and choose and that's still you can still do that I'm not required they learn everything in third grade but let them learn some actual science and not not think that memorizing planets in order from the Sun with a mnemonic is science well we have time for just two more questions and I see this gentleman in the front has had his hand up for a while thank you for coming I like the characters that you play on Nova ScienceNOW can you tell us if you have an opinion or any thoughts on CERN and the LHC and what it's going to be bringing to us indeed the LHC the Large Hadron Collider it's currently the most powerful most powerful particle accelerator in the world that might have been in Texas but Congress voted to cancel the superconducting supercollider that the physicists had proposed by the way at astronomers propose that we would call it the SuperDuper collider see that's another one is the physicists are in Congress you know defending the budget that this would require because Congress initially agreed earlier in the 80s and they got cut as we sort of exited the 80s when the budget flinched what else happened at the end of the 80s hmm oh I know the Cold War ended ho physicists had you know wore shiny badges during the Cold War because this is one the second world war with their weapons and so the value of physics as a defense investment was manifest without defense voting thirty billion dollars just to discover a new particle wasn't going to fly it turns out and so there's the physicist in the room and I forgot whether it was in the Senate or the house but they're getting questioned on what this would discover this is the part of the accelerator in America and I'll get to that I see in a minute but this is important story and so they're asked so so doctor what you know will this accelerator will it see the face of God and the physicists said senator it will see the Higgs boson that's the particle they're looking for nothing is stronger would have had a better answer for that there ways to get that one out without sort of compromising your principles so I so why we can recommend for example I heard Michio Kaku mentioned this friend of mine back in New York physicist what you could have said then is senator whatever is your concept of god this particle accelerator will bring you closer to it it might have still gotten funding okay they might have so we don't have it the center of mass of particle physics is no longer in America it's in Europe that's the thing about science anybody can do it if you have the vision and the resources Large Hadron Collider is going to sample the states of matter that have never been sampled at the higher energies than have ever been sampled before and the higher the energy should go the closer back in time your your cavity will look like the Big Bang okay because the big bangle was a time when the whole universe was small under conditions of pressure and temperature that they're recreating inside this accelerator you remember what the big fear was and it's still the black hole merrily so I'm going to make a black hole and is going to eat the earth and it turns out we get bombarded by high-energy particles daily that dwarf the energy is created in this the nature is a much bigger particle accelerator than anything our hardware can produce and the these particles would have surely turn earth into a black hole long ago that's number one number two I don't if you check this but the week the LHC was turned on that was the same week of Wall Street collapse and the financial market collapsed so I think the black hole went to Wall Street is what happened sucked all the money out of the economy that's what happened there so it's a tremendous international collaboration and the black holes people fear frontiers of physics they've done it ever since the Adam was first split so people's concerns don't surprise me I it's our goal to make sure people are scientifically literate and so that they can make an informed decision about information that comes across your newspaper headlines our last question in the back the last one so better be like the best question I'll try I have a list given to me by my daughter what's the most shocking thing you've ever discovered about space a little shocking thing space in general or the universe we say space I'm thinking empty space all the universe Oh most shocking thing I'd say the most shocking and most seductive thing about the universe is that 85% of all the gravity we measure in the universe is traceable to something about which we know nothing and we call it dark matter we don't know what it is we don't know we have never seen it except for its gravity we are dumb stupid about what this stuff is but we know it's there and that's 85% of all the gravity we've ever measured in the universe is traceable to that and okay I was okay I got used to that and then who ordered up the following then now you look at the expanding universe and you find out it's accelerating there's some anti-gravity pressure that's making the universe expand faster than the natural other forces would have it behave we don't know what's causing that either that's called dark energy and dark energy is 94 percent of all the matter energy in the universe so all the science all everything we ever talk about is contained within 4% of what the universe is and so there's a lot to learn out there and which brings to mind the famous comment about cosmic discovery that the greater is your area of knowledge as your area of knowledge grows so too does your perimeter of ignorance well that's a beautiful thought to end up

Channel: selinakyle

Views: 148,722

Rating: 4.7639551 out of 5

Keywords: Neil deGrasse Tyson, astrophysicist, Hayden Planetarium, Planetary Society, Pluto, solar system, planets, Dr. Laura Danly, astronomer, spectroscopist, space

Id: lwSjyoPrKfc

Length: 79min 33sec (4773 seconds)

Published: Mon May 14 2012