StarTalk Radio - Debating Pluto's Planethood with Alan Stern

Episode Date: April 23, 2024

Will Neil take back what he said about Pluto? Neil deGrasse Tyson and comedian Chuck Nice explore planets, dwarf planets, and the Kuiper belt with planetary scientist and principal investigator for the New Horizons Mission, Alan Stern. NOTE: StarTalk+ Patrons can listen to this entire episode commercial-free here: https://startalkmedia.com/show/debating-plutos-planethood-with-alan-stern/Thanks to our Patrons laura, Mihajlo Jovanovic, Heather Smith, Juan Ignacio Galán, Artsaveslife, Frank Wagner, Adam Brown, Greg Albrecht, Mickey Fuson, and Jeremy Green for supporting us this week. Subscribe to SiriusXM Podcasts+ on Apple Podcasts to listen to new episodes ad-free and a whole week early.

Coming up on StarTalk, we're reopening old wounds regarding the status of Pluto. I've got with me in my office Alan Stern, Mr. Pluto himself, and we spend the whole time talking about that little bugger in the outer solar system. Welcome to StarTalk, your place in the universe where science and pop culture collide. StarTalk begins right now. This is StarTalk. Neil deGrasse Tyson here, your personal astrophysicist. Today we're going to do cosmic queries.

I know we got Chuck for this, right? Oh, definitely. But this is a very special cosmic query. It is. Oh, this hits deep. Yes,, right? Oh, definitely. But this is a very special Cosmic Queries. It is. Oh, this hits deep. Yes, it does. This is the Montague and Capulets. This is the West Side Story of Dwarf Planets.

We got with me my friend and colleague, Alan Stern. Alan, welcome back. Neil, thank you. Give me some love and colleague, Alan Stern. Alan, welcome back. Neil, thank you. Give me some love here. Oh, man. Alan, welcome back to the crib here. We're here at my office at the American Museum of Natural History. And you're one of the world's, I'm not going to say one of,

I'm going to say the world's expert on Pluto. Can I say that? Wow. You just did. But let's hold Pluto just for a minute. I just want to catch up. I haven't seen him in years.

I got to say this Pluto thing that sometimes I feel like I'm typecast like an actor on Gilligan's Island. Oh. The only thing people talk about is Pluto. No, no.

We'll get to Pluto because this is a cosmic queries and so people can't, they can't shake Pluto. No, no. We'll get to Pluto because this is a cosmic queries and so people can't, they can't shake Pluto. Yeah. You know that. People can't shake Pluto. It's everybody's favorite planet.

It's everybody's favorite. So, but let's catch up. What have you been doing? So you are, you're still a vice president at the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio, part of the space division.

Very busy research institute. A lot of different scientific. A lot of science, a lot of engineering. The institute was formed back in the 1940s for the public good. Oh, my gosh. And does a lot of federal research, state and local stuff, but also research consortiums for industry. Everything from oil and gas.

It being Texas. Yeah. consortiums for industry, everything from oil and gas to automobiles. It being Texas. Yeah, but electric vehicles, automated vehicles, just thousands of engineers and scientists. Cool, cool. So you've been there since you left NASA. That's right. Okay. So you may remember, I was at the launch of New Horizons mission back in 2006. mission back in 2006. And if I remember correctly, that mission to Pluto was the most powerful rocket with the lightest payload ever, just in combination, so that it could accelerate and get

the hell out there before you died. Mission accomplished. That's the number one rule in any science project. When I was a little kid, I was washing cars and babysitting and doing everything I could think of to buy bigger and bigger model rockets. You have no idea. The kind you would launch in your backyard. Yeah, Estes model rockets. Estes, yeah. Oh, wow.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Right? And the biggest one was the Saturn V with like four D engines or something. Right, the D engines. The D engines or something. Right, the D engines. The D engines. I only got the one where you stomped on a balloon and it shot it off with water. Yeah. I couldn't get any further. That's the starter kit.

That's the starter kit. That's lame. That's lame. But then we got the New Horizons, 181-foot tall rocket, 70-foot payload bay, most powerful variant. I got to order every upgrade. You know, I'll take the lightweight nose cone. I would like all five solid rocket motors.

You know, everything to make it go as fast as possible. And then we built this little spacecraft the size of a desk. Very compact. So this thing was built to launch school bus size spy satellites and big communication satellites and things like that. And we more or less took an Atlas V, amped it up with every upgrade you could think of, and then launched it basically empty. And of course, you got the highest possible burnout speed.

So, you know, Apollo astronauts, three days to the moon. We're now talking about New Horizons, no longer about your kid model rocket, right? Yeah, yeah. He transitioned very quickly there. We're in the big boy rocket. Yeah, that was a blurry transition. I was like, man, you are a really advanced kid.

But think about this. Apollo would launch 25,000 miles an hour, three days to the moon. Nice. You know, Tom Hanks. Right. Exactly. Right? New Horizons, nine hours. Right. And didn't you get to the asteroid belt in. You know, Tom Hanks. Right. Right. Exactly. Right. New Horizons, nine hours.

Right. And didn't you get to the asteroid belt in three days or something? Well, not that quick. But we got to the asteroid belt in record time. Faster than any spacecraft. Yeah. Just three months. Right.

Right. And Jupiter in a year. Okay. But this also meant by the time you got to Pluto, you were booking. Yeah. Right. So. How do you slow down to even take a picture of Pluto?

I mean, in the old days, we got used to flybys. Right. And later on, you went into orbit. But this was like the resurrection of the flyby. Right. Where you got to get ready for all your data in just a few seconds. And one shot. One shot?

Once you're gone, you're not making a new turn. You can't come back. Right. So wait a minute. Can we do just one blurry picture with a sound effect that goes, meow. Meow. You hope the picture back. Right. So wait a minute, can we do just one blurry picture with a sound effect that goes, meow, meow. You hope the picture's not blurry.

Pretty much it. So anyway, it was a fond memory being there. And so it took how long to get to Pluto? It took nine and a half years. Nine and a half years. Because it's a long way. And so you just sit in the Bahamas

over those nine years? That's all I was doing. So when you do that, you're busy. I mean, you had a lot to do. When you do that, when is the optimum time, when is Pluto closest to us so that you can intersect it? Right, well we actually,

the optimum time in order to get there fast is when it's in a certain orbital position, but it's not closest. It's near closest, but what really matters is it's in the plane of the solar system. And we got there right at that exact time. In fact, we set a time... What he left out there is

Pluto's way the f*** out of the plane of the solar system. That was implicit and unstated. So, at the point where it crosses the plane of the solar system, you don't want to launch something from here and have to leave the plane of the solar system. That's where all your momentum is.

It takes a lot more fuel. And that slows you down if you have to spend fuel climbing out of the plane. Yeah. Okay. Right. Because you're already in the plane with Earth. Right. And you got, yeah, all this adds to your favor.

Right. Okay, continue. Sorry for that interruption. Where were we? We took a little detour. Yeah, we took a little detour, but no, it was nine years. Okay, continue. Sorry for that interruption. Where were we? We took a little detour. Yeah, we took a little detour, but no, it was nine years. Nine years out, right.

Yeah, so nine years. But, you know, like the Voyagers, which went all the way out to Neptune, they had 500 people on that project. Scientists, engineers, flight controllers. By the time we did... The whole room, yeah. Yeah, the whole way.

Exactly. And we did it with 50 people wow and so the 50 of us were doing the work you're doing everything yeah doing everything yeah and so we were pretty busy so then with our friend of star talk david grinspoon he's been on dr funky spoon yeah yeah he's uh you you banded together with him to write Chasing New Horizons. Yeah. With this long subtitle. Yeah.

What was that subtitle? Inside the Epic Mission to Explore the Ninth Planet. Did he say Ninth Planet? Yeah. Ninth Planet. We'll get back to that. Oh, boy. Here we go.

Blood drawn. Blood drawn. It's happening already. Shot across the bow. Blood drawn. Uh-oh, here it is. Blood drawn. Blood drawn. Shot across the bow. Blood drawn. Uh-oh, here it is. Blood drawn. So that's, I mean, that book was needed because Pluto was a big mystery for so many people for so long.

Well, yeah. And this mission was, you know, so much in the public eye that really needed to be documented. Of course, David's an amazing writer. Yeah, we all love David. We all love David. So also, since then, you've writer. Yeah, we all love David. We all love David. So also, since then, you've been in space? I hear. Yeah. You went above

the Kármán line? Wow. We did that on Virgin Galactic. Did Neil's Pluto News upset you that much? You're like, I'll show you. I'll go investigate it myself. Let me get into space. I'm proving myself. I'm going to space, damn it. How long? Was it like four minutes of weightlessness?

About how long is that? Four minutes between engine cutoff and reentry. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But a hell of a ride and a tremendous experience to see the planet. So what science were you doing on it? Yeah.

So you weren't just dry riding? Right. Right. As much as I wanted to look out the window, I was sent, I'm going to be doing a NASA mission, which is going to be determining how well the Virgin Galactic spacecraft can be used to do astronomy on these missions, like unmanned sounding rockets. And on this first mission, I did some physiological experiments using myself as the guinea pig, and also some practice for the astronomy mission. Kind of get the timing

of everything down. Okay. So you weren't purely a tourist. Right. Right. In fact. That's noble, but still sucks.

I'd rather just look out the window the whole time. Right. Yeah. Just be there for the ride. You know what I mean? And you would love it. You should do it.

Yeah. I don't know. Beautiful view. Yeah. I don't. Why not? Why wouldn't you? Any industry that considers an exploding rocket on the launch pad a success, I'm not.

No, no. They don't call it success. They call it an experiment rich in data. That's even worse. That's what the rocket people call it. So, what else have you been up to? the rocket people call it. So, what else have you been up to?

Been doing a lot of research as a scientist. Right, because your expertise is obviously not just Pluto. You have solar system objects of all kinds. Asteroids, comets. Yeah, working on things all across the solar system, even the moon. I'm on Europa Clipper that's

going to be launching this year to study Europa and the ocean of Europa, the plumes and the potential for biology. The liquid undersurface. Yeah, yeah. I'm on the Lucy mission, which is an asteroid mission. It just got launched in 2021. Is Lucy an acronym?

No, Lucy is a pretty name. It was named after Australopithecus Lucy. Oh, that Lucy. Yeah, Lucy. Which was named after the Beatles. Lucy in the sky with diamonds. Yeah, and it's all about the Australopithecus Lucy. Oh, that Lucy. Yeah. Which is named after the Beatles. Lucy in the sky with diamonds. Yeah. And it's all about

Everything goes back to the Beatles. The Australopithecus. It's about the origin of our solar system. Just like the origin of human comments. I see what you did there. That's amazing.

Uh-huh. The Lucy mission. Very cool. Yeah. Yeah. All right. And what data are you gathering to tell you about the origin of this little solar system?

Well, all these missions contribute to that. Oh. Right? It's a big, kind of like CSI, right? With hints and clues everywhere. And you have to build a whole story. CSI, the solar system. All of a sudden, Alan takes off his glasses.

He goes, yeah! Do-do-do. There we go. There we go. Mysteries unsolved. You know, the Lucy mission is a good example. The asteroids it's going after co-orbit with Jupiter. Neil won't like this, but they orbit in Jupiter's orbit.

And there are tens of thousands of them that Jupiter has not cleared. Nonetheless, planet Jupiter has these pockets about Trojans

that are leading and trailing. Lucy's the first mission to go explore them. It's thought that these Trojan asteroids... Just to be clear, so these are places

in the Jupiter-Sun system where forces of gravity and centrifugal forces balance. So like Lagrangian points. Okay. We did a whole thing on Lagrangian points. Yes, we did. That's a whole explainer. So Jupiter has a forward and trailing Lagrangian points,

and stuff finds itself there. Just gets trapped in it? Yeah. It's like it doesn't know where to go because there's nothing pushing it anywhere. Yeah, exactly. And there they go around the solar system. It's like the Wizard of Poppyfields.

You just wander in and you just stay. It's a little like that. Yeah. And the objects that are there are thought to be sourced from the same region as a lot of the Kuiper Belt objects.

Okay. So we're going there so we can compare them to the Kuiper Belt objects that New Horizons has explored. Nice, nice, nice. And we see if it's really right. If that part of the story is correct. Just, nice, nice. And we see if it's really right. If that's part of the story.

Just remind me, the leading ones were Trojans. Didn't they have a different name for the trailing ones? So why do you call them Trojans? I mean, because I'm thinking Trojan horse when I hear Trojan. Right, or is it? So there's got to be some origin for why they call them Trojans. Yeah, and I'm not a historian. But didn't they call the other ones a different name?

There's just a leading and a trailing cloud. Right. They're called the Lagrange points four and five. Four and five. L4, L5. But I think only one of these packs are called Trojans. And I think the other pack. No, they're both called Trojans.

You think so? I think they have individual names, but they're more obscure. Well, they hide in something. That's what we know. They what? They're Trojans. They're hiding something. We should not trust them is what I'm saying.

So, I'm glad we're finally learning more about these objects because they're just sitting out there waiting to be… Yeah, and they've been begging for exploration and never… Begging. Never. And now the Lucy mission is going to go see almost a dozen of them. Some of them have satellites and we'll visit some of those. And that mission got launched in 2021.

We just did a first practice asteroid flyby in the main belt. We're going to do another practice asteroid flyby in 2025. How many people get to say that? It's practice with a whole asteroid. That's amazing, I've got to tell you. Because we've got to get it right on those flybys. And then, starting in the late 20s, we'll do a whole series. Late 2020s.

Late 2020s, we'll do a whole series of flybys of Trojans. Then we'll dive back in our orbit down close to the sun and come back out and go to the other Trojan cloud, where we'll complete that exploration. If there's an extended mission, we'll do even more. And this will all end in the 2030s. So it's a long-term program of exploration. So just to be clear, once you've established this orbit around the sun going out to Jupiter,

it's minimal fuel, right? Because you've already earned this orbit. And so now you're just sort of redirecting it a little bit. Right. So the rocket does the initial boost and then we do Earth gravity flybys. We've already done one.

Yeah. We have two more to do to make the whole mission come. Yeah. And the principal investigator, Hal Levison, is a part of the team that dreamed up

the whole geometry and orbital mechanics of how you get so many flybys into just one mission. Right. Right. This is the genius

of what they got to do. Like with the Cassini mission to Saturn. Right. It's orbiting Saturn, but it's visiting moons every time. And all these loop orbits. Oh, let's check out this other one. Do a little adjustment. I mean, it's brilliant that we can exploit

the gravitational fields of other stuff. I mean, it's almost diabolical. I'm Olicon Hemraj, and I support StarTalk on Patreon. This is StarTalk with Neil deGrasse Tyson. So, Alan! Neil! so alan neil ow neil that's a pattern don't get me started okay get me started we uh we alerted our fan base that you were going to be on and most of them knew your expertise, but others were fresh in the room for that. And we collected questions. Yes, we did.

And these are Patreon members. Yes, they are. Oh, excellent. These are the people who keep us afloat. Let's see what questions we have. Yeah, what do you have? All right, here we go. I haven't seen them.

I don't know anything about them. Let's go with Sean Ravenfire. Now I wonder if that's a real name or not. Ravenfire. Ravenfire sounds like, you know, a video game character. I am Sean Ravenfire. I am here to collect the crystals. The crystals?

All right. Not even the money, right? It's got to be something. Your money is meaningless. Give me the money, right? It's got to be something. Your money is meaningless. Give me the crystals. Okay. Sean says, hey, I'm still a little fuzzy on the difference between minor planet, dwarf planet, and planetoid. Can you please explore the differences?

I'm fuzzy too, actually. Yeah. Everybody's fuzzy because the terms are not, you know, some of them, like planetoid, no one uses. You hear it very occasionally. No scientist I know uses the term planetoid. I don't even hear. What do they call Theia? Wasn't that a planetoid?

So, Theia that made the moon. The term is planetary embryo. That's the term that's really used. This sounds like a PC thing. You got to add syllables and add another word. But that is the term that's used. Planetary embryo. That's the term that's really used. This sounds like a PC thing. You gotta add syllables and add another word. But that is the term that's used. Planetary embryo that collided with Earth to make

the Earth moons. I did not know that. Planetary spermatozoa? I'm sorry, you're talking about never. But you know, the embryos are basically the building planets. And there were a lot more of them originally than there are now because many of them combined through collisions to make bigger and bigger objects. Theia ended up spalling material into orbit around the Earth,

and it collided. It created the moon. But most of Theia ended up in the Earth. Right. And this was a big thing. It was the size of Mars. Yeah. Right?

Big hit, right? Okay. So, I was just trying to get my vocabulary straight here. So, you would call that a planetary embryo, not a planetoid. Because no one uses that. Okay. It's really an archaic. Okay.

Is that the same as protoplanet? The planetary embryo? Yeah, embryo and protoplanet. Protoplanet. Those are interchanging. Oh, we're good. So, protoplanet. Good.

All right. So, now, for the longest while, my whole life growing up, we're about the same age, I knew of this thing called the minor planet circular. Right. Which tracked asteroids, basically.

So I always thought of asteroids collectively as minor planets. Yeah. Is that term still a thing now that we've added vocabulary to the system? Sometimes it's used. And it's mostly used

for the small kind of potato-shaped lumpy things in the solar system, not the bigger things. Okay. The term dwarf planet, I'm actually very proud of this.

I coined the term in 1991 in a research article in the journal Icarus and it was meant to be... Icarus features solar system-based science. This is the first research journal

of solar system science. And Carl Sagan was one of the original editors of it back in the 60s, 70s when planetary science was being born as a field. And in 1991 I published an article that was about

prediction, mathematical prediction, that there would be a large number of Pluto-like objects discovered. And I termed them dwarf planets in analogy to dwarf stars and dwarf galaxies and so forth. And they're meant to be… Because that word is already in use. It's already in use. It makes sense. So, much smaller planets, the ones that are the size of continents.

And that term has been used very widely. Okay. And we see dwarf planets all across the Kuiper Belt, which is part of the revolution of the Kuiper Belt that we didn't know about until the 90s, is that dwarf planets are more populous than the four terrestrial planets and the four giant planets combined. And there's one dwarf planet orbiting in the asteroid belt called Ceres.

Ceres. The largest of the asteroids, which is a mini planet itself. Okay. Right? Okay. Right? Asteroids are kind of a zip code. So, you know, it's like a Kuiper belt object is kind of meaningless.

It's just an object in the Kuiper belt. It's like a zip code. Technically, New Horizons, the spacecraft, is a Kuiper belt object. For the time being, it's an object in the Kuiper belt. Okay. Right? So that's just a zip code.

All right. So now how do you get up to the term? I'm not trying to push back here because I'm out of my league between you two. But I want to know how do you go from being floating rock to planet? Because there's

got to be a difference. It's a big difference. How do you make the jump from, you know... Let's start, let's back up. How do you go from potato to dwarf planet? Yeah. So, the thing about potato-sized objects,

so these are things that are the size of counties or mountains. And most of the asteroids that you can look up in a book or that we've flown spacecraft by, they're lumpy and they have irregular shapes. And that's because that's the shape that as they were assembled uh they just came to rest in when the assembly was finished and that shape is controlled by the material strength of the object okay the thing is as objects get bigger and bigger more and more massive eventually they get massive enough that their self-gravity causes them to form into a sphere. And then we call them planets.

Okay. Once they're big enough to be a sphere, like Pluto, they're planets. The smallest of them are called the dwarf planets. And then there are larger planets that are Earth or Jupiter size. And eventually... And those are all spheres. There's a continuum. They're all spherical objects. So sphere is definitely a determining characteristic. It's's a continuum. They're all spherical objects. So,

sphere is definitely a determining characteristic. It's the hallmark. It's one of them. It's the hallmark of them. If you're on Star Trek and they show up somewhere and turn on the viewfinder, everything is round.

You see a round, rocky something or thing with an atmosphere that's round, you go, oh, there's a planet this week. All right,

let me ask you this, both. But did we get through a dwarf planet, a planetoid planet? There's no planet. Minor planet. So you said there's no minor.

I just want to get to more questions. Minor planets are these little rocky guys. They used to be called, it's an 1800s, 1900s term, minor planet. Okay. Right? And that's kind of a legacy term. All right. So before we move on to the next question, one last question.

In fact, asteroid itself is very legacy. Right. Because who was it? Not Herschel, was it? Somebody around 1800. Some dude. Yeah. He's got his telescope and he sees this dot of light.

Like stars are just dots of light. They're so far away, they're just dots of light in a telescope. They see a dot of light except it's moving. Right. And it's like, so it looks like a star, but it's not a star. So asteroid, star-like. Oh, star-like. Right.

So that's like the biggest misnomer there ever was. Right. Right. Yes, visually, but if you care what the thing is, and we still call them asteroids, star-like from the Greek. That's just legacy. That's legacy. All right, so one last thing

and then we're going to move on because I'm taking up way too much of the Patreon's time. Does composition have anything to do with it? So let's just say that it's round but it's a bunch, it's an aggregate of just larger objects but they're not really, they're not condensed.

They're not really solid. They're just kind of a congregation. We haven't seen anything like what you're describing. Oh, okay. And if you look across the planets of the solar system, whether they're made of ice or rock or they're gas giants or whatever, they're all contiguous bodies, not agglomerations like you're describing. Right.

Right? They're one big spherical thing because the gravity crushes everything into that spherical shape. Okay. Right? And they might have a core and a mantle and a big atmosphere above it, for example,

or they might have a core and a mantle and an ocean layer like europa right and then a layer an hour an hour ice for example right uh but but they're all the same they're essentially spherical objects and their shape is driven by the force of their own mass that creates self-gravity okay you don't nobody say this is if you had three objects that were each themselves massive enough to be their own sphere. Right. And you bring them together.

Right. They're making a sphere. They're making a sphere. There you go. I got you. That's how it rolls. That's how it rolls. That's how it rolls.

We're making a sphere no matter what. But the same thing applies when stars collide and they can merge into a still bigger star, into a larger sphere. Right. Right? And it's the same physics. Okay. All the way through.

All the way through, no matter where you are in the universe. That's the good thing about physics. There you go. That's true. All right. Give me some more. All right. And make this quicker this time.

All right. Here we go. This is Andrew Coffey, who says, Good day, Dr. Tyson. Lord, nice, Sir Alan. I know very little about Pluto, so I'm super excited to hear you talk. I'm hoping you can enlighten me. I'm wondering if celestial bodies like Pluto are only able to form and exist at the extreme distance from the sun,

or could they be orbiting closer, perhaps near a smaller or cooler star? And if so, do we hope finding an exoplanet that is similar, simply too small or too far away from the star to be seen from the distances involved in our observations? Thank you. That's two parts. One, you know, is the distance from the sun? The main part is, you know, could you have them close to the sun? Right. In fact, everything we know about the origin of the solar

system indicates that Pluto formed at something like half its present distance from the sun. That the solar system was more compact originally. And Pluto and most of the other dwarf planets of the Kuiper Belt were transported outward with all the small bodies of the Kuiper Belt were transported outward with all of the small bodies of the Kuiper Belt.

But Ceres is another example. Now, Ceres is in the asteroid belt. It's a dwarf planet. Some people think it formed there. Others can argue that it may have come from the Kuiper Belt itself. So we don't know, but we know that dwarf planets can exist much closer to the sun. So we don't know, but we know that dwarf planets can exist much closer to the sun. So just for clarification's sake, because there are people who may not know, the proximity of when you're talking about asteroid belt, Kuiper belt, the sun, Pluto.

So how does it go? Where does it go? So the sun's in the middle of the solar system. It's the big kahuna right that controls all the other orbits okay right and then we have the four rocky planets mercury venus earth and mars right and then there's an asteroid belt just beyond the orbit of mars okay it stretches for something like 100 million miles outward okay it's big and then you got the four gas giants. That's amazing. Who knew that? Then you have Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune. Right. By now, you are, Neptune's orbit is 30 times as far away from the sun as the Earth is.

Right. Right? And probably 15-ish times as far away as the asteroid belt. Right. Okay? Okay. And then beyond Neptune's orbit is this second belt or disk-like region called the Kuiper Belt, discovered in the 1990s but predicted back in the 1940s and 50s.

And that's where Pluto orbits and a bunch of other dwarf planets and a bunch of much smaller Kuiper Belt objects that are more like asteroids but much more icy than the asteroids. Wow. Okay. And if I understand correctly, the Kuiper Belt was a negative prediction. What does that mean? I didn't learn that in school.

Yeah, I think it was a negative prediction. I think Gerard Kuiper published a paper saying that there should be a reservoir of objects. I don't know if he called them comets at the time, a reservoir of objects just beyond the red-blooded planets. And since we don't see any there, then he was making some inference about the early solar system. So he was using the absence of evidence as an evidence for something else.

And then we find stuff there and we name it after him. Yeah, I think it was actually a little different. My recollection of the literature from back then is that there were really two scientists. One was named Kenneth Edgeworth and the other was Gerard Kuiper. They were both making predictions that beyond the orbit of Neptune, One was named Kenneth Edgeworth and the other was Gerard Kuiper. They were both making predictions that beyond the orbit of Neptune,

that there was something like an asteroid belt that Pluto orbited in and that it might contain other planets in it. But it was really beyond the technology of the mid-20th century. The telescopes couldn't do it, and detectors, yeah. And, you know, you had like Clyde Tombaugh squinting at photographic plates. They didn't have the data analysis tools. Clyde Tombaugh, the discoverer of Pluto. Yeah, okay. So they didn't have, they had big enough telescopes,

but they didn't have sensitive enough cameras. They didn't have computers to do the painstaking data now. This is A.J. Stavely, who says, Hello, Dr. Tyson, Lord Nice, Dr. Allen, so much respect. I am A.J AJ from Atlanta, Georgia.

My question is, what unanswered questions has New Horizons answered or you have discovered about the Kuiper Belt that researchers like yourself didn't already know or you were surprised about? Also, is Pluto's dance with Sharon why it appears to be so geologically active? Thank you so much. So a two-part question, but both very cool. I'm going to try to get through all of that.

That's a lot. We found a lot of discoveries. Okay. And you don't have enough time on this show. If I came back two or three more times. All right, let's go top three then. Okay, top three. Top three then.

A good example is Pluto itself. Okay. Right? We wondered for a long time if its surface would be flat or rugged. Basically, because we knew the surface is made of nitrogen ice, and nitrogen ice is structurally weak, it would make a surface that was almost entirely flat. It's so weak that even Pluto's gravity would just flatten it out.

Yeah, exactly. Smooth it out. You got it. But if the nitrogen is just a frosting on top of a waterized crust, you could have mountain ranges and canyons and craters and all the rugged topography that we actually saw. So we answered that question the first day

with the first pictures that came back from New Horizons. So Pluto. And then when we went further out into the Kuiper Belt and made the first flyby of a small Kuiper Belt object, we found out how they were born, how they were formed.

This was not an accidental encounter. This was intentional. Yeah, you're targeting other Kuiper Belt objects with that trajectory. And this was a goal of the mission. And a billion miles beyond Pluto, we flew by this Kuiper Belt object, Arrokoth. No one had ever been to this Kuiper belt object, Arrokoth.

No one had ever been to a Kuiper belt object. And from its shape, it means sky in the Powhatan Indian land. Okay. Yeah, I knew that. Who doesn't know that? Wait, wait, wait, wait. You went to Pluto and then went another billion miles? Yeah.

And now we're almost twice as far as Pluto now and still exploring. Okay. But when we got to Erichoth from its geology and geophysics, we could determine that one of the major two theories of how planets get their start, how planetesimals, the seeds of planets form, was wrong. And the other theory was right. And we found that essentially that these little planetesimals, the seeds of planets, form very gently and through a very slow

local accretion process in which they can... Rather than colliding at high speeds. Rather than collisions. Interesting. And there were decades in which computer models were warring and in one fell swoop, New Horizons settled that with the data on AirCon.

Beautiful. It showed you pick one out of a bag and look at it up close, and you could tell one theory's right, one theory's wrong. Beautiful. So it means they just kind of gather. Yeah, everybody comes together. Just come together. They start off in little pockets, and the little pockets end up with little material,

boulders and hills and mountains that collide with one another very gently and just stick due to self-gravity and build up a lumpy thing, not big enough to be a round thing. Right. Just a lumpy thing. Right.

And tell us about the Pluto-Sharon dance. Oh, yeah. That was the other question. So the question was whether Pluto's intense geologic activity could be due to that. And it turns out not. Due to? To that dance.

To the gravity. To the gravity. To the mutual gravity of Pluto and its big moon. They're in a very special state called tidal equilibrium. Turns out that because of that equilibrium, all those forces that might heat Pluto or make that geology go are long gone. Tidal equilibrium, you mean double tid long gone. And so Pluto's...

You mean double tidal lock. Yeah, that's right. Here we go, we know what that is. But that can't be the cause of Pluto's geology. It's got to do something else. Okay, interesting. That might have to do with the ocean that we think is inside of Pluto.

Just like Europa. So the ocean is not rigid, so it can shake things up. Right. Well, it's also, as it freezes, releasing heat, a latent heat. You know about that.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And that can power the geologist. Physics 101. So wait a minute. What? Okay, I failed Physics 101. Freezing gives off heat? It does.

It releases heat. Mm-hmm. All right. Okay. All right. I'm going to tell you right now. I've been on this earth for a little while now. That's the first time I ever heard somebody say freezing gives off heat.

So I'm just going to call bullshit. No, no, no. You can try it. No, no, I got one for you. No, I'm joking. No, I'm joking. I got one for you. No, I'm serious. No, bullshit. No, no, no. You can try it. No, no, I got one for you. No, I'm joking. No, I'm joking. I got one for you. No, I'm serious.

No, no, I got one for you. Go ahead. Are you ready? Go ahead. Are you ready? Are you seated? Okay. I'm seated.

Let's look at the other side. So, you have water on the stove. Right. And you're heating it. Right. And as you heat it, the temperature rises.

Correct? Okay. Then it hits, what temperature? Boiling point. 212. 212. You keep heating it. Yes, you do. Where does the what temperature? Boiling point. 212. 212. You keep heating it.

Yes, you do. Where does the heat go? Wait a minute. It does not raise the temperature. It does not raise the temperature. Correct. It turns into steam. So the heat simply goes and changes it from liquid things.

So the molecular change is- Itself. Itself. Okay. Okay. So now you go the other direction. Holy crap. So now you go the other direction. Yes crap. So now you go the other direction.

Yes. Now you're going to suck energy out of the water. The temperature drops. Right. And then there's a point where you're still sucking energy. The temperature doesn't drop. Oh, man. And what does this change state?

Changes the molecular state. Right. Damn. Where was he when you took that physics? You might have done better. I might have done a lot better. You might have. Had I had Neil.

Yeah, so we call it latent heat. There's terms for it in physics. Latent heat. It's really physics one on one. Hi, how y'all doing?

I'm latent heat. Hey. Okay. All right. You personified latent heat. Yes, yes, yes. I will never get this out of my head.

I know, right? You can't do... Oh, God. Also, Sharon, just in the traditions of the field, Pluto is Roman, god of the underworld. Right. And moons have traditionally been, not in all cases, but in many cases, traditionally named for Greek characters

in the life of the Greek counterpart to that Roman god. Okay. And that way both is an homage to both cultures. Yeah, you get both cultures. Right. So Pluto's counterpart in Greek is what? What's his face? The underworld.

Hades. Hades. Yeah, Hades. Okay. It's also the place, but it's also the god. Yes. Okay. And the ferry boat driver to take you across the River Styx

is named Sharon. Sharon. Yes. That's where I came from. Sharon! Okay, here we go. Greetings, Dr. Tricin and Dr. Allen. I'm Jasmine from the wine country

here in Northern California. I'm very curious. What's the big deal about Pluto? Does it even really matter if it's a planet or not? Why all the fuss over this icy rock at the edge of our solar system? Oh, yeah. Whoa, look at that.

Can I venture a guess that it's been with us so deep in our culture that it's hard to shake any adjustments to those? Well, that's a guess. But as a scientist, the real reason is that Pluto is the archetype. It's the heralding body of this whole new type of planet, the dwarf planets that we've discovered in the outer solar system. They're active.

They have moons. They have atmospheres in some cases. And far from being a rock, it's a big spherical thing. Right. Right? And that's why we call it a planet. We don't know what else to call it.

There you go. All right. Planet modified by the word dwarf. Right. Like giant. Giant planet for Jupiter. A gas. I don't have a problem.

I mean, that's, in fact, where we agreed. Okay? And one of the correspondence I got back when I was pilloried by third graders. Because here, people know, I don't have to give the backstory here. Dear Dr. Tyson, why are you so mean? Well, what's really sad is not that he's mean. It's just that he's wrong. Oh, snap.

What happened? Geek fight. No, no, it's like. So you failed your freshman physics. He did great at all that. He did all the way up through PhD, but he's failed his planet test. No, so we have the word paper, right? And we have construction paper, cargated paper, toilet paper,

a card, stock paper. Right? So this paper is a very broad category. And then we modify that with whatever is the next word. And we know exactly what anybody's talking about.

Okay. So I don't have any problem with that. Just let... So it was... I've always felt there's been a shortage of vocabulary. So in other words, let me hear, I'm sure we agree here. Jupiter and Earth should not be called the same object in orbit around a star.

I disagree. Yeah, they're rounded, but one is huge in gases. And Earth is smaller than storms on Jupiter's weather system. So wouldn't it be cool if we just had a different vocabulary so that when I use the word, you know exactly what I was talking about. Right now, if I just say, I discovered a planet orbiting a star, is it gaseous? Is it rocky? Is it large? Is it small?

Is it? And I have to ask 20 questions just to understand what anybody's talking about. But that's the cool part of science. No, that's a weakness of science. As a planetary scientist, you know, planet is part of the term of what our field is all about. Right? And so we know what planets are.

They are the things, the central objects of our field, and they are the large things that orbit stars. And they range from the smallest large, they know they're large when they become round, and gravity dominates. And they range from the smallest large, they know they're large when they become round and gravity dominates. And from the dwarf planets

all the way up to the giant planets, that's a continuum of objects we all call planets. And planetary scientists agree on that. And in the planetary science research literature, there's no debate. I don't have a problem. I just, I'm a big fan of words. I have six dictionaries on my shelf over there

from different eras, and I watch words come and go. I'm just saying, if you have to modify the word planet in order to know what someone is talking about, that's a clarion call for another word, a word yet to be invented that captures both of those simultaneously.

And so it's a shortcoming of the lexicon. That's all I'm saying. That's all. Look at me. Do you see how he's looking? Do you see that face? I'm telling you. By that, for example, we have different kinds of human beings. Short ones,

tall ones, skinny ones, big ones, right? We have North Americans and Europeans and South Americans, and that doesn't mean we need a new term for human beings. It just means adjectives help in the English language. And there are all kinds of ways to add descriptors to planets, to stars, to galaxies. We do that all through science, right? And we got to get over these small number fears, right?

I mean, if we're going to have only eight planets, Neil, I'm afraid the periodic table's got to stop at beryllium. You know, the periodic table has a hundred and umpteen elements in it, right? We're not afraid of a large number of those. No. Just like we're not afraid of having 50 states, right? Or countless numbers of stars and asteroids

and everything else. We only have 49 states. Texas is not a state. It's its own country. Just ask anybody from there. I've been to restaurants called Texas is a planet. So we get used to big numbers of planets now that we see them around stars

and lots of them in our own solar system. Doesn't Star Trek have a much more nuanced system and nomenclature for planets? Yeah, because they classify all planets't Star Trek have a much more nuanced system and nomenclature for planets? Yeah, because they classify all planets. Star Trek is fiction. We're talking about facts.

No, no, but let's imitate fiction. Okay, Alan, I was on your side until that statement right there. How dare you, sir! Send him away, one factor one. No, so I'm just saying there's a term, a succinct term that references,

is it an oxygen-nitrogen planet? Is it gravity? There are ways of folding that into the term. You don't mind Star Trek having lots of kinds of planets? Yeah. See? It's just fine. I'm all in.

We got ocean worlds, right? I'm all in. We got volcano worlds. And we got biologically active worlds and sterile worlds. It's just fine. I'm all in. We got ocean worlds, right? I'm all in. We got volcano worlds. And we got biologically active worlds. All in. And sterile worlds. It's all good. All in.

Okay. Adjectives rock, don't they? On it. Alan, great to have you back on. Thanks so much, Neil. Okay. It's a pleasure. All right.

Good. Thanks. We're done here. Oh, my gosh. But we're really not done, are we? No, we have solved nothing. We must do it again because nothing has been resolved. All right.

So this has been StarTalk, the Pluto Cosmic Queries Edition, if I may call it that. We're going to have to get Alan back because we just barely scratched the surface here. Anyhow, thank you, Alan, longtime friend and colleague. Thanks so much. Chuck, always good to have you. Pleasure. All right. Neil deGrasse Tyson here,

your personal astrophysicist. As always, keep looking up.