Cosmic Queries – Planet 9

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2:43Neil deGrasse Tyson:Chuck, another queries grab bag. Yes. My favorite one is the person wants to know what the chance of getting hit by a meteor. Yes. And you were actually taken out by a meteor. Almost. Oh, okay. Still met 11 on StarTalk. Welcome to StarTalk, your place in the universe where science and pop culture collide. StarTalk begins right now. This is StarTalk Cosmic Queries. And as always, it's a grab bag edition. And I got Chuck Nice with me. How you doing, Chuck? Hey, Neil. doing well man thanks for asking there's no shortage of people's questions yes people really inquiring minds want to know so bring it on bring it let's jump right into andy l says hello stellar intellects and also co-host of the week my name is he he has assumed that the co-host is clearly not of a stellar intellect.

3:50So this is...

3:54Neil deGrasse Tyson:But he's allowing it to have been other co-hosts because we have other co-hosts that come in. Yes, yes. That's why I'm not taking it personally. He says, hey, my name is pronounced Andy. See, now that lets me know that he thinks it's me. See, now you're full of it. Andy. and i know what the d stands for too anyway by the way that's another name it's nicknamed for richard thank you uh he says it's also a nickname for private detective that's correct private dick that's right yes and that's why in the opening song to the movie shaft isaac hayes sings who's the black private dick that's a sex machine to all the chicks.

4:43Yeah, I don't think he was talking about investigations.

4:48Neil deGrasse Tyson:That was a line I had to listen to a few times, and then I had to look up the definition, and one of the definitions of Dick was private detective. So that was a weird scripting there. Okay, go ahead. Way to go, Isaac Hayes. He said, I've heard there may be a large planet or dwarf planet orbiting beyond Pluto, the so-called planet X. What exactly are the scientific observations causing this suspicion? Could the new Rubin telescope find such an object? Thank you, Andy from Thousand Oaks, California. I do not know the targeted zones of the Rubin telescope. Generally, if you're going to find a planet and you don't know that it's a planet, You need several observations because otherwise the stars, though they move to orbit the galaxy, are so far away from night to night, they basically keep the same position.

5:50Neil deGrasse Tyson:But something orbiting the sun would not from night to night, week to week, month to month. So I think in principle, the Rubin telescope would be able to detect such a thing. But it would have to be directed to a region of space where we think it is and then hang out there just for that purpose. But that's not what the telescope was designed for. It was designed as a survey telescope of the entire sky looking for whatever moves in the survey zone. So that's my first point. Second, the way we have colleagues who think about this and do these experiments, there are these, the Pluto we discovered in the last 20 years, 25 years, is just the most prominent member of a new swath of real estate discovered in our solar system called the Kuiper Belt, named after a Dutch, I think Dutch American astronomer, Gerard Kuiper by mid-century.

6:52Neil deGrasse Tyson:he hypothesized the existence of a repository of comets that didn't participate in the formation of the rest of the solar system in fact he made the inverse prediction he would say he said there's a region out there where there would be comets if they didn't participate okay it was one of those kind of backhanded predictions turns out there are thousands of dirty ice balls orbiting well beyond Neptune, including Pluto. Okay. So, and the Kuiper Belt is huge. So, observations of Kuiper Belt objects tell us that maybe they are responding to another source of gravity in the outer solar system and not just in their orbit around the sun.

7:43Neil deGrasse Tyson:There's movements that can't otherwise be explained if they're simply orbiting the sun. So that allows you to say, maybe there's another source of gravity out there that's mysteriously tugging on these objects we do see. Now, if it's a planet, it's going to be much bigger than just a Kuiper Belt object. But if you can't see it, it must be much farther away. So they're placing it at a distance below their detection limits because they're saying otherwise we would have seen it and when you do this this thing is really far away so there's still a lot of speculation there's been some skepticisms of the observation and the interpretation but that's what it is and that's how we infer that there might be a planet nine or a new planet x because we all know pluto got done demoted right yes so there you have it and Andy crawled through a mile of...

8:43Anyway.

8:50Okay. This is Eric Leroy who says, greetings, Neil and Chuck. Eric Leroy here, exercise physiologist and space flight physiology researcher from NYC. And my question is, what are the requirements established by the IAU that led to the demotion of Pluto as one of the major planets of our solar system. In my opinion, they are not specific enough and should include granular measurements in addition to the phrase clearing its neighborhood. I believe if Pluto was given its title as the ninth planet back, there would be a surge in scientific and astronomical interest around the world of all ages. Thank you for all that you do in the name of science.

9:36So he's saying let's create a controversy that will spur interest in astrology once again. Astronomy once again. I said astrology. Oh, Jesus. Astronomy once again by giving Pluto planetary status back.

9:58Neil deGrasse Tyson:The rules weren't diabolically conceived just to get rid of Pluto. pluto it's not how that worked okay so here's what happened let me remind people as our telescopes got better as the keck telescope started looking in the outer solar system in the region of space where pluto orbits we started finding other objects and there was an object whose size rivaled that of Pluto. And no one was prepared to call that a planet. So that forced a whole fresh look at what Pluto is, where it is, how it's orbiting, and why. On doing so, we found not only is Pluto more than half ice by volume, like comets are, Pluto is orbiting a region of the solar system that we would discover has countless thousands of other icy bodies in the outer solar system.

11:14Neil deGrasse Tyson:These we would more commonly call comets. pluto was the first discovered because it was the biggest and the brightest you would expect the biggest and the brightest to be discovered first then we have better telescopes and now we're they're popping up we we've lost count of the number of kuiper belt objects that are out there so this is not different from the year 1801 where a new planet was discovered orbiting between Mars and Jupiter. That was a big gap anyway, between Mars and Jupiter on a planetary scale. We said, something has to be there. Let's keep looking. We found a planet. We called it Ceres, named in the tradition of a Roman god, as were all the other planets.

12:04Then we found another one, and then another, and then another.

12:09Neil deGrasse Tyson:Ceres, Pallas, P-A-L-L-A-S, vesta and juno and it says wow the planet count just look at all these planets a big leap and then we said well wait a minute how come when i look at them through a telescope you don't see a disc the way you see a disc like you see uh jupiter has you see weather bands on it saturn you see rings you know that's pluto calling you right now when you look at the other planets you see the the physical spherical object that is the planet when you look at these planets they're just dots of light they're really tiny and we know they're orbiting the sun and they're reflecting sunlight because we can follow the orbit so so but when you look at stars, they're just dots of light.

13:07Neil deGrasse Tyson:But we know these are not stars. They're just star-like. Wait a minute. What's a word for star-like? I'm going to say asteroid. Asteroid. Once we started discovering dozens of these things, we said, we can't call these things planets. What instead has happened is that we have discovered a brand new swath of real estate in the solar system that we didn't previously know was there another belt a belt and generally it's a belt if it's flat but goes around uh the circle like it rims the sun the asteroid belt so overnight those four new planets were quote demoted to asteroid status and now there's countless hundreds of thousands, likely millions of asteroids discovered in catalog orbiting in that zone.

14:04Okay.

14:06Neil deGrasse Tyson:Having discovered Pluto first and thinking it's a planet and then discovering another object and another, we kind of been down that road before. We have countless Kuiper Belt objects all in an orbit that is spread around the sun enclosing the trajectory of Pluto. that's the first strike against it it's not isolated in its orbital zone it is one among many whose size rivals it wow okay two yeah it's small but that alone doesn't indict you it's big enough to be a sphere if you're small if you it's got enough mass to be a sphere, if you have much less mass than that, then the gravity doesn't overcome the structural integrity of the rocks and the rocks went out.

15:01Neil deGrasse Tyson:So most asteroids look like Idaho potatoes. Okay. There's whatever the rock is, that's its shape. But when you get bigger, gravity pulls the high places into the low, fills them in, and you become a sphere eventually. Interesting fact about gravitational physics. All right. so Pluto did not clear its orbit Pluto is because it's in a swath of real estate completely filled with other objects that rival it in size what else do you have to be to be a planet you have to be big enough to be round Pluto is big enough to be round it is but it needs more than one criterion to be satisfied for planet status.

15:49Neil deGrasse Tyson:Having failed one of those two, it got demoted to dwarf planet status. However, you know, Ceres, the first asteroid discovered, that's the only asteroid that's round. Of course, it was big enough for gravity to make it round. And of course, that's going to be the first asteroid you discover. Ceres has more mass than all the other asteroids combined. So Sirius got a promotion. At the same time Pluto was demoted to dwarf planet, asteroid Ceres was elevated to dwarf planet. And so Pluto has company. There are many dwarf planets in the solar system to join. And like I said, it's half ice by volume.

16:38Neil deGrasse Tyson:If you brought it to where Earth is right now, heat from the sun would evaporate the ice and it would grow a tail and the third criterion i left out sorry uh you can't cross the orbit of other planets oh that's a no wait um pluto spends 20 years that's right 48 year life closer to the sun than planet neptune it crosses neptune it goes to the outside to the inside inside and by the way that's what comets do that routinely they cross all the planet orbits as they plunge in towards the sun right so out of three criteria pluto failed two of them it's a fraud pluto you're a fraud however however while it had planetary status we discovered a new element it basically invented a new element in the laboratory that we named after pluto and so pluto now has an element on the periodic table from false pretenses just thought i put it out there and in sequence there's element 92 which is uranium named after which planet take a guess i'm gonna say mars no of course uranus uranus and then there's neptunium that's element number 93 named after neptune and element 94 plutonium named after pluto pluto was discovered in 1930 plutonium was isolated in 1940 it was weaponized turned into a bomb and used in warfare five years later damn damn that's right Wow.

18:27Look at that. Pluto, the most destructive non-planet ever. Wow. That was the first time I've seen you give that exhaustive list of Pluto's failure to be a planet. um i i well listen eric i hope that did it for you man because get over it otherwise yeah get over it that's terrible but really get over it all right Thank you.

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22:14Hello, I'm Finky Brooke Allen and I support StarTalk on Patreon. This is StarTalk with Nailed Grass Tyson.

22:33Let's go to Nirav Shah, who says, Hello, Dr. Tyson, Lord Nice. I am from India, now living in Arizona. I have listened to you, Dr. Tyson, for years and appreciate your storytelling such that it helps me recall things and I share it with my fellows. Could you please share the connection between theory of relativity, quantum physics and semiconductor physics? How the former eventually allowed the latter to develop. Thank you for everything that you guys at StarTalk do.

23:02Neil deGrasse Tyson:There's no direct connection that I know of between relativity and what happens in a circuit board. But relativity is what we call modern physics, which was discovered in the 20th century, just as quantum physics was. So often, if you take a college class in modern physics, you learn both relativity and quantum physics together in a first introduction to in your first step beyond classical physics. All right. So quantum physics. Quantum. People say you took a quantum leap. A quantum is a very small unit discovered originally as a small unit of energy that cannot be continuously varied. a quanta of energy you can't have one and a half quanta you can have one you can have two you can have three you can't have fractional quanta that's the whole construct of that understanding so in circuits you're moving electrons around to understand electrons and what they do and who they behave and why you need quantum physics you need quantum physics to understand anything that's going on inside of molecules and atoms and nuclei.

24:25Neil deGrasse Tyson:So you don't have to single out the semiconductor and its importance to civilization being fed by innovations in quantum physics, because it's all quantum physics. So I don't know how to reply, other than to say just a couple of things about semiconductors. A semiconductor typically uses a wafer of silicon, which is an insulator mixed with some other material that's a conductor of electricity. Insulator does not transmit it. Conductor does. Semiconductor is configured so that you can control the passage of electricity at will and on command, depending on the needs of the circuit. And so semiconductors became highly useful, especially in computing.

25:16Neil deGrasse Tyson:And the race was how to make the tiniest semiconductor that had the most number of circuits in it. So you can, when I grew up, computers were the size of whole rooms. That's how old I am. Right. Those were four function calculators. Walk into the room and it's like, it was hot because it had vacuum tubes that were, that radiated heat. Quantum physics enables the IT revolution entirely. And so I don't know what more to say about that. Other than that, we're in the centennial decade of quantum physics. And let's celebrate that fact because civilization as we know it would not exist without it. Well, thank you, Quantum.

26:05Yeah. There you go. All right, let's move on to Derek Evans. Hi, Dr. Tyson, Lord Nice. Derek here from South Windsor, Connecticut. My question is about the shape of galaxies. As we know, they take many forms outside the stereotypical spiral shape. But what ultimately dictates a galaxy's shape? Do they all rotate? And if so, does shape indicate age or developmental stage? That sounds very psychotherapy.

26:40Neil deGrasse Tyson:What is your developmental stage? Are you lagging behind? I'm a little stunted, you know what I mean? All the other galaxies seem to have it together, man. I don't, you know, I'm just really confused all the time. And I'm so angry all the time, too. I don't know if it's because I'm a spiral galaxy or sombrero galaxy. I honestly don't know what my identity is. There is a galaxy named the sombrero galaxy. It's not a kind of galaxy. It's the name of a galaxy. Oh, is that the name? Yeah, it looks like a sombrero. And it looks, well, okay. There you go. Okay, so if you start out with a gas cloud, huge gas cloud, If it's, depending on how fast it's rotating, if it's hardly rotating at all and it collapses, it doesn't flatten.

27:32Neil deGrasse Tyson:It stays kind of three-dimensionally. Globular. We call them elliptical galaxies. Oh, really? They're spherical elliptical shapes. Okay. And they rotate very slowly. Okay. All right. If you have more rotation than that, you will flatten as you collapse. And you become very flat, flatter than a flapjack. You become as flat as a crepe, almost as flat as a tortilla. And so our galaxy, the Milky Way, when seen edge on, would almost disappear from your sightline for that reason. and what happens is you a galaxy gets stars from its gas clouds and in this elliptical galaxies for reasons not fully understood or were not fully understood the last i looked at this problem that's the more the safe way to say that um elliptical galaxies were very efficient making stars so they made all they used up all their gas and made all the stars and there's no gas left So when you don't have gas, you're not doing what?

28:40I'm going to say ruining the dinner because you're rude at the table.

28:44Neil deGrasse Tyson:Yeah, gas. These are different gases, Chuck, not hydrogen sulfide.