Astronomy!

[bloodyrosemccoy]

By the way, if you haven’t seen the Daily Show’s interview with Neil deGrasse Tyson, it’s here and it’s hilarious. You’ve got to love a guy who gets hate mail from third graders.* (They had a bonus follow-up the next day. Apparently the man’s just a bit obsessive about his Rubik’s cubes.)

And as long as we’re on the subject, can someone explain to me why the reclassification of Pluto as a dwarf planet was such a big hairy deal? What I figured was that we found a lot of other Plutos, and it seemed a little ridiculous to keep one as a planet. Was it some sort of emotional attachment? The problem of having to retcon all the Magic Schoolbus-type books and shows? The sudden obsolescence of a poetic mnemonic? Or what?

Anyway, yeah, I’ve been on an astronomy kick lately—to the point where I was wondering if I should learn that instead of ASL interpreting or midwifery or medical technicianing.** Partly it’s because I’ve been worldbuilding again, partly it’s just my own interests. But yeah, I’ve been watching cosmic shows a lot lately.*** I like astronomy a lot—it makes me feel happy all over.

Plus, I get to fangirl awesome people like Neil up there. You know you’re in a good place where you can’t choose your favorite astronomer/astrophysicist because you have entirely too many of them.


*Which makes me wonder if this was a letter-writing campaign from a whole class of third graders, because that suggests to me that Ms. Wiggins or someone heard about Pluto's reclassification and was incensed and stormed into class one day with a bunch of paper and crayons and said, “Class, this bad man is trying to say Pluto isn’t a planet! Let’s write letters to him saying our opinion—which of course is that Pluto is a planet, because I just spent the last three weeks teaching this unit on the solar system, dangit, and I’m not about to start telling you they changed their minds because we had a hard enough time naming the stupid planets and the mnemonic is already memorized!”

**Why yes, I am my own distraction!

***The UFOs and Hitler History Channel show I’m Netflixing, by the way, still has some totally hilarious analogies. Highlights from the second disc include “The moon is like a child playing ring-around-the-rosy” (one side always faces inward as it circles Earth), “Venus is Earth’s evil twin,” and “The Earth is like a Porsche.” I could not figure out what was up with that last analogy, but I think the documentary producers really liked it and told all their interviewees to explain how the Earth is like a Porsche. It was highly entertaining to watch them struggle to come up with reasons.

Comments

[bean-bunny.livejournal.com]

Waitwaitwait. Is or is not Pluto a planet?

[padparadscha.livejournal.com]

Pluto is a dwarf planet, along with many other dwarf planets in our solar system. It is no longer considered a planet planet.

Except in New Mexico.

But as far as I know, Pluto is rarely in New Mexico anyway.

[kadharonon.livejournal.com]

Oh, HEART. Neil DeGrasse Tyson is now part of my pantheon of heroes.

[padparadscha.livejournal.com]

Isn't he great? The man is one of my favorite interviewees ever--he's ALWAYS that hyper, even in documentaries.

I also think he actually posed for the "gravity problem" photo. WHICH IS EVEN MORE AWESOME.

[kadharonon.livejournal.com]

Oh MAN I need to find some documentaries with him in. Stupid not having a TV.

[beccastareyes]

Even astronomers care about it. Well, a few. Back when the announcement came out, Dr. M-, our (former) Kuiper Belt/small objects/Mercury guy posted it to the elevator. Dr. B-, one of our Martians, then put up a 'Save Pluto' bumper sticker on his bulletin board. Dr. M- responded by making a 'Save Pallas' bumper sticker for his door. (We also suspect that Dr. M- was behind a special DPS session this year in which a bunch of people talked about why it was okay for Pluto to be a dwarf planet. We had been hoping that there would be a fight between Dr. M- and either Dr. B- or a Kuiper Belt person that disagreed.)

As for me, I tend to agree with Dr. S-, the other Martian, who said that Pluto does not care what we call it. I also think that it reflects the trends in planetary science -- if you are a dynamicist (you study how stuff moves), or work on the system as a whole, you're more likely to want to keep the Big Eight and put Pluto with all the other debris out there. If you're a planetary geologist, you want to study anything that's round (planets, dwarf planets, large moons) as geologically interesting, and tend to focus a bit more. (Somewhat -- there's not enough data to really focus on any single thing except Mars. If you like 'small things with ice', you hop to whatever place has a NASA probe there.)

(I don't know why I'm abbreviating the names -- five minutes on Google could tell you who I mean, and I give enough hints that even not knowing where I go to grad school would just add a couple of spots to your search.)

[kittikattie.livejournal.com]

The sudden obsolescence of a poetic mnemonic?

My Very Excellent Mother Could Just Start Up New Planetary Examples.

[http://users.livejournal.com/_wastrel/]

While it's possible that some people were attached to its astrological significance, it was discovered and only called Pluto relatively late historically, iirc.

Have you ever watched or heard of Fringe, btw?

[queenlyzard.livejournal.com]

Thank you for posting this. Neil wins so hard, and I don't have cable TV (thank goodness, enough of my time vanishes as it is).