In this episode of TYT Science we have an exclusive interview with Professor Michael Brown who was the scientist whom officially deemed Pluto “not a planet”. In this interview we asked how did he draw this conclusion and talk a good bit about the resulting controversy that unfolded after the announcement. Send your clip to TYT Nation to upload.theyoungturks.com
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29May
Posted by Pluto @ 12:02 am
Tags: Eris, interview, Lecture, Michael Brown, planet, Pluto, Professor, solar system, The Young Turks, Theyoungturks, tyt, TYT Nation, TYT Science, tytnation, tytscience
25 Responses
May 29th, 2012 at 12:02 am
Who the hell decided that you must? name something after the GODS. What if you cant stand GODS?
May 29th, 2012 at 12:02 am
terrible effort. the guy doesn’t have enough time and you reiterate the same general question twice ?? keep? saying like um like. Are you Larry King’s great great great great grandson.
May 29th, 2012 at 12:02 am
Some medium sized? things are coming in 10 years. Big things in 20.
May 29th, 2012 at 12:02 am
“tyt does?? science?” – It does now. :))))
May 29th, 2012 at 12:02 am
MORE? PLX
May 29th, 2012 at 12:02 am
0_0?
May 29th, 2012 at 12:02 am
brown on pluto is interesting but brown on uranus 😕 not so much
I KNOWZ
peace
May 29th, 2012 at 12:02 am
1:50?
May 29th, 2012 at 12:02 am
I contemplated suicide? after watching this for 30 seconds
May 29th, 2012 at 12:02 am
I do miss Pluto? though….
May 29th, 2012 at 12:02 am
nope, if things keep going like they are going we will have a massive crash in about 100 years. we need oil, we need a world population limit (impossible). if you look at politics the people elected won’t do anything (also extremely corrupt in USA) and the free market? is condensing into large monopolies. without oil we would have to make plastic from food products making people starve (not only that fertilises need oil to be produced)
We will crash it is only a matter of what will be left.
May 29th, 2012 at 12:02 am
The problem with interviewing scientists?
The fact that you can hear? the girl’s stupid phone conversation in the background extremely well, and the genius in front of you might as well be whispering.
May 29th, 2012 at 12:02 am
The notion that an object has to “clear its neighborhood” to be a planet was concocted in 2006 by a small group of astronomers who focus not on individual objects but on how objects interact with other objects. Many astronomers do not accept this as a requirement for an object to be a planet. There are clear differences between all 13+ planets in our solar system. However, all are rounded by their own gravity and orbit the Sun and therefore are planets.?
May 29th, 2012 at 12:02 am
What is wrong with our solar system having hundreds of planets? The notion that we have to keep the number of solar system planets small has no scientific basis whatsoever. Nineteenth century telescopes? were not powerful enough to resolve Ceres into a disk, so no one knew it is spherical, meaning in hydrostatic equilibrium. Today, there is no question Ceres is spherical and therefore a small planet. Minor planet is a synonym for asteroid, which Ceres, Pluto, and Eris are not.
May 29th, 2012 at 12:02 am
Giuseppe Piazzi wanted Ceres to remain a? planet, because it is a planet, as is Pluto and Eris and the other dwarf planets like Makemake, Haumea, and Charon. Even the satellite planets like Triton and Ganymede have a strong case for planethood as there are some planetary scientists who believe location should not matter. To say nobody is wrong. Dr. Alan Stern would make Ceres a planet again and no sane person would question his credentials. There is no clear diff bet Mercury and Pluto. None.
May 29th, 2012 at 12:02 am
include them “as full? planets” (was missing)
May 29th, 2012 at 12:02 am
Look at the wikipedia article on “Clearing the neighbourhood”. There is a clear difference between the eight planets and pluto/ceres/eris and all the rest. (actually several orders of magnitude).
If you include all objects that are in a hydrostatic equilibrium (round due to their own mass), there may well be hundreds (and Ceres would most certainly? have to be included and orbits between Mars and Jupiter, and nobody wanted to make Ceres a full planet for decades).
Call the others minor planets.
May 29th, 2012 at 12:02 am
No one is saying all Kuiper Belt objects should be planets, only those that meet the elements necessary to be a planet. Brown says there is not hard and fast definition of a planet. There is. And Pluto meets all the factors, except for clearing its path — a factor Earth itself does not meet as Earth has 19,500 asteroids that are in its path per NASA’s last count. So ask Brown why Earth is still a planet next time you see him. LOL. The next chance to change the? def is this August. In China
May 29th, 2012 at 12:02 am
Brown has a point that the demotion of Pluto led to interest in the issue of what is a planet, but, unfortunately, the vote in Prague was ramrodded by the Executive Committee of the IAU, much like how Winston Smith was made to love Big Brother by the end of “1984.” Pluto meets all the logical elements of a planet. Saying it is a Kuiper Belt object is a stretch as it is sometimes closer to the Sun than Neptune.? Should we deplanetize Neptune, too. If Earth was in Pluto’s orbit, guess what?
May 29th, 2012 at 12:02 am
This? is great but who else expected NDGT?
May 29th, 2012 at 12:02 am
But in his obsession with “killing” Pluto, Brown is acting very unprofessional. According to the nonsensical IAU definition, dwarf planets are not planets. This makes absolutely no sense. And the IAU definition is completely driven by where objects are to the exclusion of what they are. The? further an object is from the Sun, the larger an orbit it has to clear. If Earth were in Pluto’s orbit, the IAU definition would not consider it a planet either.
May 29th, 2012 at 12:02 am
No, as an astronomer myself, I can tell you there is no reason to get over a bad decision done for all the wrong reasons. The demotion of Pluto was political rather than scientific, and six years later, it is rightfully not accepted by many planetary? scientists.
May 29th, 2012 at 12:02 am
I urge TYT Science to post a video by Stern or another astronomer who will present the other side of this issue, the conviction that dwarf planets are planets too and that “clearing its orbit” is? not a requirement for an object to be considered a planet.
May 29th, 2012 at 12:02 am
The IAU decision was immediately opposed? in a formal petition by hundreds of professional astronomers led by Dr. Alan Stern, Principal Investigator of NASA’s New Horizons mission to Pluto and ironically, the person who first created the term “dwarf planet.” One of the petition signatories is Dr. David Rabinowitz, co-discoverer of Eris. Brown did not “kill” planet Pluto, as the debate over its planet status is very much ongoing.
May 29th, 2012 at 12:02 am
Brown has no status to deem anything “official,” and he is grossly? misleading the public by acting as if he does. It was four percent of the IAU that voted on the controversial demotion of Pluto, and most are not planetary scientists. Brown is not even an IAU member.