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| Re: Neil deGrasse Tyson: Professional Buzzkill by Ice Cream Jonsey 04/13/2011, 6:30pm PDT | ||||
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laudablepuss wrote: Ahhhhhh, hahaha, ah? He claims that Americans care more about Pluto than any other cosmic object. I'm certain this is false. But the only other contender is "Earth" and it's where we dump all our poisonous garbage! He hypothesizes that the reason it's so popular has to do with Pluto, the Disney character. There was a twinkle in his eye when he was talking about all this! But it's a reasonable explanation. He also thinks there are moons in the solar system larger than Pluto. I say: depends on how you measure it. This is where you are beginning to lose me. The radius of Titan is 2,576 kilometers. The radius of Pluto is 1,153 kilometers. It's really going to be difficult to convince me that Pluto is larger than Titan based on those numbers unless you're either Jim Kirk or an extremely beautiful woman. I'd previously pointed out that Pluto has a surface gravity of .58 G. That's higher than Mars' surface gravity. That means it's not mostly ice, like say Ganymede (larger diameter and mass than Pluto, .14 G surface gravity). I personally think that distinguishes it from any other Kuiper Belt object anyone's found so far, including the big ones like Quaoar. Well, there's either 8 planets or like, what, 30. Clearing the orbit is a pretty good requirement! I mean, if we had the telescopes we have now in 1930, there's no way Pluto would have ever been considered a planet to begin with. I'm glad New Horizons launched. It was critical that Pluto be considered a planet long enough for that satellite to get funding, because the government is continuously littered with ignorant, science-hating shitstains that would vote down the meager money NASA gets for probes on the basis of the Kuiper Belt not being "notable" enough. Now that NH has launched, how Pluto is categorized is irrelevant. We're going to get a ton of exciting data back, and nobody can shoot the satellite down at this point. ICJ |
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