The Dwarf Planet Pluto | Summer School w/ Mr. Smith

[00:00:00]Today we're talking about Pluto.

[00:00:03]No, Pluto, the dwarf planet, not the Disney dog.

[00:00:10]Pluto.

[00:00:13]There we go. [laughter] This is Mr. Smith coming at you not live to tell you that when I break a routine or a schedule, it's almost impossible for me to get back on it. But I see all the comments. We want more talks. The garage is sweltering right now because I still haven't figured out a solution for air conditioning. We've been out of town, but and I never wanted to film in here. This is my office. It's a closet office. Um it's just it's just too busy in the background. There's too much going on. But I we're going to do it anyway. Okay. So, I had an idea about potentially talking about the planets, but I didn't want to start with Mercury cuz that just seemed mercurial. So, we're going to start from the from the back. All right, >> the back >> is where we're going to start. And I know depending on when you were born, the conversation about Pluto is uh you know, but we're going to start with Pluto. So Pluto was discovered in 1930 by a guy named Clyde Tombball. And for 76 years, 76 beautiful years, it was considered the ninth planet. In 2006, the International Astronomical Union reclassified it as a dwarf planet. It's just too small. And ba basically what happened is after the discovery of Aerys and other similarsized objects in the Kyper belt, a debate basically popped up on and and it really still hasn't fully died down on Pluto. Like I wouldn't be surprised if I don't know, maybe that gets reversed at some point in my lifetime, but it is what it is. Pluto is smaller than our moon. Okay, it's about 1,500 miles. It's actually a little bit less. It's uh uh 1,477 mi in diameter. Its orbit is very elliptical. And what that means is is instead of it being more close closely related to a circle, it's much more closer closely related closely related to an oval or like an egg shape. And so as it orbits the sun, it doesn't have quite as well you can see that very much. It doesn't have quite a as much of a round shape as some of the other planets orbits do. it it orbits a little bit more like this. Not there there are no perfectly round orbits, by the way.

[00:02:20]It's that's why we call that's why we call them elliptical. And if you struggle with remembering what elliptical means, if you've ever been to a gym, the elliptical machine that you put on, if you notice, it doesn't do a circle. It does more like an oval or an ellipse. So, that's a description of the revolution.

[00:02:36]What about the rotation? It's about 6 and 12 Earth days of a rotation. So one day on Pluto is about six and a half Earth days. It does have five known moons. There's Stixs, Nyx, Keraros, Hydra, and Kiron. I don't I never know if I'm pronouncing Karon right. Maybe Sharon, but Sharon is the name of my aunt, and I don't I just she's closer to my heart than one of Pluto's moons. I would I I'm not going to I'm not going to call it that. And what's really interesting, I guess we are going to call it that. I love Aunt Sharon. What really interesting is Pluto's moon, Sharon.

[00:03:12]is that they're tidily locked. Another interesting fact, it's it's not much smaller than Pluto itself. So, [snorts] there's actually an argument to be made that they're a binary a binary system by just meaning two, but tidily locked, which means they both only ever see the face that's facing them currently. It would be like if you held on to someone and spun around with them, you never see the back of their head. Pluto also has a heart-shaped glacier region called the Tombar Regio, which is named after the guy that discovered it. And it's made mostly of methane and nitrogen and carbon monoxide ice. It has a very thin atmosphere, mostly composed of nitrogen, which expands when Pluto is closer to the sun, and then it partially freezes onto the surface as it moves farther away. There are mountains made of water of uh water ice, >> water ice, >> that are very, very tall, like Rocky Mountains tall. And there's also evidence that potentially suggests that there's ice volcanoes, which the technical term for that is cryo volcanoes.

[00:04:13]>> Cryo volcanoes, >> which is just the coolest thing ever.

[00:04:19]Ice volcanoes. I want to see that. How do we know all these things about Pluto?

[00:04:24]Um, well, we do use telescopes, but NASA's New Horizon spacecraft actually did a flyby in 2015. You can see some of those images. Maybe I'll put them up here. Um, the first and so far only close-up mission that ever went by Pluto. And uh, it it revealed a lot actually. It revealed that it's much more geologically active and complex than we expected. I guess we just think he's at the back of the line. He's a small boy. Not much going on. But there's actually some evidence to suggest that there might be a subsurface ocean because of all of that uh, geological activity. And really cool, it was named by Pluto was named by an 11-year-old English girl, Vignetta Bernie. Vignetta Bernie, who suggested the name after the Roman god of the underworld, which is is actually a pretty good name for the guy at the back of the line, considering how how cold space gets the farther away that you get from the sun. So yeah, Pluto is soups cool. Much cool. Very wow. And we shouldn't ever let the fact that we've decided that it's a dwarf planet and not a real planet take away from just how cool it is. And now that I'm thinking about it, I really don't know if we know. I'm sure we know, but I just don't know >> know >> the origin of Pluto. But I do know that there's an episode of Magic School Bus where they go to Pluto and I remember Arnold takes his breather helmet off and his his head freezes and it looks like it freezes all the way through and it was always so terrifying because like you can't come back from that and then like in the next scene they're thawing they're just thawing him out and he's fine. Like I guarantee you he his mom and dad didn't sign a waiver. So I don't know dude it just seems like a frivolous lawsuit. Ah, get it, Miss Frile.

[00:06:20]Frivvil. Frizzle. Oh, that's not the right. It seems like a frizzleless lawsuit. That's what I should have said.

[00:06:27]That's what That's what That's what it should be. Um, and that's what I remember of that episode. If I'm completely mismembering it, I I haven't seen it in like 24