Hello, all!
Today I'll be doing a Google Auto-Complete Q&A about the dwarf planet Pluto.
If you're not really sure how this works; basically, depending on your browser settings,
if you go to the Google website and type in something like, "How Pluto," Google will try
to expedite your search by suggesting other questions that have been made by other curious
users, like yourself.
So I've gone online, I've done all those searches, I've compiled the questions, and I'm going
to try to answer them for you here today.
So let's get started!
Well, up until recently, that was a very difficult question to answer.
Even through our most powerful telescopes, like the Hubble Space Telescope, Pluto looked
like little more than a brown and white blur.
But thanks to the New Horizons probe that flew past Pluto in 2015, we now have these
spectacular images of Pluto.
Did someone really ask this question?
Okay...
Well, let's think about it.
Its atmosphere is made of mostly nitrogen, which is an odorless gas... so no help there.
But, it does also have smaller amounts of carbon monoxide, which is also an odorless
gas; and methane, which is also an odorless gas.
So, Pluto doesn't smell like anything.
Pluto is made of mostly what I just mentioned was in its atmosphere.
You have frozen nitrogen; frozen carbon monoxide; methane in various forms, both frozen and
liquid, as well as mountains made out of water ice.
But that's just within its crust.
Underneath that crust, it's believed that there's a mantle--if you will--of slushy water,
leading down to a solid silicate core.
Nothing happened to Pluto.
It was simply reclassified.
Pluto is named for the Roman god of the underworld.
It looks like this!
Pluto was reclassified as a "dwarf planet."
Pluto was discovered on the 18th of February 1930.
Pluto was reclassified on the 24th of August 2006.
A day that will no doubt live in infamy.
When you get a really good telescope!
No seriously, you can see it for most of the year, except when the Sun is too close to
it [in the sky].
Well, that depends on what you mean by that question.
Physically, it can be found in the Kuiper Belt, which is a region of space beyond the
orbit of Neptune at about 50 Astronomical Units from the Sun.
If you are talking about where Pluto is located in the sky, it can currently be found in the
constellation of Sagittarius.
Pluto was discovered in the Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona, USA.
Well, actually, there is a bit of a story to that.
Officially, Pluto was discovered by Clyde Tombaugh.
but he had taken over the search for Pluto from another astronomer by the name of Percival
Lowell.
And, Lowell had actually photographed Pluto several times, unknowingly.
But, unfortunately, he wasn't able to officially discover it in his lifetime and so later,
it passed to the astronomer, Tombaugh, who made the official discovery in 1930.
Pluto was reclassified by a vote of the International Astronomical Union.
Pluto was named by an 11-year old girl by the name of Venetia Burney, who suggested
the name to her grandfather, who then passed on the name to several other people; and eventually,
it got on a very short list of names that were being voted on by the members of the
Lowell Observatory.
Sadly, Pluto does not have rings.
Yes, Pluto does have an atmosphere.
It's very tenuous.
It's not very dense.
It's about...
I think about 10,000 times less dense than Earth's atmosphere[sic].
If I'm remembering that correctly.
But it's made of--as stated earlier--of diatomic nitrogen, carbon monoxide, and methane.
Yes, Pluto has five moons.
It's largest major moon is Charon.
And then it has four minor moons known as Nix, Stix, Hydra, and Kerberos.
Yes, it does.
It wouldn't be a dwarf planet if it didn't.
Yes, the Sun does shine on Pluto.
Now, obviously, being as far away from the Sun as it is, it gets significantly less light
than the Earth does.
It receives about 1,500 times less light than the Earth, so it is quite dim by comparison.
But, it's still not quite as dark as you might think.
During the numerous noon hours on Pluto, you could very easily read a book by the amount
of sunlight you'd receive.
No, actually, it doesn't.
At its farthest from the Sun, Pluto never gets any farther than 49 Astronomical Units
and the Oort Cloud doesn't even begin until around 1000 Astronomical Units.
So, Pluto doesn't come anywhere close to the Oort Cloud.
Pluto is approximately 1,190 kilometers in radius.
But here's a picture for comparison.
Well, Pluto has a very elliptical orbit, so it varies in distance from the Sun from 29.6
AU all the way out to 49.3 AU.
At its coldest, Pluto is around -230 degrees Celsius.
So, you know, bring a scarf if you are going to visit.
Pluto is not a "planet" because it was reclassified as a "dwarf planet."
Well, they are significantly different.
Pluto is made out of mostly ices; you know, like frozen nitrogen, methane, carbon monoxide,
water ice, things like that; mixed in with some silicate materials--other rocky materials
like that.
Whereas, Gas Giants are absolutely enormous balls of mostly gas, as their name would suggest.
Mostly hydrogen and helium gas.
So, that's how they differ.
Well, again, this comes down to how you're asking that question.
Like if you're asking, "How long have we known it existed?"
Well, maybe that's about 87 years.
But if you are asking, "How old is it, physically?"
Well then, it is about as old as the rest of the Solar system, so about 4.65 billion
years, give or take.
Pluto was likely made through a similar process to the way the other terrestrial planets were
made, which is a process known as accretion.
Basically, you start out with all the grains of dust and ice and gases, and they slowly
come together and stick, first through electrostatic forces and then later through gravitational
forces, eventually becoming so massive as to pull itself into a sphere and be a planet
of some type.
Approximately 248 Earth years.
Pluto makes one revolution upon its axis every 6 days, 9 hours, 17 minutes, and 36 seconds.
Well, Pluto is no longer a "planet" because it was reclassified as a dwarf planet.
Pluto was reclassified as a dwarf planet because it was discovered that in that region of space
where Pluto dwells, the orbits beyond Neptune, there's potentially thousands of similar bodies
in that region.
So a new classification was created for those planetary bodies--dwarf planet--and Pluto
was assigned to that category.
Pluto was not demoted.
It was reclassified.
Okay?
There is a big difference.
Reclassified.
Well, you know, it is really far away.
That's, you know, way too far to expect any parent to drive their kid just so they can
play in the snow.
It's also, you know, it's really dark, it's really cold, and there's not a McDonald's
anywhere in the area.
Well, basically, someone likened the cold distances of the Kuiper Belt as being metaphorically
very similar to the cold depths of the grave, and so they thought it would be cute to name
Pluto after Roman god of the underworld.
Well, because it has no mouth nor vocal cords.
Yeah, I know you probably think that question was directed at the cartoon dog, but you have
no proof of that.
Well, given where Pluto orbits, out in the Kuiper Belt, that's home to billions of pieces
of ice and rock.
And so Pluto has many chances over its lifetime to pull those into orbit around it.
So, a better question might actually be, "why does Pluto ONLY have five moons?"
Because it could have potentially had many, many more.
What do you mean, "Why does it not exist?"
Of course it exists!
Do you think I'd be talking about it and giving all these random facts about it if it didn't
exist anymore?
No!
I'd be talking about the cataclysmic events that lead to a planet in our Solar system
being destroyed.
You know, that would be the topic of the day.
No, of course, it [still] exists!
Basically, for the same reason that Earth doesn't have rings: It just didn't happen
that way.
It could have, it just didn't.
Well, as stated early, with a really good telescope, yes you could.
I mean, you know, how else was it discovered?
Well, that depends on what you mean by "live on."
Sure, we could set up a colony there if you're content to roam around in domes that have
life-support systems installed.
But if you are talking about, "could you live on the surface," then no, no you couldn't.
It's far too cold and you can't breathe the air.
Well now, that's THE question.
That's a question that astronomers are currently trying to answer.
At this point, science really can't say, definitively, what planets in our Solar system can or cannot
support life; you know, with the exception of the Earth, which we're convinced can...
currently.
So, maybe it supports life, but, you know, more study is needed.
Well, technically, nothing prevents us from landing on Pluto's surface.
It's just really more of a logistical issue.
Like, to get the New Horizons probe out to Pluto, it took it about ten years to get there.
And to get it there within that timespan, it had to be accelerated really, really fast.
So fast, in fact, that there was no way of slowing it down to let it enter orbit, which
is why it just flew past and kept going farther out into the Kuiper Belt.
So, to land on Pluto, you would have to carry enough fuel on the spacecraft to slow it down
enough to enter orbit, once it got there, and then even more so to land on its surface.
So, if you go out there with enough fuel, then yes, you could land on the planet.
Yes, Pluto is a planet.
It's a dwarf planet.
A dwarf planet is a type of planet.
It's just one that orbits within a belt.
In this case, the Kuiper Belt.
No.
No, Pluto is most certainly not a star.
Pluto is a small planet, made of ice and rock, whereas a star is a giant ball of plasma,
made of ionized hydrogen and helium that is sustaining itself by nuclear fusion in its
core.
So, BIG difference there!
Well, as stated before: Maybe!
I'd like to know the answer to that question as much as anybody.
But, unfortunately, until we can send a lander there or, better yet, humans there, we won't
know.
Yes, there is!
There's actually quite a bit of water on Pluto in many forms, both solid and liquid.
On its surface, many of its mountains are made of frozen water ice, and then, as stated
earlier, below its crust there's expected to be a mantle of water in various phases
of solidity.
Yes, there is gravity on Pluto.
Ther's gravity on any object that has mass and Pluto most certainly does have mass.
The amount of gravity is substantially less than that of the Earth.
It's about 1/600th that of the Earth.
But, if you were on the surface of Pluto, you would weigh considerably less than you
do here on Earth and you could jump very high!
Not high enough to escape Pluto's gravity and float off into space, but high enough
to injure yourself.
Yes, there's many dwarf planets beyond the orbit of Pluto, including Eris, Haumea, Makemake,
Sedna, Quaoar, Varuna, Varda, Ixion, and..
I'm sure I'm forgetting a few.
And then there's just hundreds that don't have names, that just have code numbers representing
them.
But, yes, there's a lot of dwarf planets beyond the orbit of Pluto.
In fact, it is!
At least by land area.
The country of Russia has about one million square kilometers more land area than Pluto
does.
Well, actually, that's debatable.
A number of people do consider Charon to be a dwarf planet, and that it and Pluto to be
binary planets because the barycenter of their orbit--or the point at which both of them
orbit around--lies outside the volume of either of the two objects.
So, you could call Charon a dwarf planet, but most people call it a moon.
If you look it up on the NASA web page, or whatever, they'll call Charon a moon.
Yes, it was.
Pluto was a planet from 1930 to 2006.
No, Pluto was reclassified as a dwarf planet.
No, Pluto was not blown up!
And contrary to what science-fiction would like you to believe, planets do not blow up.
They can be obliterated by an impact, they can be swallowed by a black hole, or they
can be vaporized by a supernova, but they do not blow up!
Pluto did not blow up.
It's still out there.
No, Pluto has never been a moon.
Alright!
So that's it for the questions.
I hope you found this video educational, or at the very least, entertaining.
If you have any questions that you'd like answered about Pluto, feel free to post them
in the comments.
I will try to answer them for you.
As always, I appreciate all comments and, if you would, please press the Like button.
And, if you really did like this video, please share it on social media so everyone can learn
that PLUTO WAS NOT DESTROYED!
Seriously, you should do a Google search for this.
Like, just type in "Did Pluto" and you'll get like four or five questions that ask things
like, "Did Pluto explode?", "Did Pluto vanish?", "Did NASA blow up Pluto?"
It's crazy!
And, you know, I think it has to do with how the media writes their headlines.
They like saying things like, "Pluto isn't a planet anymore," or "Pluto is formerly a
planet."
And I think it leads a lot of people to believe that something catastrophic has happened to
everyone's favorite little dwarf planet.
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