Pluto in Grandma’s Living Room
TRANSCRIPT Moiya McTier 0:29
Corinne, I would love to share with the listeners where we're recording today.
Corinne Caputo 0:33
Boy, do I love where we are.
Moiya McTier 0:36
So we're actually in my grandma's house right now. We are in the living room recording under some cozy blankets and my grandma is literally baking us chocolate chip cookies as we speak. It's so cozy. It's so warm.
Corinne Caputo 0:50
The smell is not to be believed. Oh my gosh.
Moiya McTier 0:54
So this is the first episode of the Pale Blue Pod. People are hearing our voices right now. They don't know who we are, or why we're here. So maybe we should give them some context.
Corinne Caputo 1:04
Let's do it.
Moiya McTier 1:05
Let's start at the beginning of our relationship.
Corinne Caputo 1:08
Yeah.
Moiya McTier 1:08
And how how Corinne and I met and how we came to be here today.
Corinne Caputo 1:11
Um-hmm.
Moiya McTier 1:13
So Corinne, do you want to tell them how we met?
Corinne Caputo 1:15
Yes. Okay. It's this incredibly romantic story. I used to host a space comedy show in New York called Astronaut Training. I played a billionaire. And I would have comedians and scientists compete to go to space, very Nickelodeon style, and you guys would win money after games, after you play little games I made up, and then pay me–
Moiya McTier 1:36
Little Monopoly money!
Corinne Caputo 1:37
Yeah!
Moiya McTier 1:37
Yeah! We had to pay that.
Corinne Caputo 1:39
And then you would pay me back for my time. And I would send the winners to space and Moiya competed a number of times, won a number of times, co-hosted–
Moiya McTier 1:47
The same number of times.
Corinne Caputo 1:48
Yeah.
Moiya McTier 1:49
I always won.
Corinne Caputo 1:49
Moiya's good. She was just too good. I'll see you play once. I'm not changing the game. So like, you're gonna know the answers.
Moiya McTier 1:57
Fair. Yeah. I want to I want to tell the audience what types of activities you would have us do because it was, it was extremely Nickelodeon. I remember answering trivia questions while you made me jump rope.
Corinne Caputo 2:09
Oh, yeah, yeah. Somebody had to do like the kendama kind of game while someone was answering. We had, there was one episode, there's one show where we had to, I tried to get people to make slime and it just didn't work. And that was the closest we got to Nickelodeon.
Moiya McTier 2:24
I'm sad I missed that one.
Corinne Caputo 2:26
No, don't worry. It was weird.
Moiya McTier 2:28
I also remember one time I'm pretty sure you made me put on an astronaut helmet and run around the venue looking for things.
Corinne Caputo 2:35
Yes, that was okay. That was a really important game because that was about how are your, what are your spacewalks gonna be like, can you find all the Mars rocks that I hit around the room? Then come back. And also the I'm sorry for that helmet. The helmet we gave the guests was kind of sharp on the bottom. It's just really close to gettin' ya good on your neck.
Moiya McTier 2:59
Oh no. I never noticed because I have all this hair to cushion it.
Corinne Caputo 3:03
Oh sure. Okay, lucky you.
Moiya McTier 3:07
When was that?
Corinne Caputo 3:08
The show ran until March 2020. So I think it started 2017, 2018.
Moiya McTier 3:14
Wow.
Corinne Caputo 3:15
Yeah, long running.
Moiya McTier 3:16
That was a different life.
Corinne Caputo 3:17
I know, I ordered–
Moiya McTier 3:18
A different time.
Corinne Caputo 3:19
I ordered time ordered new postcards to promote the show like March 1, 2020. It was like such a joke. They're still like in my apartment somewhere.
Moiya McTier 3:28
Wow. Oh, the artifacts of a life gone–
Corinne Caputo 3:31
Yeah.
Moiya McTier 3:31
From us now.
Corinne Caputo 3:32
Good-bye! Different Corinne, different me.
Moiya McTier 3:35
But the now Corinne, the Corinne who is here today, as a co-host on this podcast. Let's let's talk about how you became that Corinne.
Corinne Caputo 3:45
And then fast forward to 2022, I get an email in my inbox from Moiya asking if I want to host a space podcast, and it was an immediate yes. Let's get the gang back together. Talk space.
Moiya McTier 3:59
Yeah, so I don't know if I told you all of the stuff that happened behind the scenes. So like, if this were a movie, we're gonna, we're gonna cut back–
Corinne Caputo 4:07
Yes!
Moiya McTier 4:08
To like, three weeks earlier. And it's my character coming in. And so this podcast is a part of the Multitude collective, just like the other podcasts that I host called Exolore. And some time ago, the Multitude people asked me, Hey, Moiya, would you be interested in doing a show that is all about science instead of one that is a chaotic hodgepodge of all of your interests? And I was like, Yes, that'd be nice. And so we we met to brainstorm stuff about the show. And I had to brainstorm co-hosts and I wrote down like twenty names, and then I put a star by like five names. Corinne, your name was one of those five.
Corinne Caputo 4:50
I got starred!
Moiya McTier 4:51
You got a star! And it came down to like, I wanted the co-host for the show to be someone who was smart and funny and nice and had a connection getting [indistinguishable].
Corinne Caputo 5:04
All these compliments!
Moiya McTier 5:06
Yeah, this is the butter-Corinne-up part of the episode.
Corinne Caputo 5:09
Yeah, yeah. We have to do this at the top of every episode.
Moiya McTier 5:14
But it just seemed kind of obvious looking at the list of people that I could reach out to that Corinne would be the perfect co-host for Pale Blue Pod.
Corinne Caputo 5:22
I'm so touched.
Moiya McTier 5:24
I was happy when you said yes–
Corinne Caputo 5:25
Oh good!
Moiya McTier 5:26
To this cold email that I sent to you after, like two or three years of no contact.
Corinne Caputo 5:31
I mean, after a pandemic of Geez, what's going on?
Moiya McTier 5:35
Yeah.
Corinne Caputo 5:36
You're lucky I remember anything about space. I didn't delete it from my from my head catalog.
Moiya McTier 5:41
Honestly, same. I'm really glad I still remember stuff about space. So that's how we met and that's how we came to be here together today. But maybe you want to know a bit more about us personally, like who we are. So, Corrine, who?
Corinne Caputo 5:59
Who are you? Who am I? Well, I am a writer and comedian I hosted that aforementioned astronaut training show I wrote a very silly self help parody book called How to success A Writer's Guide to fame and fortune. I'm realizing now the through line is I write and perform as if I am extremely wealthy and knowledgeable. That is both the theme of astronaut training and myself up parody book. Yeah, I'm still writing and creating I did a space see radio drama for a yells summer cab in last summer 21 That I oh my gosh, the big my big connection to space I can't forget is that I was a teacher at the New York City Center for aerospace and applied mathematics. That's
Moiya McTier 6:43
that title. That's such like an impressive string of what is a mouthful.
Corinne Caputo 6:47
I sound extremely smart when I say it. I was really like this contracted fun person who can guide kids through spacey themed classes and missions. And it was the coolest job in the whole world. Obviously COVID killed it along with my other space thing. But it was I wore a NASA flight suit. I got kids excited about space. I can't say I became an expert in it. I learned up to I don't know, a second graders knowledge of space, whatever I needed to answer their questions.
Moiya McTier 7:19
You know what they? That's actually probably pretty high.
Corinne Caputo 7:22
I think I think that age is like peak. Like absorbing information. Like they want to know everything. So it was curiosity time. Yes, exactly. But it was great. And that was what inspired the astronaut show. Which is how I met you to tie it back. Yeah, moyea you need obviously our space expert. But tell us more. Is that obvious? Obviously to me, you know, you take one look at my on your like space. It
Moiya McTier 7:52
might have something to do with the fact that I have a lot of space things tattooed on my body. Oh yeah, you can visibly see it. For me, I am an astrophysicist and a folklorist and a science communicator. I studied both astronomy and folklore in college, I think a through line you'll see in my story is that I am bad at making decisions. I refuse to choose between things. And so I refuse to choose between folklore and astronomy until I got to grad school and got a PhD in astrophysics. But I was always looking for ways to tie them together. And now I get to do that through my other work like EXO lore, like fate and fabled, which is a mythology show that I host for PBS with a book that I just wrote called the Milky Way, an autobiography of our galaxy, where the Milky Way itself is telling us its whole life story. So yeah, I know a lot about space. I studied it for a long time in very academic settings, very elite, academic settings that sometimes makes my skin crawl to think about, like what those spaces were like, you know, grad school kind of stole my joy away, at the risk of like getting kind of heavy right now. Grad school is really hard and committing to something, even if you love it a lot. You know that love can be taken away. It's really challenging. Yeah, if you if you like go through some stuff. So I know a lot about space, but I've kind of fallen out of love with space. I've kind of become jaded. And so I hope that through this project, when we're talking about space together that I can find my way back to loving it again. That's what I hope to get out of this show.
Corinne Caputo 9:43
That's a really beautiful mission.
Moiya McTier 9:45
Thank you. Thank you. What about you, Corinne, do you have a mission? Something you hope to get out of this show?
Corinne Caputo 9:50
Yeah, I think I want to. I just kind of want to learn more about space but also not be intimidated by it. I think even when I was teaching at At the Space Center, I was learning exactly enough to execute my job. And I loved the people that I worked with the most, which is kind of the most fun. And I think this pod is the same way or it's like, I want to hang out with Maya, I want to learn more. And I think when you go about searching info about space on your own, you're really like, trying to sort through all sorts of big words and big ideas. And you kind of close the Wikipedia page pretty quick.
Moiya McTier 10:32
The PDF pages about space can get so technical. Oh my God,
Corinne Caputo 10:35
who was behind that they're not doing a great job for mation nerds.
Moiya McTier 10:38
It's a bunch of nerds writing down. It's always equations. Yeah.
Corinne Caputo 10:44
But I want to like learn from the nerdier people were included, but not in a bad way.
Moiya McTier 10:50
I am a nerd. I'm a proud nerd, out and proud nerd. And I love other nerds too. Yeah. You said you're a bit overwhelmed by space. What is it? Yeah, I think it's
Corinne Caputo 11:02
like, I think it depends on who you are. But I can look at a picture of space and be like, I'm feeling too tiny. Now I got to look away. Or like, I think it just feels so other and so confusing. And I think things that are scary, it's often just because you don't know enough about it. So I think I'd like to close that knowledge gap. And with information comes responsibility.
Moiya McTier 11:30
With information comes knowledge, and with knowledge comes power. And with power comes responsibility. That's yeah, you close the loop.
Corinne Caputo 11:36
It's a spider man thing, is what I'm trying to say.
Moiya McTier 11:41
I love that I think a lot of people that this show finds a lot of people who find the show will relate to that, that feeling of being overwhelmed by space. And so I hope that as like Corinne and the listeners learn more about space, it becomes a little less foreign, a little less unfamiliar, a little less scary, and accessible. And yeah, exactly. Because because space is for everyone. Not just for people, at fancy institutions with enough money to build a giant telescope and displace the people who live on that land. It's not just for them. No, no. It's for everyone. And we want you listeners to know that that space is for you that you are a part of space, and that if you are willing to learn more about it, it doesn't have to be that scary. I love that. So let's go on to the topic of the very first episode get into, we do have a fun, maybe controversial topic for the first episode of the pod. Are you? Are you ready to talk about it? Corinne? I'm
Corinne Caputo 12:43
ready. I'm really ready. Today we're getting to the bottom of the question. Is Pluto a planet? I think it's the number one question on a lot of our minds.
Moiya McTier 12:52
It's definitely in the top 10 questions that I get from people when I talk about space. Are Aliens real? What is time? And is Pluto a planet?
Corinne Caputo 13:03
What is time? Do you like a quick I only have like two minutes.
Moiya McTier 13:08
Time is a construct. That's it?
Corinne Caputo 13:10
Oh, you're right. You have all the time you need.
Moiya McTier 13:14
Yes, we have as little or as much of it as we feel we do. Yeah.
Corinne Caputo 13:19
I feel like answering if Pluto is a planet is I don't know why it's tricky or controversial. I think it's just so heartbreaking to know that the science you learned as a kid is potentially not the science that is now or rather the facts. Yeah,
Moiya McTier 13:34
that there is something really scary about that. I think that's a good point. I think that that feeling you just described is something that actually leads to a lot of general distrust in science, not just Astronomy, or the question of Pluto specifically.
Corinne Caputo 13:48
Yeah, like, we want to think that science is this permanent, lifelong fact. But it is a constant question and evolving, I guess.
Moiya McTier 13:58
Yeah, you're completely right. Science is the process of looking for the answer.
Corinne Caputo 14:03
But it's so much nicer when you have the answers my
Moiya McTier 14:06
No. Trust me as like a type A perfectionist type person. You Yeah, I wouldn't have all the answers. And one of the reasons I left research academia is that I was uncomfortable not knowing all the answers and like admitting to myself that I was essentially a professional dumdum who didn't know things and I was trying to learn those things. And now I get to be a professional smart smart where I just take the things other people have learned and handed them to you.
Corinne Caputo 14:39
That's very fun. I we need and we need those people to be professional. SMART. SMART. Yeah, the smart smarts for me the other dumb dumb. The medium dumb.
Moiya McTier 14:50
Amateur. Yeah,
Corinne Caputo 14:52
there's all of it's a scale. Yeah,
Moiya McTier 14:55
it's it's you're right. It's all a scale. It's all one big cloud. But yeah, I I do think that we can get into the heart of this question. Is Pluto a planet by looking back at basically, the history of planet discovery from our earthly perspective? And even further back than that? What is a planet? And how do they form?
Corinne Caputo 15:20
Well, I've never thought about that.
Moiya McTier 15:24
Yeah, so I can tell you some things. And if you have questions, please stop me. Please tell me your comments like I want to learn together. So first, I want to start with how do planets form? Where do they come from?
Corinne Caputo 15:38
Okay, let me guess how my guess is they're from some kind of, I don't know, collision, some kind of rock that gets caught will to be a planet. Do you have to be orbiting a star?
Yes. Okay. All right. So
then you're you gotta be somehow caught in that kind of, I don't know, gravity web that's going on.
Moiya McTier 16:06
Gravity Web.
Corinne Caputo 16:08
Yeah, that's how I picture gravity, the
Moiya McTier 16:10
sun, the sun is a spider and it catches all the fly planets. Yeah,
Corinne Caputo 16:14
I saw one video where gravity was described as like graph paper. And now it's all a graph to me.
Moiya McTier 16:23
You, you are not very far off. It does happen through collisions of rocks. And these rocks are trapped in the stars gravitational web. So let's start at the very beginning of the process, because you can't have planets without a star. Stars formed from clouds of gas, that through different mechanisms cooled down and contract on themselves. That initial contraction kind of has a runaway effect, where once it starts, it will continue and create something that is so dense, and so packed tightly together, that it has the pressure and temperature to create nuclear fusion. And that is a star. Yeah, so a star is just this, this cloud of gas that contracts in on itself very tightly. But once you have the star, there's a lot of leftover material from the gas cloud that never makes it into the star. Yeah, all of this debris forms a disk around the young star, that will rotate around the star in the direction that the original gas cloud was, was twirling in. India, so everything in space is spinning, angular momentum is always being conserved. So when the gas cloud can tracks it continues to spin. And that's why we see stars that rotate, and the debris disk will rotate in that same direction. And the collisions that you guessed about those happen in that disk. So over time, I see little particles of dust will will hit each other, there'll become pebbles, those will become rocks, those boulders, all the way up to planet sized things.
Corinne Caputo 18:04
I feel like you see that when you have like bubbles on like the surface of water when like these bubbles combine like in a bath or something. And like now it's a bigger and bigger bubble.
Moiya McTier 18:15
It's it's a snowball effect. Yeah, we do. We do often describe it as these planets or these planetesimals, snowballing into larger planet figures. And then you can get into like fun details of how far away you are from the star and what materials are collecting to form different types of planets. Like we usually see rocky planets closer to the star, and gas and ice planets farther away from the star. Yeah, beyond the snow line, we call it you know, there's a distance from the star where the temperature drops below the freezing point for different elements. So there's a water snow line, and there's a methane snow line. And there Yeah, so all of these different things.
Corinne Caputo 18:58
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Based on based on the little i know, basically, like, based on what I know about, like, let's say Mars, like there might be frozen water on like the moon and Mars. Right?
Moiya McTier 19:11
Yeah. Yeah. I think there there's frozen water in some parts of the moon, but there are frozen like lakes, there's a lake and ice I think hap on Mars. Yeah. To
Corinne Caputo 19:25
go canoeing there to spend your summers on Mars.
Moiya McTier 19:30
So that's how planets form. But that's totally different than, like, defining a planet, you know.
Corinne Caputo 19:37
So So Pluto did form that way, correct. All
Moiya McTier 19:41
of the bodies around a star form in that way. But at least in the way we classify them, not all of those bodies become planets. So there is like a set of criteria that we have now for what a planet is. And you were you were totally on point for one of them that it has to be orbiting a star
Corinne Caputo 19:59
Yes, I'm very bright. I'm actually a billionaire scientist. So it makes a lot of sense. Instead
Moiya McTier 20:08
of money, you you trade in the currency of thoughts and ideas. Exactly.
Corinne Caputo 20:14
Yeah. When you get a when you get that rich, that's all you're you know, that's the only thing that's exciting anymore because money is also just a construct. Yeah, just like time, which is why it's okay that I don't give mine away. Well,
Moiya McTier 20:27
time is money I have heard.
Corinne Caputo 20:30
Oh, that's true. We do say that.
Moiya McTier 20:33
We say that. You and your billionaire kin, me and my crew. Yeah. So the definition of a planet has changed over time. The word planet comes to us from an ancient like Greek word meaning wanderer who yes, that's this is a really interesting piece of history. One of the ways that folklore and astronomy overlap, because to the ancient humans, a planet was a bright point in the sky that appeared to move relative to the fixed stars. So those planets would have been the five visible planets in our solar system to the naked eye. So Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn, plus the other bright things in the sky that appear to move. So do you know what those what those other bright things would have been that they consider planets? Well,
Corinne Caputo 21:27
I imagine no, like satellites at that point, like, like human made satellites. Right. And so obviously, aliens. Obviously, I guess like other stars that are really far away. See
Moiya McTier 21:44
this, this is the interesting thing. So those stars that are really far away, they don't appear to move in like a month, right? Over the course of a year, but very slowly, there are bright things that we see moving on faster timescales, like a bright thing that appears to change position every day would be the sun, the sun. Yeah. And a bright thing that changes over the course of a month. The moon, the moon, yes. So they had seven wandering stars, or seven planets, and only five of those were actually the other two and the moon and the sun and the moon. And those those seven wandering bodies gave us the seven days of the week that we have today, coming to us all the way from ancient Babylonian mythology. So there's like a fun connection there.
Corinne Caputo 22:36
Oh, whoa.
Moiya McTier 22:39
Yes. So that's what planet he used to mean. But we now have a more scientific definition of what a limit is. And this definition comes to us from the International Astronomical Union. This is a big body that oversees like the naming conventions of things in space. And just like official space business. In 2006, they laid out three different criteria for what a planet was, you got one of them that it has to orbit a star. This is why moons are separate from planets, because a moon orbits the planet, but a planet orbits the star. The other two criteria are that the body has to be massive enough that gravity has forced it into a spherical shape. Okay, yeah. So we're not looking for lumpy things like asteroids and comets, right? And then the third rule is, this is the one where people get tripped up. The body has to be massive enough that its gravity has cleared away other objects of similar size near its orbit.
Corinne Caputo 23:46
Interesting. Okay, so like if the moon was larger? I don't know if this is even the question to be asking if the moon was larger, and it was still next to Earth. Yeah. And the Earth would be a planet
Moiya McTier 24:00
if the moon is still clearly orbiting the Earth. Okay. Yeah. Okay. The Moon is about a quarter of Earth size, which is way bigger than I feel like it shouldn't be. Bank, you three really big but it is still considered a natural satellite of Earth, whereas Pluto's satellite share on is about half of its size. And they have this weird, complicated dance where it's unclear if Sharon is orbiting Pluto, or if they're both just orbiting the sun. Well, yeah, so Pluto fails on this third criterion for being a planet and that's why in 2006, it was demoted from planet to dwarf planet. And the IAU classifies a dwarf planet as something that meets those other two criteria. You know, it's it orbits a star and it's spherical because of gravity, but it does not have enough mass to clear out its orbit.
Corinne Caputo 24:58
So if If it was a clear door, but let's say that shear on would not be there,
Moiya McTier 25:03
maybe if like Chevron were smaller and it worked nearly orbit including then you know, yeah, that would count. But the real problem is that there's a bunch of other space junk out there. There are a bunch of rocks that are similar to Pluto size that are orbiting near Pluto's or near Pluto.
Corinne Caputo 25:20
I see. I see. So like that. We're not as close to like asteroids, I guess. It's like Pluto might be right.
Moiya McTier 25:27
Exactly. Yeah, there's just a lot more space junk
Corinne Caputo 25:30
around Pluto. Yeah. Oh, Pluto. Poor Pluto.
Moiya McTier 25:35
Yeah, Pluto. Right. Do you want to know a bit about the history of finding planets? Yeah, and our solar system? Yeah, yes. So, like I said, there are five that you can see with your naked eye, or unaided eye if you have a prudish face. Those were Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn. Uranus was discovered in 1781 with a telescope by William Herschel, William Herschel was looking for comets, and he found this bright spot in the sky with his telescope that was obviously bigger than other comments and moved in a way that was similar to the planets that we could see. So he identified it as a planet. Fun fact, I just wrote a book about the Milky Way from the Milky Way's perspective. And it talks about the history of how humans like mapped different parts of the galaxy, William Herschel and Caroline Herschel his sister made a really nice early map of the galaxy that was totally inaccurate. But that's not what this whole tangent is, is an opportunity for me to say that the Milky Way in the book refuses to name William Herschel and instead just calls him Caroline Herschel's brother every time he's mentioned. Well, I'm sure
Corinne Caputo 26:52
that tracks it with, you know, human history to have like, how much of Caroline her soul is there in our books? So maybe it's great.
Moiya McTier 27:00
Yeah, nowhere near enough considering getting the credit. Yeah, she should have gotten way more credit than she did. She helped William with all of his research and was an established astronomer in her own right. So
Corinne Caputo 27:12
that's really cool. I would not help my brother. I think in that way.
Moiya McTier 27:17
Would you would you spoon feed your brother while he's working? Oh
Corinne Caputo 27:20
my god. No, I asked you to do that for myself. Really? I'm always forgetting to eat at work. But that I'm certainly not doing that. For
Moiya McTier 27:32
you.
Corinne Caputo 27:33
I agree. He extremely ill. No. Perfectly healthy than No way man.
Moiya McTier 27:40
Yeah, science can suffer. I am not feeding some grown ass man. Yes,
Corinne Caputo 27:45
I can wait. Science can wait.
Moiya McTier 27:49
Also, like imagine all the science we lost because Caroline Herschel wasn't using her brilliant mind to study space, but using it to feed her brothers,
Corinne Caputo 27:58
Pluto's probably still would have. No, I wouldn't have changed Pluto at all. But
Moiya McTier 28:03
no, but it might have changed Uranus. Yeah. So actually, the discovery of Uranus is very important to the discovery of the further out planets, because when they saw Uranus, and they calculated how far away it was from the sun, that gave them an idea of how Uranus should move throughout the solar system, like how long should it take it to do one orbit? And where should it be at different points of the year. But when they observed that they noticed some differences between reality and their expectations. So they they realized that there was something out there tugging on Uranus, so that its orbit didn't exactly match our predictions. And they started looking for another planet out there. And in 1846, they found Neptune. Neptune tune the good old watery planet.
Corinne Caputo 28:57
Oh, 46. Oh my gosh, in my head. We've known about all this for millions of years. There's no way it happened
Moiya McTier 29:06
like 150 years ago. Yeah, exactly. Especially
Corinne Caputo 29:11
for something as big as like never.
Moiya McTier 29:13
Like your great great grandfather had no idea about that
Corinne Caputo 29:16
idea about Neptune. Things could have been so different for me.
Moiya McTier 29:22
Yeah, so through those like perturbations, they knew that Neptune was there. And then they spent many decades trying to find Neptune. And then something similar happened again, where they noticed even more perturbations in Uranus and Neptune's orbits, and they were like something else has got to be out there. So they spent like 80 years looking for Planet X, this imagined planet beyond Neptune, and they found it in 1930. Really? Yeah, it was this 24 year old observatory assistant who found blue Though his name was Clyde Tombaugh,
Corinne Caputo 30:02
a funny name to me.
Moiya McTier 30:06
Like he always wore a top hat.
Corinne Caputo 30:08
Yeah, exactly. Like I'm picturing him. And he's, like, really pale and young and like little nervous. Right?
Moiya McTier 30:15
Yeah, he's 24 When he discovers bluedot, but actually his greatest claim to fame is that when he grows up, he eventually is the ancestor to Mr. Peanut. That's, that's where that joke was going.
Corinne Caputo 30:30
That makes sense. Thank you that tracks
Moiya McTier 30:32
Yeah. The name Pluto was suggested by an 11 year old English girl from Oxford named Venetia. Burney, who for her suggestion that we are still talking about right now, you know, almost 100 years later, she got five pounds, no
Corinne Caputo 30:52
naming bluedot No.
What is that an 1840 money though? Oh,
Moiya McTier 30:58
I mean, that's a great question. No, it can't be more than $100 In today's currency.
Corinne Caputo 31:04
I'm gonna Google it. And I'll bet that value of okay, it would be $566. That's really not so good. That's not so.
Moiya McTier 31:12
I mean, she was like
Corinne Caputo 31:14
a treat. It's a treat. Yeah. But it's not like, what it should be. You need residuals. This girl needs residuals on this. This is why the human race needs to unionize and set up a contract. We get our Pluto residuals. Yes,
Moiya McTier 31:31
there needs to be a planet naming union. You're right. Not not the International Astronomical Union. That is not the same type. Though they don't care about giving out residuals,
Corinne Caputo 31:42
I figured that when you said that it's like, okay, they don't care about residuals at all.
Moiya McTier 31:47
No, not at all. So poor Venetia. Burney, Let's all think about her. The way that she was not fairly compensated for her work.
Corinne Caputo 31:57
I am glad she didn't live to see Pluto get demoted. That might have been sad for her
Moiya McTier 32:02
did she might have been? That's a great question. When Pluto was demoted, if she was 11, and in 1930, then she would have been a
Corinne Caputo 32:11
legend decided she's really wish she really could have been alive, which is perfect sense.
Moiya McTier 32:17
I mean, 87 is old for the 20th century. Yeah. So she might have but maybe not
Corinne Caputo 32:26
me just declaring her dead.
Moiya McTier 32:29
Are you looking it up? Are you seeing live
Corinne Caputo 32:32
2009? Oh, so she didn't see it? She saw Obama, the president and amazing life.
Moiya McTier 32:39
I mean, I don't know her personal politics that she thought
Corinne Caputo 32:47
she missed Hurricane Sandy. I'll tell you.
Moiya McTier 32:50
The rest of the podcast is actually just a list of things Venetia Bernie did not experience.
Corinne Caputo 32:56
She did not see COVID I'll tell you that.
Moiya McTier 32:58
That's a blessing.
Corinne Caputo 33:02
She said I don't quite know why I suggested it. I was having breakfast with my mother and my grandfather and my grandfather read out the at the breakfast, The great news about the discovery of the planet. And he wondered what it would be called. I said, Why not call it Pluto?
Moiya McTier 33:16
Why not?
Corinne Caputo 33:17
Thanks, Venetia, you're right.
Moiya McTier 33:20
So Right. I mean, there there is a naming convention in place now, where planets are named after mythological figures, mostly from mythology. When Herschel discovered Uranus in 1781, he was tempted to name it after King George the something whatever George was king at the time, but other astronomers around the world pushed back and we're like, No, we don't want to have a planet named George. When we like we have planets. We don't want it to go. Yeah. Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, George.
Corinne Caputo 33:55
Yes. Yeah, totally. This is how I feel about dune. Did you read dune? I haven't, but my fiance has and it's like all of these made up words. And then your main characters named Paul. Wait, we have to like stick to something here. The brand we have to maintain the brand
Moiya McTier 34:14
is not consistent. Well, yeah. It's not like the other. Yeah, so Pluto being the Roman god of the underworld, a place that is very dark and cold. Makes sense for a planet that is at the time, the furthest one we know about from that history of us discovering a planet seeing that its orbit isn't exactly how we predicted it should be and then continuing to look for more planets. We're still doing that. So cool. are trying to find a planet beyond the orbit of Pluto that we are calling Planet Nine. That search is actively ongoing, and there's
Corinne Caputo 34:54
like some evidence that things are getting tugged in a way that could be there. Mm. Interesting. So would that still be a dwarf planet? Or maybe like it might be big enough that it's not?
Moiya McTier 35:05
That's that's a great question. I think based on how the planets that we can see are being tugged. We believe that if Planet Nine is out there, it would be between five and 10 times the mass of Earth. Whoa, definitely massive enough to be a planet. Wow,
Corinne Caputo 35:23
I guess I just assumed that that was the end of the line.
Moiya McTier 35:28
No, no, history continues to repeat itself.
Corinne Caputo 35:31
Wow. I'm gonna name that one. I'm gonna start thinking of a name and name it.
Moiya McTier 35:36
Please do and it can apparently be as casual as you're eating breakfast.
Corinne Caputo 35:42
For $566.
Moiya McTier 35:44
There's a precedent. Yeah,
Corinne Caputo 35:46
there is a precedent. Yeah.
Moiya McTier 35:50
So there, there obviously is some pushback against Pluto's demotion. People were very upset in 2006 when Pluto dwarf planet, I
Corinne Caputo 36:01
remember that. It was disturbing.
Moiya McTier 36:04
Yeah, all black people felt like they had been lied to all of a sudden that a they got in their fifth grade science. Yeah. Not an am or not anymore.
Corinne Caputo 36:13
Not at all. That was like a defining moment for me to be like, Wait a second. This is not a planet. Because I certainly did a report on it at some point. Constantly did some bit of homework on Pluto, because that's always like the one you want to pick? Because it's like the little guy or something. Yeah,
Moiya McTier 36:30
it's fun. Well, not anymore. No, you your grade got ripped away in 2006. so cruelly,
Corinne Caputo 36:39
my whole academic career spiral down the drain after.
Moiya McTier 36:42
That's, that's why you're not an astrophysicist.
Corinne Caputo 36:45
And that's the only reason
Moiya McTier 36:49
they're there. There are also some astronomers some some scientists who have pushed back against this demotion. One of them is a planetary scientist named Alan Stern, who believes that astronomers, people who study stars and galaxies and black holes should not have been voting on what constitutes a planet. First of all, if they aren't experts in planets, if they're not planetary scientists, why are they involved? Second of all, science should not be left up to a vote, says Alan Stern, because that makes people think that it's political and that it's not based on a rigor that we need science to be based on. I agree, I think, hmm. So in Allen Stern's mind, a planet should be defined as a body that is massive enough to be round, but not massive enough to spark nuclear fusion in its core. Oh, just a nice inclusive definition. Yeah.
Corinne Caputo 37:45
Yeah. Would that bring in anything else that we in our solar system?
Moiya McTier 37:51
Yes. Yes. So the reason one of the reasons that they made this criteria for Planet hood being that it has to have cleared out its orbit with its mass and gravity is that otherwise, we would have gone from a solar system with eight planets in it to a solar system with like 1000s of planets in it. If you're including all of the massive round objects out in like the Kuiper belt of the solar system. Even some things in the asteroid belt are big enough to meet those two criteria of planet hood before clearing out the orbits. So essentially, the IAU was like We don't want kids to have to remember this long list of planet name. We can't
Corinne Caputo 38:34
just let anyone in. Yeah,
Moiya McTier 38:36
so they kicked Pluto out of the club because they wanted to be exclusive. Wow.
Corinne Caputo 38:41
So Pluto and those other things have to unionize. Now, this is a pro union episode. I
Moiya McTier 38:49
imagine all of our episodes will be pro union.
Corinne Caputo 38:51
Yeah, I have a feeling it's gonna lean that way. But we just have to make Pluto sentient. And then
Moiya McTier 38:59
all right, that's one that's one item on a to do list. Yeah. sentient. Go about your day. That's
Corinne Caputo 39:05
it wakes that planet up.
Moiya McTier 39:08
So I guess now we're at the point now that you have heard about the history of planet discovery, you understand? How planets formed from clouds of gas that make stars? What do you think Corinne? is Pluto a planet?
Corinne Caputo 39:20
Okay, well, I think I'm Team Stern. If I have his name correctly, and I personally think Yeah, yeah, it is. But I completely understand like, why we would have criteria you know, you have to keep things in a some kind of rubric in science so that you can keep learning and going. So I understand why we would have these three rules but I really, you know, my personal allegiance is going to be to Pluto being a planet Hell yeah, that's the report. I didn't school. That's what I want to be true.
Moiya McTier 39:56
I think that's a plenty good reason.
Corinne Caputo 39:58
I have to stand with Venetia team Venetia?
Moiya McTier 40:01
Yeah I agree with you. I, I think that if you're looking at the historical precedent of what is and is not a planet, ancient humans definitely would have would have considered Pluto a planet. It's a wanderer it moves relative to the ground. Yeah. And also even if you are getting stuck on this iau definition of a planet being something that is cleared out its orbit, and if it hasn't, then it's a dwarf planet. I mean, like, it's just a special type of planet.
Corinne Caputo 40:36
Yeah, that's what I'm thinking like, it's still a planet, but it's in like some sub category. Yeah, like I'm sure you can categorize like, Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, like, in a way as well, that everyone just gets some kind of sub category definition. And
Moiya McTier 40:51
we do we do that we have. We have terrestrial planets. We have gas giant planets, we have ice giant planets, we have many Neptune's and Super Earths, we have all these different classification schemes.
Corinne Caputo 41:03
Wait, what the hell's a mini Neptune.
Moiya McTier 41:06
It's literally just a planet that is in between the size of Earth and Neptune. So cute. Neptune is so cute. We think most planets out there are many Neptune's most of what we found anyway. But that could just be a bias in what our instruments can see. Like it might be to see these mini Neptune's and so we are observing them more frequently. So okay, we are both in agreement. Pluto is a planet even if it is like a special type of planet. It's still a planet. Yeah. So I, I have prepared some some mnemonics some ways that we can remember the order of the planets, including Pluto. And I would love to share them with you hear any that you came up with and then maybe make make our own together collaboratively? Okay.
Corinne Caputo 41:59
That's so funny because mine. Only some of them include Pluto because I wasn't sure where we were gonna land. I'm gonna quickly pop in a few peas to remind me Molly.
Moiya McTier 42:10
Some peas. Love that. Okay, then can I can I read one of mine? Well, yes,
Corinne Caputo 42:18
you can.
Moiya McTier 42:19
I wrote down three. I was having a lot of fun with this. The first is married vixens evoke memories jailed under Noro particles. That's
Corinne Caputo 42:30
really good.
Do you have a Saturn in their shit? No, I
Moiya McTier 42:35
don't. Oh my god. None
of these have Saturn.
Corinne Caputo 42:39
So Saturn is not the planet and Pluto is just add the word so
Moiya McTier 42:45
married wait since evoke memories jailed sturdily under Articles.
Corinne Caputo 42:52
That's exactly it sturdily can be popped into any of them. I'm confident. Can't believe I forgot Saturday. Well, okay, most of mine. This is a really challenging thing for me. I don't know why. I think I was just like, just repeating in my head, my very educated mothers, right. So here's one. And in this one, the word U is just the letter U. And the word no, we're going to pretend starts with an N. Okay. And I think that's how it should be taught in schools. So it goes marketing various eggs may just stink, you know? And then please, please.
Moiya McTier 43:35
Well, marketing various eggs may just stink, you know, please.
Corinne Caputo 43:39
It's me. Someone who's copywriting in a marketing agency and like, maybe it's just stinks, you know?
Moiya McTier 43:46
Fantastic. I have one here. mopey. Vampires enter most jurisdictions under noxious pretenses. And like a typical astronomer, when we are doing our acronyms, we will just capitalize a letter in the middle of the word to make it part of the acronym so I did. So the s in jerks in jurisdictions is
Corinne Caputo 44:11
also realized. I love that that's a good fix that I can tell you came in with
Moiya McTier 44:16
yes, this was part of the plan the whole time.
Unknown Speaker 44:19
Okay, so here's
Corinne Caputo 44:20
when many very educated mothers just sat down down isn't part of it. You should not bother them. And that's the one who thought that word bother started with a P and three words in that are not in it down should and them are not part of it. But that's okay. That's okay. They're little. You whisper them exactly. And they're smaller words and it just helps you remember it.
Moiya McTier 44:48
Oh, amazing. mixed vegetables in rage my uncle so never prepared.
Corinne Caputo 45:00
It's like period so never prepared.
Moiya McTier 45:02
Oh is his it's always a mess with my uncle who eats mixed vegetables.
Corinne Caputo 45:09
This guy's never coming over. He hates vegetables and he's never coming over with like a housewarming gift. Okay, here's one more volcanoes exists merely to just smolder utensils now. Oh.
Moiya McTier 45:27
So that's my favorite one yet.
Corinne Caputo 45:30
And again, the two it is not part of it, right? If you want to add a Pluto, you just go at the end are like, Oh,
Moiya McTier 45:39
can we make one up? Like a word at a time?
Corinne Caputo 45:42
Yeah, yeah. Okay, um, I've never heard of a word that starts with them. Okay, how about magazines? Hmm?
Moiya McTier 45:52
There.
The Vex magazines Vex.
Corinne Caputo 45:58
Everyone. Mostly just so you
Moiya McTier 46:08
never pee? Magazines. Next everyone, mostly just so you never be?
Corinne Caputo 46:16
That's true. Yeah, I'm always reading magazines and not going to the bathroom. Because
Moiya McTier 46:21
you're so that's five. I'm
Corinne Caputo 46:23
just so vexed all the time. Oh,
Moiya McTier 46:27
I would love to hear some listener mnemonics for the planets in the solar system. See if you can be magazines Vex everyone, mostly just so you never be.
Corinne Caputo 46:39
I do think kids would remember that. I'm confident kids in fourth grade would remember that. Yeah.
Moiya McTier 46:44
If it has pee or poop in it, you're gonna remember it? Yes,
Corinne Caputo 46:48
please tag us on Instagram, Twitter. I would love to hear your mnemonics. And remember, you can be very flexible with them the same way we just works.
Moiya McTier 46:56
Capitalize the fourth letter in the word Why not
Corinne Caputo 47:01
sneak in just a random sound at the end to get Pluto.
Moiya McTier 47:07
At some point, we're gonna have to do an episode on the worst astronomy acronyms because there are some oh my god, I would love to hear that. Oh my god. So but the one that comes to mind right now is alpha alpha. But the A is a twice nested acronym. In the alfalfa. It's there. It's acronyms all the way down. It's beautiful.
Corinne Caputo 47:28
Is that just so that it's like a fun thing to say?
Moiya McTier 47:31
Yeah, probably interesting.
Corinne Caputo 47:33
You gotta have a little bit of fun. Yeah.
Moiya McTier 47:35
Otherwise, you know, the research gets tedious. I absolutely know people who came up with the concept for something that they turned into an acronym and just like forced it to work. That's
Corinne Caputo 47:47
so funny. Yeah, that's so funny.
Moiya McTier 47:51
But none of them none of them will ever hold a candle to magazine specs. Everyone, mostly just so you never be. I think that's all I heard about Pluto being a planet.
Corinne Caputo 48:02
I think I just heard the timer for the cookies. So yeah, let's
Moiya McTier 48:06
go eat some cookies. Let's snack and leave our listeners do come up with their own mnemonics and let us know if they think Pluto is a planet. Some action items, listeners. This is our very first episode, we will continue to make episodes as long as people continue to listen to them and also as long as we enjoy making episodes, so please subscribe to the show. Share it with your friends and listen to the next episode. It's gonna be some galactic fun.
Corinne Caputo 48:36
That's a clue. See if you can read find the Easter egg in that one.
Moiya McTier 48:43
You I'm not going to tell you if there are any capitalized or like small letters and well that's it for this episode of Pale Blue Pod. If you remember nothing else from the show, remember that you are space!
Pale Blue Pod was created by Moiya McTier and Corrine Caputo with help from the Multitude Productions team. Our theme music is by Evan Johnston and our cover art is by Shea McMullin. Our audio editing is handled by the incomparable Mischa Stanton.
Corinne Caputo 49:21
Stay in touch with us and the universe by following @PaleBluePod on Twitter and Instagram. Or check out our website palebluepod[dot]com. We're a member of Multitude, an independent podcast collective and production studio. If you like Pale Blue Pod, you will love the other shows that live on our website at multitude[dot]productions.
Moiya McTier 49:40
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Corinne Caputo 50:06
Thanks for listening to Pale Blue Pod! You'll hear us again next week. Bye!