*promote

Promoting this video and sending it back into the queue for one more try; last queued Wednesday, June 10th, 2009 8:01pm PDT - promote requested by eric3579.

If you've already seen Tyson talk about black holes and Pluto, start watching at 26 min. Brilliant stuff regarding his schooling. One of my favorite NDT posts ever. Thanks for posting mauz

It is important to note that Tyson has distanced himself from the controversial 2006 IAU decision, which he himself admits is flawed. At this point, he even admits that the debate is not over, that it might be too early in the study of planetary scientists for anyone to be defining what a planet is in the first place. This was pretty much his message at the Isaac Asimov Memorial Debate, which he moderated at the American Museum of Natural History on March 10, 2009.

Significantly, only four percent of the IAU voted on Pluto's demotion, and most are not planetary scientists. Their decision was immediately rejected by hundreds of professional astronomers led by Dr. Alan Stern, Principal Investigator of NASA's New Horizons mission to Pluto.

This debate is far from over. For another perspective, anyone interested in this topic should read "Is Pluto A Planet" by Dr. David Weintraub.

Is it just me, or do I see McLuvin in the audience ?
Light blue t-shirt, you can see him clearly in the closing min.

*quality

Boosting this quality contribution up in the Hot Listing - declared quality by radx.

Wow, the whole thing was brilliant, but the final question was perhaps the best for me. I've had an interest in science, math, and other topics thought of as thoroughly "academic" for pretty much my entire life. However, during my own time at university getting merely a bachelor's degree in Computer Science, I got thoroughly disgusted with academics taking ideas that really aren't particularly complex and making long, jargon-filled papers or lectures about them that seem to only serve to hide and obfuscate the natural simplicity and beauty of the basic idea.

Tyson does a fantastic job of achieving the opposite: making more complex ideas seem simple and presenting them in a way that is easily accessible yet open to exploration for more depth.

Thanks for the sift, was well worth watching the entire hour and a half!

I've got such a man crush on Tyson it's rather embarassing...

Honestly, it is just a name. There is no REAL thing called a planet, just arguing about lines in the sand. It is like arguing if something is warm, lukewarm, or room temperature; a realm for analytic philosophers, not scientists.

I think his views on his "role" as a black man is one of the first real steps you get towards the ideal of color blindness as apposed to color sensitivity; the ideal that MLK would see as the better of the 2.

9 more comments have been lost in the ether at this killed duplicate.

Great stuff, GREAT STUFF

*length=1:29:20

The duration of this video has been updated from unknown to 1:29:20 - length declared by Boise_Lib.