Stephen Colbert Interviews Neil deGrasse Tyson about Pluto Mission
Posted on July 18, 2015
Stephen Colbert has been putting up interesting content on his YouTube channel even though his talk show has not yet officially started. Colbert talks about the exciting New Horizons Pluto mission in the latest episode. He had astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson as a guest on the show.
Neil deGrasse Tyson is a big proponent of Pluto being downgraded to a dwarf planet from a planet. Colbert summoned him using the Neil signal causing him to materialize in the seat next to him.
Colbert says astronomers have discovered through the New Horizons mission that Pluto is bigger than we thought. It is bigger than astronomers recently thought but deGrasse Tyson says that in the 1930s it was thought to be the size of the Earth.
Neil deGrasse Tyson talked about the rapid speed of the New Horizons spacecraft and explained the gravity assist it received when it passed Jupiter. Colbert says it is like drafting in NASCAR and Tyson concurred.
Colbert showed a photograph of Pluto with the heart feature and said it looks like a planet and it has a heart "unlike you." Neil is 100% convinced Pluto should not a be a planet, but he says Pluto is now the "King of the Kuiper Belt." He was a wearing a tie of the planets in the solar system that did not include Pluto. Take a look:
Photo: NASA