Frantic Pansies - Tribute to Carl Sagan by Neil deGrasse Tyson

Tribute to Carl Sagan by Neil deGrasse Tyson

Jul. 5th, 2009 at 5:48 PM

The whole presentation was wonderful. Some awsometastic person has posted all of it; this clip is part 10 of 10 as you can see. Anyway, this clip contains my favorite portion of the presentation. He fields a question asking as you are the current "face of science" for this generation, who is your favorite of the previous faces of science: Sagan, Burke, Clarke, etc. His story about Carl Sagan made me cry. I wanted to marry Sagan when I was five. :)

Start around 3:30 for the question and his beautiful response.

Through some lucky turn of chance, I timed returning home just in time to catch him on Book TV. :)

I Am In:the big red couch
I Feel All: nostalgic
I Hear Some:deGrasse Tyson

Comments

( 5 jibber-jabbers — Speak out! )

laurele wrote:

Jul. 6th, 2009 05:37 am (UTC)

It is important to note that Tyson has distanced himself from the controversial 2006 IAU demotion of Pluto, 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. Also, please visit my Pluto blog, which discusses the scientific reasons for Pluto maintaining its planet status and chronicles worldwide efforts to overturn the demotion, at http://laurele.livejournal.com

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madladyred wrote:

Jul. 6th, 2009 01:08 pm (UTC)

Ignoring Pluto for a bit, aren't his comments about Sagan lovely? They brought tears to my eyes. :)

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madladyred wrote:

Jul. 6th, 2009 10:41 pm (UTC)

By the way, I'm just curious -- how on earth (or Pluto) did you find me? :) Is there some way on LJ to search for people who mention topics in individual postings as opposed to listed interests? That would be neat! Except, I didn't have Pluto anywhere in my title, text, or tags. Were you looking for Tyson posts?

Or can you track YouTube postings and tracked me from YouTube?

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laurele wrote:

Jul. 7th, 2009 03:54 am (UTC)

The secret is Google alerts. As someone actively advocating the overturning of the IAU demotion, I subscribe to Google alerts for the word "Pluto." Since your You Tube video has the title "Pluto Files," the site showed up, with a link, as a Google alert. :)

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