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How to Get to Pluto: From a Waterpark

2015-07-10 · explainer · Hank · 3:35 · watch on YouTube

Topic: Science & nature · mode: News analysis · tags: timely hook, on location, self promotion

Filming at a water park, Hank explains why the New Horizons flyby excites him: Pluto is a weird Kuiper belt world with odd moons, and the probe will reveal a mostly unexplored world.

What is said

The parts of the video and what is said in each (★ — how much it matters to the video).

00:00:00 — Hank at a water park; New Horizons will soon send the first non-blurry pictures of Pluto; launched 2006, carrying Clyde Tombaugh's ashes

  • ★ Hank is filming at a water park because it is very hot where he is, and, he jokes, because his life is amazing and marvelous. (playful) — 00:00:00
  • ★★ Hank says that very soon there will be, for the first time, pictures of Pluto that are not horribly blurry. — 00:00:06
  • ★★ New Horizons, launched in 2006, has traveled for nine years; besides instruments like spectrographs and cameras it carries the ashes of Pluto's discoverer Clyde Tombaugh. — 00:00:14

00:00:28 — Pluto is not a planet because it is weird: the Kuiper belt, Pluto as its largest object, Triton as a studied proxy

  • ★★ Anticipating comment debates, Hank says Pluto is not a planet, and that the reason is also why he is excited about the mission: Pluto is weird. — 00:00:30
  • ★★ The Kuiper belt is a ring of loosely packed icy, rocky worlds beyond Neptune, Pluto is its largest object, and Neptune's moon Triton, slightly bigger than Pluto, is similar in makeup. — 00:00:45

00:01:11 — Triton's capture from the Kuiper belt; Pluto's five weird moons and the crash risk they pose

  • ★★ Triton, which was visited, orbits Neptune backwards, so it was probably captured from the Kuiper belt about 4 billion years ago when Neptune and Uranus switched places, possibly destroying thousands of Pluto-sized bodies. (hedged) — 00:01:11
  • ★★ Pluto has 5 moons, among the weirdest in the Solar System; 2 were unknown before New Horizons launched, and unknown moons could crash the probe, ending the mission without data. — 00:01:35
  • ★ Pluto's moons were probably collected from the Kuiper belt; some have wobbly orbits, so on their surface sunrise would be unpredictable, rising in the east and setting in the north. (hedged) — 00:02:04

00:02:16 — New Horizons' speed, Jupiter boost, flyby, and slow data transmission over months

  • ★★ New Horizons is over 4.5 billion km away; it left Earth's orbit faster than any object before, got a speed boost from Jupiter, and cannot slow down, so it will fly past Pluto into the Kuiper belt. — 00:02:16
    • a number in question (doubtful): "more than 4.5 billion kilometers" — check against the recording
  • ★★ New Horizons cannot take pictures and transmit at once, so it will photograph during next week's (week of 13 July 2015) approach; transmission slower than an early-90s modem means months to receive all the data. — 00:02:37
  • ★★ Hank says the data will give a truly rich, deep and amazing understanding of this mostly unexplored world, and he is very excited. — 00:02:59

00:03:07 — Hank asks John to put a Pluto picture in Tuesday's video; Paper Towns comparison; sign-off

  • ★★ Hank tells John New Horizons makes its closest approach on Tuesday and asks him to put a picture in his Tuesday video. (hedged) — 00:03:08
  • ★ Hank is excited for everyone to see the pictures, just as John is excited for everyone to see the Paper Towns movie. (playful) — 00:03:13 · Paper Towns (film)

00:03:25 — P.S.: SciShow will cover New Horizons; check out Crash Course Kids

  • ★★ Hank says SciShow will cover New Horizons heavily and encourages viewers to check out Crash Course Kids, the new series for elementary school students. — 00:03:25 · SciShow, Crash Course Kids

Threads in this video

Where the stories that moved here went next

Mentioned

Central: New Horizons · Pluto

Also: People: Clyde Tombaugh

Projects: Crash Course Kids · SciShow

Works: Paper Towns (film)

Concepts: Nice model

Places: Jupiter · Kuiper belt · Neptune · Triton · Uranus · water park where Hank films

Also centred on Pluto: Knowing is not Understanding - Pluto and the P4A

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