With so much news surrounding the Pluto flyby this week, comedian and talkshow host Stephen Colbert sat down with one of the most famous names in astronomy, Neil deGrasse Tyson, and taught him a thing or two about Pluto.
A clearly excited Colbert was speaking to deGrasse Tyson just prior to the first close-up photos of the flyby being released by NASA, but it looked like it was going to take some convincing for the latter to get too excited.
Prior and during the New Horizons spacecraft launch, deGrasse Tyson was actually one of the forefront proponents of demoting Pluto from its planetary status and soon after the craft took off on its long journey, he got his wishes and saw Pluto become a dwarf planet.
That’s not to say he wasn’t excited by the whole affair, as he describes how the dwarf planet on the outer edge of our solar system has never been photographed before, until now, all at an incredibly fast speed.
Putting a somehow hilarious dampener on the achievement, deGrasse Tyson said: “It would be totally awesome if it was a much bigger place,” only for Colbert to retort by taking out his phone and correcting the great scientific mind on his error.
Take that Neil ‘Blasé’ Tyson, as Colbert calls him, you’ve been schooled.
Stephen Colbert image via Christine Grabig/Flickr
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