If you asked most people to name any modern-day scientists, they would mention Neil deGrasse Tyson and Bill Nye the Science Guy. We think of them as the two of the smartest people alive. Maybe we were wrong.
The astrophysicist decided to challenge his friend to the Reflex Challenge to see who had better reflexes. The answer is the Pluto demoter. But he had an advantage; he and his brother used to play Slap Jack all the time. So, Bill and Neil decided to try to see who is better at that one. The answer was the same.
Watching these great minds do childhood challenges made me, for the first time, realize that deGrasse Tyson did have the same science teachers as me in junior high school because those are the smartest things I could ever do in science class.
Neil deGrasse Tyson is a renowned scientist who is so easy to love. However, he does his best to destroy things we learned in our childhoods.
For example, he demoted poor Pluto to a dwarf planet, proved that the sky in Titanic was wrong, and where Barbieland would be.
So what has he destroyed now? Ever since I was a little kid, I was told if we dug a hole through the center of the Earth, we would come out in China.
Well, the StarTalk host revealed that is not where we wind up. Instead, we would drown because we would come out in the Indian Ocean.
I don’t care what he says; I am still going to say it is China, and Pluto will always be the ninth planet in our solar system.
I have mentioned this before: I went to the same junior high school as him and had the same teachers, but we didn’t learn the same things. I also didn’t learn to dance from the teachers of our other alumni, Alfonso Ribeiro.
Before Neil deGrasse Tyson was telling us how the sun shines, he almost showed us where the sun doesn’t shine.
That’s right. He told Kelly Clarkson on her talk show today that he was a dancer before he was an astrophysicist. And he needed some money. So his dancemates told him he could earn a few extra bucks stripping.
Therefore, he went to check out what they did. For their first dance, they moved their bodies to Jerry Lee Lewis’ Great Balls of Fire. And their balls were literally on fire. At that moment, he decided to tutor math to make extra money. And poor Pluto suffered for that last-minute decision. As did all the ladies who missed out on seeing his planets.
Can I tell I went to the same JHS as him? It never made sense to me because we didn’t turn out smart people. However, now it makes more sense that he went to the same elementary school as Steven Tyler and Alfonso Ribeiro. No offense to them, but we are just more about performing than brains in Riverdale.
Did you watch the Barbie movie and wonder where in the world Barbie Land is? You are not alone. Neil deGrasse Tyson wondered the same thing, so he studied the sky in the movie to determine its location.
Is it in Malibu? Nope, but it is in another sunny location. The astrophysicist wrote, “In Barbie the Movie, the Moon’s orientation places Barbie World between 20 & 40 degrees North Latitude on Earth. Palm trees further constrain latitude between 20 & 30 degrees.
“The Sun & Moon rose & set over the ocean.
“So if it’s in the United States, then Barbie World lands somewhere in the Florida Keys.”
This reveal almost makes up for Pluto not being a real planet. But not totally.
I have mentioned this before, but I am going to do it again. I went to the same Junior High School as Neil deGrasse Tyson. We might even have had the same science teachers. But only one of us barely passed that subject. And that was me.
So while we both went into the study of stars, his knowledge is much more important and interesting. That is why Jeopardy asked him to give the answers on the show with a category that is dedicated to the things he knows better than most people on Earth, The Universe.
It was not an easy category for the Jeopardy Masters and an impossible one for me. So while he went to PS 81 and had to travel to Manhattan to go to the Hayden Planetarium. My elementary school, PS 24, on the other end of Riverdale, had its own! Therefore, na-na-na! And yet he is the one that went into science and makes millions, and I only graduated because no teacher wanted to have me again!
Oh, and can we talk about the way he says Uranus? He says your-en-es, it is your-anus. Am I right?
