ScopeDoggie SpaceBlog
Portal To Distant Suns
Astronomy questions from kids, Part 2
- December
- 26
8:24 pm Education
My friend Tina is a teacher in Austin. She asked her sixth grade students to send me questions they had about astronomy, and I answer them on question. There were so many I had to split this into *5* parts!
This is Part 2, and these are the questions they asked me:
1) Why is gravity different on the Moon?
2) Why are planets round?
3) How deep do the gases on Jupiter go?
4) Are Uranus and Neptune solid ice?
5) Why is Uranus tipped over?
6) Can a moon have a moon?
7) Can you touch a comet and land on an asteroid?
8) Does Titan smell like ****? 
[NOTE: I made an error in this one; Titan's atmosphere is mostly nitrogen, with about 1-2% methane. That's lot more than on Earth, but it's not "mostly methane" as I say in the video. Oops.]
9) Will my school get hit by a meteorite?
10) What would happen if you hit a golf ball on the Moon?
23 comments
when a planet is forming, gas concentrates into one tiny point and it keeps concentrating basically because of the force with which gas clouds collide. When it’s concentrated enough, the gas actually forms liquid and evenutally solid matter, and since its mass is immense, its gravity is so great it starts attracting gas around it and that’s what makes a planet and its core.
Posted by rebirthsaph, on December 31st, 2008, at 11:36 am. #.
this videos are great fool! keep it up
Posted by ZeromusIV, on January 1st, 2009, at 9:11 am. #.
I’m not Phil, but I’ll try to answer:
When we’re looking at a distant galaxy, you need to remember that it’s about 100,000 light years across. The detail we’re seeing are the large structures in gas strands, galactic arms, etc. If we were to zoom in much more, OTOH, the image would be incredibly blurry.
Pluto is much closer, but TRILLIONS of times smaller. The details we want to see on Pluto are smaller in scale to the entirety of Pluto than a spiral arm is in relation to it’s galaxy.
Posted by angryscott, on January 3rd, 2009, at 6:43 am. #.
I’m going to guess the gravity of the sun eventually corrected the initial impact of the foreign object causing the irregularly tilted planets to maintain their tilted and inverted axises. Think of how much gravitational force the sun on everything in our solar system.
Posted by VicariousJukebox, on January 5th, 2009, at 10:42 pm. #.
Nevermind. Somehow I envisioned Earth rotating along two axes. Ridiculous.
Posted by khoavuong, on January 8th, 2009, at 2:27 pm. #.
idk why boowiedude’s comment has a score of -6 but hes right it is impossible for a planet not to form into a sphere
Posted by wvb93, on January 9th, 2009, at 10:55 pm. #.
Not only are these questions good for kids, but they’re great for people of adult age, too. General knowledge about astronomy is always wonderful.
Thanks!!
Posted by twothirtyam, on January 11th, 2009, at 3:08 am. #.
If a planet gets its tilt from an impact, what would stop it from turning in that direction?
Posted by khoavuong, on January 11th, 2009, at 8:24 pm. #.
Some of those sixth graders have some pretty cook questions.
Posted by ThePhascolarctos, on January 13th, 2009, at 12:02 pm. #.
actually you should have closed with “don’t believe in commercials at all”, that’s a great advice for life
Posted by intigfx, on January 15th, 2009, at 11:14 pm. #.
Really great that you’re doing this for kids.
Posted by eleveneggs, on January 16th, 2009, at 11:58 pm. #.
thank you Phil for posting these four videos. We watched all of them with our son. It’s really great for you to do these Q n A questions for kids. Keep making videos, we really enjoy them!
Posted by celsias, on January 19th, 2009, at 5:10 pm. #.
How many copies of Bad Astronomy does he have in that bookcase?
Posted by JamesTCA, on January 21st, 2009, at 11:40 am. #.
Why not? He had a golf cart.
Posted by foley15136, on January 22nd, 2009, at 12:17 pm. #.
Yes, but he didn’t play all 18 holes.
Posted by noswonky, on January 24th, 2009, at 7:13 pm. #.
it’s impossible for a planet to not form into a sphere
Posted by boowiedude, on January 26th, 2009, at 1:01 am. #.
You are a great inspiration to kids!
Your should do educational videos for kids that could be viewed by all American kids.
Posted by Salladsdressing, on January 27th, 2009, at 3:17 pm. #.
The quality of these videos is surprisingly high. Resolution I mean.
Posted by Mjhavok, on January 30th, 2009, at 11:26 pm. #.
Do you like MST3K?
Posted by foley15136, on February 2nd, 2009, at 2:03 pm. #.
Re: question 5—I thought Venus had a retrograde rotation, rather than a prograde rotation with 180º of tilt. This, at least, is what nineplanets {dot} org says. Someone please correct me if I’m wrong.
Posted by ZorkFox, on February 4th, 2009, at 11:55 pm. #.
It’s really great of you to answer questions for kids!
Posted by ThyGoddess, on February 9th, 2009, at 8:27 pm. #.
Phil, answering questions for kids is the coolest of the cool.
As a kid, I grew up with Carl Sagan’s Cosmos — and still consider astronomy one of my fondest, most visceral subjects.
I had Carl to deepen my wonder and awareness of both science and astronomy. These kids have you, who also crusade for real science.
I’d have to say they’re pretty darned lucky. 
Posted by mojojojo928, on February 10th, 2009, at 4:19 pm. #.
Good work!
One critique only. Equating mass with size is a little misleading. Large things don’t necessarily have a lot of mass. I know you know this, and it seems a piddling point, but accuracy is the key.
Keep up the good work. Great video.
Posted by hackenbollox, on December 30th, 2008, at 3:39 am. #.