Tickets to hear astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson at the Distinguished Speaker Series this weekend sold out almost immediately, reported the box office at the Performing Arts Center. Known by elementary school children around the world as the man who killed the planet Pluto, Tyson is scheduled to speak at 8 p.m. Thursday, March 27.
"I didn't kill Pluto," Tyson often says when asked. "I just drove the get-away car."
As director of the Hayden Planetarium at the Museum of Natural History in New York City, Tyson took Pluto out of the massive to-scale solar system display there. He was the first authority to demote Pluto from planet to gas giant after scientists at a world meeting in Italy demoted it. As author of "The Pluto Files: The Rise and Fall of American's Favorite Planet," he became the man who killed Pluto, leaving us with only eight planets.
"If Neptune were analogized with a Chevy Impala in mass, then how big is Pluto compared to that?" Tyson said during an interview with The Verge, a science news website. "Pluto would be a matchbox car sitting on the curb."
His arguments have not mattered to thousands of school children the world over. Tyson still receives letter employing him to reinstate Pluto as the ninth — and favorite! — planet.
Often a guest on "The Daily Show" with Jon Stewart, Tyson hosts the new and popular prime-time FOX-TV series, "Cosmos." Time magazine named him one of the 100 most influential people in the world in 2007. NPR has called him "the most powerful nerd in the universe," while People magazine anointed him, “the sexiest astrophysicist alive.” That could be the real reason the $28-$48 tickets went so fast.
To check on any stand-by tickets, call the box office at (361) 825-2787.
