The Sky Is Not the Limit by Neil DeGrasse Tyson

Author:Neil DeGrasse Tyson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Prometheus
Published: 2018-10-09T00:00:00+00:00

I thought your necktie was just so, so.

—Bernard Kurtin

I own an asteroid. Rather, I own a piece of an iron-nickel asteroid that slammed into Earth at a speed of several miles per second, was collected by a meteorite hunter, and made its way to an auction house in New York City, where I put forth the winning bid. This particular asteroid fragment weighs a couple of pounds and spans the palm of my hand. Striations across its face betray an explosive episode somewhere in the asteroid's journey through 4.6 billion years. At a gavel price of $1,300, it qualifies as the most expensive paperweight I have ever owned.

At the same auction, a second, larger meteorite piqued my interest. It too had an iron-nickel composition but weighed about fifteen pounds and was the size and proportions of a discus. This particular meteorite had an esthetic quality to its shape—a natural hole had smoothly worn through the center so that when mounted upright, the meteor looked like a stylized doughnut that could easily pass for an objet d'art. Apparently, I wanted it more than anybody else in the room because I soon became the lone bidder against a person who was posting live bids to the auctioneer via telephone from California. The unidentified caller and I leapfrogged right up to my spending limit, and then some, but my pocketbook was evidently no match for the phone-bidder's interest level and resources. Several weeks later I learned from the auction house that my opposing bidder was a famous producer of science-fiction films. Clearly, no matter how much money I had planned to spend that afternoon, I was not going home with that meteorite. My disappointment eased, however, when I realized that at least one great filmmaker shared my interest in acquiring an extraterrestrial of verifiable provenance.

Auctions notwithstanding, in 2001 the International Astronomical Union named an asteroid in my honor, out of respect for my continued efforts to bring the universe down to Earth. David Levy, patron saint of comet and asteroid hunting, discovered this particular asteroid and proposed my name for it without my knowing. He did this even after we found ourselves on opposite sides of the debate to demote the planet Pluto from its standing as a bona fide planet among the others of the solar system. Levy had authored a biography of Clyde Tombaugh, who discovered Pluto. It is obvious then, which side of the debate Levy was on. My asteroid orbits in the asteroid belt, about two and a half times farther than Earth from the Sun, along with tens of thousands of others. It's officially called 13123 Tyson, but one can't get too bigheaded about this, given that 13,122 asteroids before mine got named after some other person, place, or thing. I have nonetheless enjoyed the distinction, and I'm glad, last I checked, it's not headed for Earth.

Of the cataloged asteroids in the solar system, several can be seen and tracked with a small telescope. The word “asteroid” translates

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