I thoroughly enjoyed this book. If you've been through a science class in school, it can seem that science is an orderly process, well thought out, without a lot of controversy. This book delves into a subject and illustrates what scientific discoveries really look like - months or years of research before making announcements, controversy, and perhaps more time analyzing data on a computer than actually collecting it via telescopes. Mike Brown does it in a way that is engaging and easy to understand. Here are some points on the origin of planets, and how the definition has changed in recent years:
p 21 - The original ancient Greek meaning of the word planet was simply "wanderer," or something that moved in the sky. As the sky slowly revolves throughout the year, the stars stay in fixed patterns while the wanderers move separately and conspicuously through the constellations of the zodiac. There are five visible planets - Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn.
p 21 - 22 - Our basic units of time are based on the sky: A year traced the time it took for the sun to go all the way around the sky to reappear at the same location again, while a month ("moon"-th) is the amount of time it takes for the moon to circle the earth. The seven days of the week are even named after the seven original planets. Sunday, Mo[o]nday and Satur[n]day. Tiw was an ancient Germanic god of war, as Mars was to the Romans, so Tuesday is actually Mars' day, Wednesday is Woden's day, the carrier of the dead, equivalent to one of the roles of Mercury. Thor was the Norse god of thunder, similar to Jupiter in Roman mythology. Friday is the day of Venus in the guise of the Norse Frigga, the goddess of married love.
p 27 - On the discovery of Pluto - some astronomers didn't want to call Pluto a planet, and thought perhaps it was better classified as an asteroid. Though it looked like and behaved like no other planet known, there was no other way to classify it, so it became accepted as the ninth planet, had the element plutonium named after it, and remained unchallenged for almost seventy years as the tiny lonely oddball at the edge of the solar system. In the early 2000s, there were discoveries made that showed that Pluto is actually part of a vast population of the Kuiper belt. The new discovery of the Kuiper belt would force astronomers to reconsider the status of Pluto.
p 69 - On naming things in the sky - There are rules, decided upon by the International Astronomical Union, for the naming of most everything in the sky. Craters on Mercury have to be named for deceased poets; moons of Uranus are named for Shakespearean characters. For objects in the Kuiper belt, the rules said the name had to be a creation deity.
Mike Brown continues to relay his story of making discoveries of possible planets on the edges of our solar system. It is an educating and entertaining tale of the work it takes to do this, how the scientific community is informed of the progress, how he nick-named and formally named his discoveries, how he kept (or didn't keep) a work-life balance, and ultimately, how one of his discoveries affected the status of Pluto.
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