Notes: The discovery of Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto

Let's take stock. We started out confident in our belief that it was just us, Sol, Luna and the fireflies. Now, we have knocked ourselves down a few pegs. We're not in the centre of the universe, there are other things orbiting the Sun (and not us, the bastards) and we have a bunch of equations that tell us how they move. We also have a brilliant device using lenses and tubes that let us see these things much more easily. Yes, telescopes were a particularly brilliant invention. They allowed us to observe the sky with unprecedented accuracy. Looking around our 5 neighbouring planets, the Moon, the stars, that odd comet...Yes, that one. No, it's definitely a comet, I'm sure. No, no tail as of yet but it's a comet, I'm certain of it.

Comet.

The discovery of Uranus is quite a pleasant one as it happens. It had been seen so very many times over the years but most put it down as being a star. Then a German fellow going by the name William Herschel moved to England, built himself a telescope and had a marvellous time with it until one March night in 1781 he noticed a fuzzy thing and thought to himself "Ah, a comet". Specifically he noted

"In the quartile near ζ Tauri ... either [a] Nebulous star or perhaps a comet"

He claimed as much to the Royal Society and the Astronomer Royal, the latter replying to him not knowing what to call it at all.

 "I don't know what to call it. It is as likely to be a regular planet moving in an orbit nearly circular to the sun as a Comet moving in a very eccentric ellipsis. I have not yet seen any coma or tail to it

Herschel continued to refer to it as a comet, albeit cautiously. By the end of the year however he had concluded that, as others had already begun to suspect, it was a new planet. The happy ending to this story, King George III threw money at Herschel on the condition that he move to Windsor and let the Royal family have a look through his telescopes. There is some more drama to be had about it's name but I'll let you discover that for yourself. It was discovered to have a really very long orbital period. 84 of our Earth years, in fact. Further observation also unearthed some rather interesting data. There was some anomalous factor in the orbit. Now we have dealt with this before. Something is going against our view of the universe and we need to sort it out. Thus we come up with some possible explanations:

• Poor quality observations. This is the favourite of the theorists. Those bloody experimentalists fucking up the data collection. Look at it again, our way is law. Newton's Law.
• Does the gravitational force really obey the inverse square law? Yes, on the other side of the coin, could it be the theorists at fault? Certainly this has been true before. Remember geocentricism, eh theorists? Yeah, choke on that.

Theorists and experimentalists are like that, in the same harmless way that Physicists pick on Chemists pick on Biologists for being a somehow lower form of science. And everyone picks on Psychology. Anyway, the debate raged on, until a couple of people, one French Urbain Jean Joseph le Verrier, one English John Couch Adams, proposed another idea. What if there is another planet, beyond Uranus, who's gravitational force was affecting the orbit of Uranus? Calculations were made, observations done, and low and behold, a "star" making planet like motions was observed. Le Verrier, being the one who actually saw the bloody thing (Seems that Adams did something of a hash job with his data) called it Neptune, and after years of debate, the credit was split between the two. Thus, in some small way, two nemeses came closer, as people, as humans. Yes, we the British could focus on making everyone else hate us instead.

Once again did history repeat itself, it seems, as Neptune's orbit also did not seem to conform to expectation. Ah, but we knew the tricks now. A new "Planet X" was predicted (Planet IX, surely), and eventually, in 1930 something was found. It was named, adorably, by an 11 year old schoolgirl with an enthusiasm for both astronomy and classical mythology. Venetia Burney figured that the name of the god of the underworld was an apt name for such a cold, dark planet. After the name was chosen by unanimous vote Venetia received £5 for her trouble. Adjusted, that is roughly £234 of our Pounds Sterling. Given to an 11 year old.

Fair play

Incidentally, it should be noted that the apparent mass of Pluto was no way near what would have been required to mess with Neptune's orbit. No, Pluto was not the Planet X everyone was looking for. A search for a 10th planet was made but this was all but abandoned following the discovery that the discrepancies in Neptune's orbit were due to a slight overestimation of it's mass. An overestimation of 0.05% in fact, comparable to the entire mass of Mars.

I would like to end the post by reminding everyone that 2012 is not yet over, and there is still every chance that our modern day Planet X, aka Nibiru will swing through the the solar system fucking some serious shit up as it goes before the year is out. Ignore any of those "scientists" or "astronomers" who might tell you that it is kind of impossible for it to actually exist. They're all just in on the conspiracy.