WEBVTT 00:00:11.120 --> 00:00:16.879 lost in the fog of a cosmic storm floating on 00:00:16.879 --> 00:00:21.120 whimsical wavelengths is the norm dancing through 00:00:21.120 --> 00:00:30.799 the stars chasing spectrums of light Welcome 00:00:30.799 --> 00:00:33.960 back to another episode of Whimsical Wavelengths. 00:00:33.979 --> 00:00:37.479 Before I jump right in, it's time to do a little 00:00:37.479 --> 00:00:41.600 bit of housekeeping. First off, happy Christmas, 00:00:41.799 --> 00:00:44.600 merry holidays, and all the mixing and matching 00:00:44.600 --> 00:00:47.100 of all the different holidays and solsticness 00:00:47.100 --> 00:00:50.460 that is all going on. I've got my Christmas tree 00:00:50.460 --> 00:00:53.539 already put up in my living room. My own two 00:00:53.539 --> 00:00:56.500 monsters are... Counting down the days, using 00:00:56.500 --> 00:01:00.119 my homemade advent calendar that I do every year. 00:01:00.159 --> 00:01:02.579 I put little boxes and things together with different 00:01:02.579 --> 00:01:06.879 kind of candy. It's a fun way to be able to count 00:01:06.879 --> 00:01:09.280 down, and for kids, they get so incredibly excited. 00:01:09.420 --> 00:01:11.760 It's a festive time of year, a time where we 00:01:11.760 --> 00:01:14.459 come together. It's also the time of year where 00:01:14.459 --> 00:01:16.939 we start reflecting on the year that has passed. 00:01:17.359 --> 00:01:19.540 And here on Whimsical Wavelengths, it's been 00:01:19.540 --> 00:01:23.939 a pretty damn good year. Into Season 2. And just 00:01:23.939 --> 00:01:26.980 keep going. I think I'm putting together something 00:01:26.980 --> 00:01:31.140 that is really useful and perhaps filling a niche 00:01:31.140 --> 00:01:34.319 that this world needs a little bit more of. But 00:01:34.319 --> 00:01:37.599 to get better, I need you guys. So hopefully 00:01:37.599 --> 00:01:41.579 in this next year, you will put in a New Year's 00:01:41.579 --> 00:01:44.480 resolution to reach out and, I don't know, give 00:01:44.480 --> 00:01:46.969 me some feedback. Tell me what works, what doesn't 00:01:46.969 --> 00:01:49.750 work, and all that other things. Oh, also, the 00:01:49.750 --> 00:01:52.230 very first episode of the year will actually 00:01:52.230 --> 00:01:56.390 be an encore edition. I need that extra two -week 00:01:56.390 --> 00:01:59.430 period to get everything ready and make sure 00:01:59.430 --> 00:02:00.950 that I'm not always behind the eight ball, that 00:02:00.950 --> 00:02:02.950 I'm putting my best foot forward and producing 00:02:02.950 --> 00:02:06.989 content that at least I want to hear. And hopefully 00:02:06.989 --> 00:02:10.939 you do as well. So that very first one, I believe 00:02:10.939 --> 00:02:13.520 it'll be the first Monday in January, there will 00:02:13.520 --> 00:02:16.280 be an encore edition, and then we'll move in 00:02:16.280 --> 00:02:19.280 with my past PhD supervisor, Dr. Glenn Williams 00:02:19.280 --> 00:02:21.960 -Jones, as part of a two -part episode, although 00:02:21.960 --> 00:02:25.900 two different guests, just the location of the 00:02:25.900 --> 00:02:29.979 science generally stays the same. I'm totally 00:02:29.979 --> 00:02:32.439 looking forward to it, and I hope you guys are 00:02:32.439 --> 00:02:36.530 as well. So... Why am I doing this? Well, yeah, 00:02:36.610 --> 00:02:38.590 because I'm a little bit behind. Why am I behind? 00:02:38.750 --> 00:02:41.009 Because of that trip to Saudi Arabia earlier 00:02:41.009 --> 00:02:44.990 in October. Fantastic trip. So glad I went there. 00:02:45.310 --> 00:02:47.789 There's certain things, particularly outside 00:02:47.789 --> 00:02:50.949 of the major city, that were just culturally 00:02:50.949 --> 00:02:55.650 hard for me to understand. You can always ask 00:02:55.650 --> 00:02:57.870 me over beers at one time if you ever catch me 00:02:57.870 --> 00:03:00.409 at a pub. Ask me about it, but I don't think 00:03:00.409 --> 00:03:02.580 it's really worthwhile. Going on to... In the 00:03:02.580 --> 00:03:05.960 podcast. Why? It's not science -related, and 00:03:05.960 --> 00:03:10.259 it's for my day job. So, this is a solo episode. 00:03:10.819 --> 00:03:12.919 I'm setting it up just for myself, because every 00:03:12.919 --> 00:03:15.580 once in a while, I take a deviation. That is 00:03:15.580 --> 00:03:18.280 more about history, instead of, like, cutting 00:03:18.280 --> 00:03:21.900 -edge research with guests and the like. In season 00:03:21.900 --> 00:03:24.759 one, I did Nikola Tesla, the Mediterranean Sea, 00:03:24.960 --> 00:03:28.990 and the rise and fall of leaded gasoline. Here, 00:03:29.009 --> 00:03:32.110 in Season 2, this is the first episode in this 00:03:32.110 --> 00:03:36.610 kind of vein. You, the listener, what would be 00:03:36.610 --> 00:03:39.830 fun for you? Tell me. Perhaps I'll find a way 00:03:39.830 --> 00:03:41.969 to make an episode all about it. And more importantly, 00:03:42.050 --> 00:03:44.250 give me some more feedback of whether these types 00:03:44.250 --> 00:03:48.219 of episodes are good for you. They take me a 00:03:48.219 --> 00:03:51.479 significantly more time and effort to produce 00:03:51.479 --> 00:03:53.780 and do the research, because they're not really 00:03:53.780 --> 00:03:56.219 within my wheelhouse, but I feel there's still 00:03:56.219 --> 00:03:59.719 a lot there to be gained to have someone talk 00:03:59.719 --> 00:04:03.580 about it and do the storytelling. So today we're 00:04:03.580 --> 00:04:07.439 going to look at the planets. Why? Because there's 00:04:07.439 --> 00:04:10.020 lots we can get into, from prehistoric times 00:04:10.020 --> 00:04:13.169 to today. And the search for, quote -unquote, 00:04:13.289 --> 00:04:16.329 Planet Nine. It'll be whimsical. It'll be fun. 00:04:16.769 --> 00:04:21.569 Well, fun, at least for me, anyway. And it also 00:04:21.569 --> 00:04:26.050 will chronicle science progress. How we learn 00:04:26.050 --> 00:04:28.850 new tools and how those tools enter the scene 00:04:28.850 --> 00:04:32.290 and change how we view the universe around us. 00:04:33.189 --> 00:04:36.449 I could cut this whole idea to famous quotes 00:04:36.449 --> 00:04:40.050 like... If I've seen further, it is by Standing 00:04:40.050 --> 00:04:42.649 on the Shoulders of Giants by Sir Isaac Newton. 00:04:42.910 --> 00:04:45.709 Or if I wanted more historical, there are many 00:04:45.709 --> 00:04:47.910 famous quotes. But I'll stick with, you have 00:04:47.910 --> 00:04:50.269 to know the past to understand the present, which 00:04:50.269 --> 00:04:54.550 is attributed to Carl Sagan. This idea on analysis 00:04:54.550 --> 00:05:00.310 is absolutely required right now. We have to 00:05:00.310 --> 00:05:03.300 know the past to understand the present. So much 00:05:03.300 --> 00:05:05.939 is being covered up, or forgotten, or perhaps 00:05:05.939 --> 00:05:10.920 just turned a blind eye to. And the scary bit 00:05:10.920 --> 00:05:13.600 of maybe sounding political, vaccination is something 00:05:13.600 --> 00:05:16.839 that instantaneously comes to mind for me. The 00:05:16.839 --> 00:05:19.800 hard lessons of the past are being completely 00:05:19.800 --> 00:05:24.360 ignored. There is no clear data set suggesting 00:05:24.360 --> 00:05:26.459 that the current vaccine schedule in, say, Canada, 00:05:26.579 --> 00:05:28.420 and I could choose a different country, is causing 00:05:28.420 --> 00:05:30.620 more harms than the risks of getting the pathogens 00:05:30.620 --> 00:05:34.649 if not vaccinated. Yeah, scientific speak, but 00:05:34.649 --> 00:05:38.269 it should end the discussion for population scale 00:05:38.269 --> 00:05:44.610 ideas. But I digress. That deviation is to show 00:05:44.610 --> 00:05:48.529 understanding the past scientific endeavors is 00:05:48.529 --> 00:05:51.389 useful for providing context to the present and 00:05:51.389 --> 00:05:55.110 ultimately the future. So the planets, because 00:05:55.110 --> 00:05:58.569 no matter the discipline, the process is similar. 00:05:58.810 --> 00:06:04.699 To start, to start. Well, how about which planets 00:06:04.699 --> 00:06:08.300 have we known about since, like, the antiquity? 00:06:08.680 --> 00:06:14.120 Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn. For 00:06:14.120 --> 00:06:16.920 each of these planets, the earliest records are 00:06:16.920 --> 00:06:19.899 from the Babylonian astronomers of about 1000 00:06:19.899 --> 00:06:26.480 BCE. Or, you know, 3000 -ish years ago. They 00:06:26.480 --> 00:06:29.720 made meticulous observations of the night sky 00:06:29.720 --> 00:06:33.480 by eye. They are the first, as far as we know 00:06:33.480 --> 00:06:36.079 of anyway, to come up with a mathematical model 00:06:36.079 --> 00:06:39.759 of the sky. Their work also set up modern -day 00:06:39.759 --> 00:06:44.139 astrology, zodiac signs. If you believe or use 00:06:44.139 --> 00:06:46.839 them, then you are in a way taking part in a 00:06:46.839 --> 00:06:49.579 spiritual tradition that dates back almost 3 00:06:49.579 --> 00:06:53.879 ,000 years ago. That, of course, doesn't make 00:06:53.879 --> 00:06:56.560 them, well... the modern version anyway, any 00:06:56.560 --> 00:06:59.500 more correct or useful. For instance, I'm a Virgo, 00:06:59.560 --> 00:07:02.740 so let's do a quick Google search and see what 00:07:02.740 --> 00:07:06.439 it says about me and podcasting. Well, according 00:07:06.439 --> 00:07:09.699 to the Times of India, Virgo is going to have 00:07:09.699 --> 00:07:12.199 a research -heavy podcast with well -structured 00:07:12.199 --> 00:07:16.279 episodes, fact -checks everything, uses timestamps, 00:07:16.360 --> 00:07:19.259 which I don't, and has a highly dedicated but 00:07:19.259 --> 00:07:23.360 small audience that swears by every word. I'm 00:07:23.360 --> 00:07:26.279 not sure that part's true either. Reader's Digest 00:07:26.279 --> 00:07:31.360 suggests Virgos will create true crime podcasts. 00:07:31.819 --> 00:07:34.759 Generally, I detest true crime. There are caveats 00:07:34.759 --> 00:07:38.079 to this, but in reality, when you get down to 00:07:38.079 --> 00:07:40.160 it, it bothers me because it warps our perception. 00:07:40.920 --> 00:07:43.480 Statistics and reality often get left behind 00:07:43.480 --> 00:07:48.060 in true crime. Some kind of magazine or website 00:07:48.060 --> 00:07:52.370 is another idea. Bustle is the name. It doesn't 00:07:52.370 --> 00:07:55.610 even have Virgo listed and directly contradicts 00:07:55.610 --> 00:07:57.750 the times of India with respect to one of the 00:07:57.750 --> 00:08:00.610 other zodiac signs, Aries, as they were rated 00:08:00.610 --> 00:08:03.509 among the least likely to create a long -running 00:08:03.509 --> 00:08:05.970 podcast and in here, in Bustle, the most likely. 00:08:06.870 --> 00:08:10.329 Yeah. The last thing I'll mention. With this 00:08:10.329 --> 00:08:14.129 search and the whole zodiac signs is one result 00:08:14.129 --> 00:08:16.750 that came up that suggested those... with the 00:08:16.750 --> 00:08:19.790 sign of Aquarius or Virgo, are most likely to 00:08:19.790 --> 00:08:24.990 start a cult. Yeah, it's a mixed bag out there. 00:08:25.069 --> 00:08:27.629 Nothing empirical or anything. I can't assign 00:08:27.629 --> 00:08:32.850 a number to it. But, yeah, they're not scientific. 00:08:32.970 --> 00:08:37.389 Let's just go with that. So, back on track. Away 00:08:37.389 --> 00:08:39.970 from the zodiac signs. It's important to state 00:08:39.970 --> 00:08:42.149 that the planets in ancient times, back to 1000 00:08:42.149 --> 00:08:45.940 BCE, They were thought of as moving or wandering 00:08:45.940 --> 00:08:50.500 stars. They weren't thought of as worlds. The 00:08:50.500 --> 00:08:52.879 Babylonians were making observations of these 00:08:52.879 --> 00:08:55.659 wandering stars and creating mathematical models 00:08:55.659 --> 00:08:59.879 around 300 BCE to 400 BCE to predict when they 00:08:59.879 --> 00:09:03.440 would reappear in the sky. The word planet comes 00:09:03.440 --> 00:09:06.179 from the Greeks, actually. I'm not going to butcher 00:09:06.179 --> 00:09:09.419 this pronunciation, but planetai, loosely meaning 00:09:09.419 --> 00:09:13.289 wandering light. and not a world or what we have 00:09:13.289 --> 00:09:15.250 as a modern understanding of what a planet is. 00:09:15.470 --> 00:09:18.830 So a very quick rundown on the Greek understanding 00:09:18.830 --> 00:09:22.029 of the planets. Mercury, the Greeks originally 00:09:22.029 --> 00:09:25.129 thought it was Apollo when seen at sunrise and 00:09:25.129 --> 00:09:28.389 Hermes at sunset, two separate objects, but eventually 00:09:28.389 --> 00:09:30.889 they did get around to recognizing it as one 00:09:30.889 --> 00:09:35.269 body or light. Venus, also thought was two different 00:09:35.269 --> 00:09:38.879 objects based on morning and evening. Mars, probably 00:09:38.879 --> 00:09:41.240 because its red color was always just seen as 00:09:41.240 --> 00:09:44.779 one object instead of two, and Jupiter and Saturn 00:09:44.779 --> 00:09:47.039 had the same stories as Mars, where they were 00:09:47.039 --> 00:09:52.500 thought of as a single object. Before 1540, the 00:09:52.500 --> 00:09:54.759 conventional understanding of the universe had 00:09:54.759 --> 00:09:58.200 Earth at its center and everything revolved around 00:09:58.200 --> 00:10:02.299 the Earth. Complex mathematical formulas could 00:10:02.299 --> 00:10:05.440 predict the positions of the Sun, the Moon, and 00:10:05.440 --> 00:10:10.049 the wandering stars. i .e. the planets. The mathematics 00:10:10.049 --> 00:10:13.690 were developed by Plutomi, a mathematician born 00:10:13.690 --> 00:10:16.789 in Alexandria, Egypt, which was a Roman province 00:10:16.789 --> 00:10:22.590 during his lifetime. See, I almost, almost managed 00:10:22.590 --> 00:10:24.450 to escape the episode without mentioning the 00:10:24.450 --> 00:10:28.210 Roman Empire. Well, this mathematical model lasted 00:10:28.210 --> 00:10:33.409 for nearly 1 ,500 years. Then came Nicolaus Copernicus, 00:10:33.649 --> 00:10:36.700 the heliocentric model. putting the sun at the 00:10:36.700 --> 00:10:40.460 center. This new model simplified everything, 00:10:40.799 --> 00:10:44.879 but it was not accepted everywhere at first. 00:10:45.059 --> 00:10:47.120 In fact, it wasn't accepted basically anywhere, 00:10:47.360 --> 00:10:50.679 mostly for religious reasons, and there was no 00:10:50.679 --> 00:10:53.639 clear observational evidence for the heliocentric 00:10:53.639 --> 00:10:56.559 model to begin with, and it really delayed its 00:10:56.559 --> 00:10:59.059 acceptance. But all that began to change with 00:10:59.059 --> 00:11:03.379 the invention of the telescope in 1608 in the 00:11:03.379 --> 00:11:06.580 Netherlands. Galileo took that invention, improved 00:11:06.580 --> 00:11:09.120 on the optics, and turned it towards the night 00:11:09.120 --> 00:11:11.720 sky. Quickly, observations of the moon's mountains 00:11:11.720 --> 00:11:14.379 and the valleys and Venus showed a series of 00:11:14.379 --> 00:11:17.639 phases like the moon proving Venus orbits the 00:11:17.639 --> 00:11:20.480 sun. And the discovery of the moons around Jupiter 00:11:20.480 --> 00:11:23.220 showed that not everything revolved around Earth. 00:11:24.539 --> 00:11:27.360 Unfortunately for Galileo, the Catholic Church 00:11:27.360 --> 00:11:30.710 thought this idea was dangerous. I feel even 00:11:30.710 --> 00:11:33.450 today I'm going into dangerous territory here, 00:11:33.509 --> 00:11:35.690 which is kind of wild when you think about it. 00:11:35.750 --> 00:11:37.889 Science is about observations and explaining 00:11:37.889 --> 00:11:40.190 those observations with continual tests and data. 00:11:41.029 --> 00:11:43.289 Observational evidence was showing that the Earth 00:11:43.289 --> 00:11:46.429 was not the center of the universe. The issue 00:11:46.429 --> 00:11:49.710 was the theological understanding that the universe 00:11:49.710 --> 00:11:53.500 placed the Earth at its center. The Bible had 00:11:53.500 --> 00:11:56.580 a number of passages which were interpreted to 00:11:56.580 --> 00:11:59.379 mean the sun moved around the earth and the earth 00:11:59.379 --> 00:12:03.580 was stationary. So a heliocentric model of the 00:12:03.580 --> 00:12:06.679 universe contradicted faith and therefore represented 00:12:06.679 --> 00:12:10.500 heresy. Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition. 00:12:10.659 --> 00:12:12.500 Okay, well, we're not there yet. The Spanish 00:12:12.500 --> 00:12:14.860 Inquisition doesn't exist. And if you only spent 00:12:14.860 --> 00:12:17.279 10 minutes or so searching, that's the story 00:12:17.279 --> 00:12:20.139 that would be told. However, it's a bit more 00:12:20.139 --> 00:12:23.100 complicated than that. Copernicus' heliocentric 00:12:23.100 --> 00:12:25.120 model was originally treated like a mathematical 00:12:25.120 --> 00:12:28.340 argument or assumption, if you will. It didn't 00:12:28.340 --> 00:12:30.820 have any evidence behind it. It was a clever 00:12:30.820 --> 00:12:34.820 solution, as it was conceptually simpler. But 00:12:34.820 --> 00:12:37.340 the Earth didn't move, because that would be 00:12:37.340 --> 00:12:41.399 totally crazy. Well, with the new observations 00:12:41.399 --> 00:12:44.000 by Galileo, the scientific world quickly divided 00:12:44.000 --> 00:12:47.340 itself into three different boxes. There were 00:12:47.340 --> 00:12:50.649 the philosophers, or the... Aristotelians, who 00:12:50.649 --> 00:12:53.529 were adamant that the heavens were perfect and 00:12:53.529 --> 00:12:57.070 unchanging. The moon was made of ether, not an 00:12:57.070 --> 00:13:00.070 earthly matter. It is surprising how often this 00:13:00.070 --> 00:13:02.009 idea still actually makes its appearances today 00:13:02.009 --> 00:13:05.690 on the fringes of, like, Flat Earth and other 00:13:05.690 --> 00:13:09.110 weird Facebook groups that I have been a part 00:13:09.110 --> 00:13:12.610 of. This group of Aristotelians would go as far 00:13:12.610 --> 00:13:15.870 as suggesting telescopes had flawed lenses or 00:13:15.870 --> 00:13:19.289 that Galileo was misinterpreting the optical 00:13:19.289 --> 00:13:22.889 illusions. Obstinate and find ways to throw mud 00:13:22.889 --> 00:13:25.169 towards what did not align with the world view. 00:13:26.129 --> 00:13:29.590 Oh, sounds so familiar. There was the church's 00:13:29.590 --> 00:13:31.710 choice to explain the data and seemed to be where 00:13:31.710 --> 00:13:33.769 the majority of the astronomers at the time were. 00:13:35.110 --> 00:13:37.610 Tachronics, named after the person who developed 00:13:37.610 --> 00:13:39.960 the paradigm. They claimed the data could be 00:13:39.960 --> 00:13:44.320 explained if the Sun and the Moon orbited Earth 00:13:44.320 --> 00:13:48.740 and the other planets orbited the Sun. Very important 00:13:48.740 --> 00:13:51.720 to note, this model at the time could explain 00:13:51.720 --> 00:13:54.820 the observations. It had the added benefit of 00:13:54.820 --> 00:13:58.519 being closer to the previous understanding. The 00:13:58.519 --> 00:14:02.200 Earth didn't move. Scripture interpretation stayed 00:14:02.200 --> 00:14:07.200 intact. Then there was the Copernicus heliocentric 00:14:07.200 --> 00:14:10.820 model. Simpler, but if the Earth was moving, 00:14:11.240 --> 00:14:15.759 parallax should be able to be measured. Well, 00:14:15.840 --> 00:14:18.559 what is parallax, you ask? Well, let's describe 00:14:18.559 --> 00:14:22.200 how you can experience it, how, if safe to do 00:14:22.200 --> 00:14:24.500 so, you can do it right now, and perform this 00:14:24.500 --> 00:14:27.139 very simple experiment, i .e., if you're driving 00:14:27.139 --> 00:14:30.580 a car, please don't do it. Hold your thumb out 00:14:30.580 --> 00:14:34.159 at arm's length. Close one eye and align your 00:14:34.159 --> 00:14:37.399 thumb with a distance object. like a clock or 00:14:37.399 --> 00:14:40.600 a picture or a tree if you're outside without 00:14:40.600 --> 00:14:43.379 moving your thumb close that eye and open the 00:14:43.379 --> 00:14:46.700 other your thumb will appear to have jumped to 00:14:46.700 --> 00:14:49.360 a new position against that distant background 00:14:49.360 --> 00:14:53.419 so if the earth moved stars should shift in the 00:14:53.419 --> 00:14:58.960 sky yearly now no parallax was measured until 00:14:58.960 --> 00:15:02.179 eighteen thirty eight using bessel's measurement 00:15:02.179 --> 00:15:06.480 of sixty one sign which is a star It was the 00:15:06.480 --> 00:15:08.980 first successful measurement to show parallax 00:15:08.980 --> 00:15:12.639 from Earth. I know that this is a science podcast, 00:15:12.980 --> 00:15:15.019 but typically I try to stay away from overloading 00:15:15.019 --> 00:15:17.779 with numbers. However, it's kind of here important 00:15:17.779 --> 00:15:20.360 to understand the parallax problem here and show 00:15:20.360 --> 00:15:22.919 why early astronomers just couldn't possibly 00:15:22.919 --> 00:15:27.120 detect it and why the heliocentric model took 00:15:27.120 --> 00:15:30.220 so long to really be fully adopted. So let's 00:15:30.220 --> 00:15:32.539 start with the best case scenario, the closest 00:15:32.539 --> 00:15:36.519 star to Earth. What is Proxima? Centauri, which 00:15:36.519 --> 00:15:41.679 is about 4 .24 light years away, or 268 ,000 00:15:41.679 --> 00:15:45.860 astronomical units. If we use the Earth's orbit 00:15:45.860 --> 00:15:48.659 instead of our two eyes, and astronomical units 00:15:48.659 --> 00:15:52.460 is just the distance, the average distance of 00:15:52.460 --> 00:15:55.940 the Earth to the Sun. It's just one of those 00:15:55.940 --> 00:15:58.100 conventions. Gives us something a little easier 00:15:58.100 --> 00:16:00.460 to work with instead of like millions and millions 00:16:00.460 --> 00:16:03.960 and millions of kilometers and miles. So if we 00:16:03.960 --> 00:16:05.860 use the Earth's orbit instead of our two eyes, 00:16:06.000 --> 00:16:09.519 i .e. the solstices or the equinoxes, and view 00:16:09.519 --> 00:16:12.259 the same star, the distance between the baseline 00:16:12.259 --> 00:16:17.299 is two astronomical units. Placing it into the 00:16:17.299 --> 00:16:21.740 equation works out to approximately one astronomical 00:16:21.740 --> 00:16:26.850 unit over 260... 8 000 astronomical units or 00:16:26.850 --> 00:16:31.169 3 .7 times 10 to the negative 6 radians or 0 00:16:31.169 --> 00:16:36.929 .76 arc seconds okay those are numbers all right 00:16:36.929 --> 00:16:38.870 now let's get back to something we can actually 00:16:38.870 --> 00:16:41.809 relate those numbers to this is the equivalent 00:16:41.809 --> 00:16:46.289 to being able to see the width of a coin five 00:16:46.289 --> 00:16:50.509 kilometers away yeah i i don't think we're going 00:16:50.509 --> 00:16:54.620 to see a person if we just use our eyes at five 00:16:54.620 --> 00:16:58.559 kilometers away but the width of a coin that 00:16:58.559 --> 00:17:02.700 would be impressive and it comes down to instrumentation 00:17:02.700 --> 00:17:06.839 and precision at best pre -1600 naked eye measurements 00:17:06.839 --> 00:17:11.440 had errors of one to ten arc minutes or 60 to 00:17:11.440 --> 00:17:15.259 600 times larger than that width of coin that 00:17:15.259 --> 00:17:19.210 we were just talking about and early telescopes 00:17:19.210 --> 00:17:23.349 had instrument accuracy of maybe 10 to 20 arc 00:17:23.349 --> 00:17:26.349 seconds at best. So while that was still a huge 00:17:26.349 --> 00:17:28.529 improvement from those naked eye measurements, 00:17:28.730 --> 00:17:30.849 it was still a bit more than an order of magnitude 00:17:30.849 --> 00:17:33.910 too imprecise to measure the parallax to the 00:17:33.910 --> 00:17:37.930 closest star to Earth. So back to the very first 00:17:37.930 --> 00:17:40.890 time parallax was measured in 1838, 61 Cygni 00:17:40.890 --> 00:17:45.630 is 10 .4 light years away, so quite close. And 00:17:45.630 --> 00:17:49.029 the measurement was 0 .314 arcseconds. This is 00:17:49.029 --> 00:17:52.430 a theme that comes up again and again in cosmology. 00:17:52.529 --> 00:17:56.109 Our ability to measure becomes more precise as 00:17:56.109 --> 00:17:58.630 we open up new avenues of investigation, like 00:17:58.630 --> 00:18:00.509 Hubble's discovery of galaxies and gravitational 00:18:00.509 --> 00:18:03.009 lensing. Don't forget, gravitational lensing 00:18:03.009 --> 00:18:06.009 was covered in Season 1 as a two -parter. Freaking 00:18:06.009 --> 00:18:07.769 awesome. You should go back and listen to it 00:18:07.769 --> 00:18:10.670 if you have not. To bring this part of the episode 00:18:10.670 --> 00:18:14.319 to a close, galileo would continue to make observations 00:18:14.319 --> 00:18:17.059 and become more convinced that the heliocentric 00:18:17.059 --> 00:18:20.619 model was correct eventually he made his opinions 00:18:20.619 --> 00:18:25.319 unequivocal and he was found guilty of vehement 00:18:25.319 --> 00:18:29.319 suspicion of heresy and spent the rest of his 00:18:29.319 --> 00:18:32.089 days under house arrest Of course, the story 00:18:32.089 --> 00:18:34.650 doesn't stop there or stop here with Galileo 00:18:34.650 --> 00:18:37.250 under house arrest. Another astronomer across 00:18:37.250 --> 00:18:39.890 Europe was figuring out that the planets don't 00:18:39.890 --> 00:18:43.130 actually move in perfect circles at all. Jonas 00:18:43.130 --> 00:18:49.269 Kepler. One of science's greatest mystics. An 00:18:49.269 --> 00:18:53.109 oxymoron, perhaps, but it's an apt one. Overlapping 00:18:53.109 --> 00:18:56.089 with Galileo, Jonas Kepler published the first 00:18:56.089 --> 00:19:00.359 two laws of planetary motion in 1609. and the 00:19:00.359 --> 00:19:04.839 third in 1619. Before getting into the laws themselves, 00:19:05.220 --> 00:19:07.240 why Kepler was able to publish clear arguments 00:19:07.240 --> 00:19:10.619 dismantling geocentrism and Galileo was walked 00:19:10.619 --> 00:19:13.500 away? Well, it comes down to a couple of things. 00:19:14.079 --> 00:19:17.859 Location and people. First, I've said it before 00:19:17.859 --> 00:19:20.059 on this podcast and I'll say it many, many times. 00:19:20.180 --> 00:19:24.619 People are weird. It's just the truth. Here I 00:19:24.619 --> 00:19:27.660 am on a mic talking about science to people I 00:19:27.660 --> 00:19:31.410 have never met. Another common theme in these 00:19:31.410 --> 00:19:35.349 solo episodes, people, are weird. Galileo was 00:19:35.349 --> 00:19:38.390 argumentative and published a lot of things that 00:19:38.390 --> 00:19:41.670 were combative, his ideas, and he brought them 00:19:41.670 --> 00:19:44.970 straight to the masses. So he would just publish 00:19:44.970 --> 00:19:48.750 for the average person. Kepler was a theologian 00:19:48.750 --> 00:19:52.470 first, trained as one. I mean, he viewed geometry 00:19:52.470 --> 00:19:56.670 as divine. If he could describe the world through 00:19:56.670 --> 00:19:59.559 geometry, in other words, math, then it was proof 00:19:59.559 --> 00:20:04.480 of God's divine work. It's a very different framing 00:20:04.480 --> 00:20:08.720 than Galileo. Kepler also published in mathematical 00:20:08.720 --> 00:20:12.000 arguments, not prose for the average person. 00:20:12.359 --> 00:20:16.440 So the average theologian would never know what 00:20:16.440 --> 00:20:19.700 work he published or talked about or wrote about. 00:20:19.880 --> 00:20:22.279 And he would never know that it essentially argues 00:20:22.279 --> 00:20:25.720 for the fall of geocentrism, i .e. that the earth 00:20:25.720 --> 00:20:31.289 moves. and his work refining heliocentrism. Sometimes 00:20:31.289 --> 00:20:34.049 it isn't the message, but the messenger. True 00:20:34.049 --> 00:20:37.589 story. By focusing on the math and the observations, 00:20:37.829 --> 00:20:40.390 Kepler determined the planets did not move in 00:20:40.390 --> 00:20:43.849 circles, but ellipses. And so here are his three 00:20:43.849 --> 00:20:47.470 general planet laws of planetary motion. The 00:20:47.470 --> 00:20:49.670 first, an orbit of a planet is an ellipse with 00:20:49.670 --> 00:20:53.859 the sun at one of two foci. Two. A line segment 00:20:53.859 --> 00:20:56.920 joining a planet and the Sun sweeps out equal 00:20:56.920 --> 00:21:02.339 areas during equal intervals of time. 3. The 00:21:02.339 --> 00:21:05.359 square of the planet's orbital period is proportional 00:21:05.359 --> 00:21:08.640 to the cube of the length of its semi -major 00:21:08.640 --> 00:21:11.960 axis of its orbit. I don't want to get too bogged 00:21:11.960 --> 00:21:14.359 down here in the details, as I still need to 00:21:14.359 --> 00:21:16.140 get through Newton before I can get back to the 00:21:16.140 --> 00:21:19.759 planets themselves. But it's important to mention 00:21:19.759 --> 00:21:23.119 this. These laws were absolutely fundamental 00:21:23.119 --> 00:21:25.799 and an important point along our journey here 00:21:25.799 --> 00:21:29.559 today. Jonas Kepler's attention to detail and 00:21:29.559 --> 00:21:33.000 academic honesty to not force things to fit ideas 00:21:33.000 --> 00:21:36.799 that were handed to him led to those three observations 00:21:36.799 --> 00:21:41.500 that would later be called scientific laws. All 00:21:41.500 --> 00:21:44.839 the while believing that he was indeed doing 00:21:44.839 --> 00:21:48.880 God's work by chronicling the divine through 00:21:48.880 --> 00:21:52.960 geometry. It really takes all types, sometimes 00:21:52.960 --> 00:21:56.839 even the mystics, to move science forward. So 00:21:56.839 --> 00:22:01.940 if Kepler described what the planets did, Newton 00:22:01.940 --> 00:22:06.619 explained why they did it. The guy Sir Isaac 00:22:06.619 --> 00:22:09.619 Newton was mysterious and a bit of a rebel with 00:22:09.619 --> 00:22:13.359 respect to the academic thought. His relationship 00:22:13.359 --> 00:22:17.420 with theology was... complicated, much only coming 00:22:17.420 --> 00:22:20.940 out since 1972, actually, after a bunch of his 00:22:20.940 --> 00:22:23.380 personal notebooks were made available for public 00:22:23.380 --> 00:22:27.539 investigation. Here we'll gloss over the academic 00:22:27.539 --> 00:22:30.980 insults, insecurities, alchemy, the great work 00:22:30.980 --> 00:22:33.019 he did with the British Mint, and even calculus. 00:22:33.339 --> 00:22:36.519 Although calculus is there, hidden in the background, 00:22:36.720 --> 00:22:40.200 for the rest of this episode. It is his seminal 00:22:40.200 --> 00:22:42.640 work, Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy, 00:22:42.740 --> 00:22:46.769 published in 1687 that we cannot ignore. It was 00:22:46.769 --> 00:22:49.890 here that Newton unified physics, brought about 00:22:49.890 --> 00:22:53.490 classical mechanics, and explained gravity. It 00:22:53.490 --> 00:22:55.910 provided the why to the orbits of the planets. 00:22:56.109 --> 00:22:58.930 We now had the ability to predict the movement 00:22:58.930 --> 00:23:03.029 of all planets and many other phenomena. Okay, 00:23:03.130 --> 00:23:06.250 up to this point, the world was still only aware 00:23:06.250 --> 00:23:09.210 of the six inner planets, Mercury, Venus, Earth, 00:23:09.349 --> 00:23:13.960 Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn. We had the how and 00:23:13.960 --> 00:23:17.900 the why. We also had telescopes, which needed 00:23:17.900 --> 00:23:19.640 better manufacturing and better understanding 00:23:19.640 --> 00:23:22.220 of the optics to make them more powerful. The 00:23:22.220 --> 00:23:25.559 next planet in the solar system was waiting to 00:23:25.559 --> 00:23:29.279 be observed. Funny thing is that the next planet 00:23:29.279 --> 00:23:32.720 had previously been observed before. What is 00:23:32.720 --> 00:23:36.700 known today as Uranus had been seen and documented 00:23:36.700 --> 00:23:40.509 many, many times before. The earliest possible 00:23:40.509 --> 00:23:45.890 is way, way back in 128 BCE by Greek astronomer, 00:23:46.029 --> 00:23:50.450 geographer, and mathematician Hipparchus. Uranus 00:23:50.450 --> 00:23:52.650 technically can be seen without a telescope, 00:23:52.750 --> 00:23:56.769 but it requires really dark skies, which is definitely 00:23:56.769 --> 00:23:59.329 a problem today. The other issue with potentially 00:23:59.329 --> 00:24:01.809 identifying it as a planet by the eye is that 00:24:01.809 --> 00:24:06.829 it moves so slowly. It makes a full orbit every 00:24:06.829 --> 00:24:12.049 84 Earth years. So it would take very careful 00:24:12.049 --> 00:24:15.390 observations over many, many years to identify 00:24:15.390 --> 00:24:20.289 it as a planet or wandering heavenly light. Dim, 00:24:20.289 --> 00:24:24.670 and it didn't wander very much. In 1781, British 00:24:24.670 --> 00:24:27.730 amateur telescope builder, astronomer, composer, 00:24:28.089 --> 00:24:32.069 titles, so many titles, noticed something in 00:24:32.069 --> 00:24:35.109 the sky. It looked like a disk and not a star. 00:24:35.730 --> 00:24:38.799 William Herschel. The long and the short of it 00:24:38.799 --> 00:24:40.680 is that William Herschel thought he had found 00:24:40.680 --> 00:24:44.259 a comet. It took data from others to convince 00:24:44.259 --> 00:24:47.799 him otherwise. It was the first recognized planet 00:24:47.799 --> 00:24:51.140 since antiquity. Well, detailed observations 00:24:51.140 --> 00:24:54.000 of Uranus continued to be made across the world, 00:24:54.019 --> 00:24:58.880 and in 1821, 40 years later, astronomical tables 00:24:58.880 --> 00:25:02.319 for the orbit of Uranus were published. It provided 00:25:02.319 --> 00:25:05.180 predictions based on Newton's equations of gravity. 00:25:06.299 --> 00:25:09.099 there were inconsistencies between the calculations 00:25:09.099 --> 00:25:13.220 and the observations. This really became evident 00:25:13.220 --> 00:25:16.980 as Uranus nearly completed a full orbit from 00:25:16.980 --> 00:25:21.259 the start of observations in 1847. There were 00:25:21.259 --> 00:25:23.940 three general hypotheses to explain these discrepancies. 00:25:24.420 --> 00:25:26.519 Influence of the Sun's gravity may be different 00:25:26.519 --> 00:25:29.319 than Newton's description at a distance. The 00:25:29.319 --> 00:25:32.740 result of observational error or three, another 00:25:32.740 --> 00:25:36.240 celestial body out there. is gravitationally 00:25:36.240 --> 00:25:39.599 tugging on Uranus. Now, whenever there's a defined 00:25:39.599 --> 00:25:42.160 problem, there's a race to be the first to figure 00:25:42.160 --> 00:25:45.019 it out. Harkening back a few episodes to the 00:25:45.019 --> 00:25:47.619 geophysical inversions, this is an ill -posed 00:25:47.619 --> 00:25:51.619 problem. It wasn't a race like that of Oppenheimer 00:25:51.619 --> 00:25:54.700 trying to get an atomic bomb, or anything like 00:25:54.700 --> 00:25:59.140 that. It was only prestige on the line. And it 00:25:59.140 --> 00:26:01.759 ended up in controversy. Again, we come back 00:26:01.759 --> 00:26:04.799 to this idea that people... are people, and they 00:26:04.799 --> 00:26:07.680 do weird things. In fact, some have called it 00:26:07.680 --> 00:26:11.160 a heist. Here's a question. Why are the pyramids 00:26:11.160 --> 00:26:14.140 still in Egypt? Well, because the British couldn't 00:26:14.140 --> 00:26:17.039 fit them into a museum. That joke will make sense 00:26:17.039 --> 00:26:19.660 in a few more moments. Shout out to the show 00:26:19.660 --> 00:26:23.660 or the podcast Stuff the British Stole. Sometimes 00:26:23.660 --> 00:26:26.940 those episodes are truly amazing, like the one 00:26:26.940 --> 00:26:30.440 on the Parthenon. Okay, back on track. The person 00:26:30.440 --> 00:26:33.039 credited with the mathematically predicting the 00:26:33.039 --> 00:26:37.039 orbit of Neptune, first via mathematical predictions, 00:26:37.119 --> 00:26:42.240 is Urbain Levenier, a French astronomer and mathematician. 00:26:42.539 --> 00:26:46.619 Sorry, terrible ability to do the accent and 00:26:46.619 --> 00:26:49.220 pronounce it. Well, anyway, Monsieur Levenier 00:26:49.220 --> 00:26:52.140 publicly announced his calculations to the French 00:26:52.140 --> 00:26:56.960 Academy on the 31st of August in 1846, and then 00:26:56.960 --> 00:27:00.329 sent the predictions to Johann Gallet, A German 00:27:00.329 --> 00:27:03.329 astronomer at the Berlin Observatory. Once it 00:27:03.329 --> 00:27:05.529 arrived, Johann promptly took that information 00:27:05.529 --> 00:27:10.049 and used it. That night on September 23rd, 1846, 00:27:10.509 --> 00:27:13.950 Neptune was officially discovered. So why the 00:27:13.950 --> 00:27:17.069 joke about Britain at the top? Well, there are 00:27:17.069 --> 00:27:19.890 usually multiple people looking at similar things 00:27:19.890 --> 00:27:23.109 at similar times. There's also, at least at this 00:27:23.109 --> 00:27:25.509 point in time, a lot of bragging rights on the 00:27:25.509 --> 00:27:29.700 line. Nationalism. This should... not be a surprise. 00:27:29.880 --> 00:27:32.279 I mean, look at the Cold War and the race to 00:27:32.279 --> 00:27:35.460 the moon. So a British mathematician and astronomer, 00:27:35.579 --> 00:27:40.799 John Couch Adams. This is where sources begin 00:27:40.799 --> 00:27:43.220 to contradict somewhat, and the deeper you go, 00:27:43.299 --> 00:27:44.700 the little bit more confused you get, and you 00:27:44.700 --> 00:27:47.720 have to try to eventually take a side. And that 00:27:47.720 --> 00:27:49.960 often happens where there's controversy. People 00:27:49.960 --> 00:27:52.250 being people. Especially when there's so much 00:27:52.250 --> 00:27:54.430 prestige on the line. Today it is, of course, 00:27:54.470 --> 00:27:56.289 just a quirk of history, but it's still interesting 00:27:56.289 --> 00:27:59.109 to explore these just for a moment. Picture a 00:27:59.109 --> 00:28:02.710 young man. One who liked to calculate things 00:28:02.710 --> 00:28:05.869 to many decimal places. Like that engineering 00:28:05.869 --> 00:28:10.710 friend that knows pi to 17 decimal places. Not 00:28:10.710 --> 00:28:12.529 terribly interested in actually writing up his 00:28:12.529 --> 00:28:15.269 results and doing papers, but loves to solve 00:28:15.269 --> 00:28:18.509 those complex mathematical problems. As part 00:28:18.509 --> 00:28:23.319 of that, he is... calculations for Neptune were 00:28:23.319 --> 00:28:25.960 ping -ponging around, or as the source I used, 00:28:26.059 --> 00:28:30.519 like the word vacillating, on his solution. He 00:28:30.519 --> 00:28:32.500 couldn't just, you know, give one number. It 00:28:32.500 --> 00:28:35.539 wasn't fixed. He was tinkering. It didn't come 00:28:35.539 --> 00:28:38.920 out with a whole lot of confidence and was, you 00:28:38.920 --> 00:28:41.279 know, somewhat ignored by British academics because 00:28:41.279 --> 00:28:45.119 of it. When Laverne's predictions and discovery 00:28:45.119 --> 00:28:52.640 came out, there was a scramble to save. Curiously, 00:28:52.740 --> 00:28:55.180 correspondence of Neptune and its discovery was 00:28:55.180 --> 00:28:58.720 lost in Britain. In 1999, it was found in an 00:28:58.720 --> 00:29:01.900 observation in Chile. Sometimes the truth is 00:29:01.900 --> 00:29:05.059 just too hard to make up. Well, it seems based 00:29:05.059 --> 00:29:07.880 on those documents anyway. The British case for 00:29:07.880 --> 00:29:10.940 getting credit was built largely after the discovery 00:29:10.940 --> 00:29:14.900 was made. It was absolutely true that John Couch 00:29:14.900 --> 00:29:16.940 Adams did similar calculation and came up with 00:29:16.940 --> 00:29:19.430 a similar answer. The timing and strength of 00:29:19.430 --> 00:29:22.210 the conviction was not 100%. So you could argue 00:29:22.210 --> 00:29:24.630 that the British, on a national level anyway, 00:29:24.829 --> 00:29:29.009 stole the discovery. John Couch Adams did, and 00:29:29.009 --> 00:29:32.009 probably rightly so, deserves credit for solving 00:29:32.009 --> 00:29:36.690 the same problem. But as a host here on this 00:29:36.690 --> 00:29:40.289 podcast, my bias is with Laverne taking the gold 00:29:40.289 --> 00:29:42.799 medal if there was such a thing. Okay, one more 00:29:42.799 --> 00:29:46.059 deviation on this. The American scientific establishment 00:29:46.059 --> 00:29:48.480 tried to take part in the prestige game too. 00:29:48.799 --> 00:29:53.000 Game of Thrones Astronomy Science Edition. The 00:29:53.000 --> 00:29:56.720 nerdiest show ever conceived. Well, after the 00:29:56.720 --> 00:29:59.440 discovery was known in the United States, a race 00:29:59.440 --> 00:30:01.960 was on to claim some of the credit. And yes, 00:30:02.079 --> 00:30:05.640 the Americans tried to jump in too. Once the 00:30:05.640 --> 00:30:07.660 word that Neptune's discovery crossed the Atlantic, 00:30:07.779 --> 00:30:11.099 the U .S. scientific establishment moved fast 00:30:11.099 --> 00:30:13.839 to carve out a slice of the glory. Several American 00:30:13.839 --> 00:30:16.380 astronomers claimed that they had independently 00:30:16.380 --> 00:30:20.059 performed calculations that pointed to an unseen 00:30:20.059 --> 00:30:23.559 planet. And a few scientific societies rushed 00:30:23.559 --> 00:30:25.880 to publish statements asserting that the first 00:30:25.880 --> 00:30:28.920 full orbital solution was produced on their side 00:30:28.920 --> 00:30:32.470 of the ocean. It was mainly a patriotism and 00:30:32.470 --> 00:30:36.430 opportunism mixed together kind of thing. Less 00:30:36.430 --> 00:30:39.049 careful mathematics and more. We're also working 00:30:39.049 --> 00:30:42.890 on that. A bit of scientific FOMO before the 00:30:42.890 --> 00:30:46.069 phrase existed. In the end, the Americans' claims 00:30:46.069 --> 00:30:48.869 didn't materially change the priority dispute, 00:30:49.250 --> 00:30:53.349 but they do add a delightful extra wrinkle into 00:30:53.349 --> 00:30:57.130 the international scramble for prestige. Okay, 00:30:57.190 --> 00:31:01.329 so we had Neptune. The next planet to be discovered, 00:31:01.609 --> 00:31:05.349 quote unquote, Pluto. In the early 20th century, 00:31:05.589 --> 00:31:09.849 Percival Lowell, founder of the Lowell Observatory 00:31:09.849 --> 00:31:12.309 in Arizona, became obsessed with the idea of 00:31:12.309 --> 00:31:16.509 the ninth planet, which he called Planet X. Now 00:31:16.509 --> 00:31:18.170 here's the part that often gets glossed over. 00:31:18.309 --> 00:31:21.430 The entire premise of Planet X rested on bad 00:31:21.430 --> 00:31:25.609 numbers. The irregularities Lowell saw in the... 00:31:25.819 --> 00:31:28.660 Uranus and Neptune's motions weren't the gravitational 00:31:28.660 --> 00:31:31.279 footprints of a hidden giant world out there 00:31:31.279 --> 00:31:33.759 in the solar system just needing to be found. 00:31:33.839 --> 00:31:36.859 They were mostly bookkeeping errors. For one, 00:31:36.940 --> 00:31:39.940 the mass of Neptune in Laos' era was slightly 00:31:39.940 --> 00:31:43.140 overestimated. That meant the predicted tug on 00:31:43.140 --> 00:31:46.359 Neptune should exert on Uranus didn't match what 00:31:46.359 --> 00:31:49.500 astronomers actually observed. The mismatch looked 00:31:49.500 --> 00:31:53.519 mysterious, even persuasive, if you didn't know 00:31:53.519 --> 00:31:57.430 that the mass was wrong. But Neptune's true mass 00:31:57.430 --> 00:31:59.630 wouldn't be nailed down until Voyager 2 flew 00:31:59.630 --> 00:32:05.769 past in 1989, long after Lowell's time, revealing 00:32:05.769 --> 00:32:08.230 that the earlier value had been off enough to 00:32:08.230 --> 00:32:11.269 throw off the calculations. Add to that the small 00:32:11.269 --> 00:32:13.509 observational errors baked into 19th century 00:32:13.509 --> 00:32:15.970 measurements, telescope pointing uncertainties, 00:32:16.049 --> 00:32:20.950 timing inaccuracies, star catalog offsets. Remember, 00:32:21.349 --> 00:32:25.019 astronomers were taking positions by hand. comparing 00:32:25.019 --> 00:32:27.980 them to imperfect star charts, squeezing out 00:32:27.980 --> 00:32:30.319 meaning of numbers that carried more noise than 00:32:30.319 --> 00:32:33.779 they realized. When you stack a few tenths of 00:32:33.779 --> 00:32:36.859 an arc second of measurement air year after year 00:32:36.859 --> 00:32:40.220 and then plug those into perturbation equations, 00:32:40.420 --> 00:32:43.740 you can magically discover forces that just aren't 00:32:43.740 --> 00:32:46.980 there. Lowell couldn't have known that many of 00:32:46.980 --> 00:32:49.900 the so -called orbital anomalies were just artifacts 00:32:49.900 --> 00:32:53.339 in the data. but lowell believed those irregularities 00:32:53.339 --> 00:32:56.039 hinted at another massive body further out he 00:32:56.039 --> 00:32:58.160 spent the final decade of his life searching 00:32:58.160 --> 00:33:01.539 for it he died without success but his observatory 00:33:01.539 --> 00:33:05.980 kept the hunt alive enter clyde a young kansas 00:33:05.980 --> 00:33:08.819 farm kid with a knack of building telescopes 00:33:08.819 --> 00:33:13.599 hired by lowell observatory in nineteen twenty 00:33:13.599 --> 00:33:17.039 nine his job was simple in description and brutal 00:33:17.039 --> 00:33:21.319 in execution photograph the sky, then photograph 00:33:21.319 --> 00:33:25.880 it again, and compare the plates under a blink 00:33:25.880 --> 00:33:31.059 comparator. Basically, you line up the plates, 00:33:31.180 --> 00:33:34.920 the photos, and compare them to something that's 00:33:34.920 --> 00:33:37.720 blinking, and you're looking for anything through 00:33:37.720 --> 00:33:40.880 thousands of stars, night after night, many, 00:33:41.059 --> 00:33:44.140 many, many photos, staring into bright lights, 00:33:44.220 --> 00:33:47.180 looking for anything, anything at all that moved. 00:33:47.869 --> 00:33:52.089 Then, on February 18, 1930, Dombrov spotted it, 00:33:52.150 --> 00:33:54.910 a tiny wandering dot against the star field. 00:33:55.509 --> 00:33:58.650 After the well observatory confirmed the motion 00:33:58.650 --> 00:34:02.490 and announced the discovery, the world embraced 00:34:02.490 --> 00:34:06.309 Pluto. Headlines everywhere, school textbooks 00:34:06.309 --> 00:34:10.289 were updated practically overnight. A schoolgirl 00:34:10.289 --> 00:34:13.289 in Oxford even provided the name Pluto, continuing 00:34:13.289 --> 00:34:16.389 the tradition of mythological underworld gods 00:34:16.389 --> 00:34:21.010 for the outer planets. And conveniently, it started 00:34:21.010 --> 00:34:24.869 with a P and then an L. Llewellyn's initials. 00:34:24.869 --> 00:34:27.510 But before I move on a quick deviation, the idea 00:34:27.510 --> 00:34:32.050 of a ninth planet never really died. Llewellyn's 00:34:32.050 --> 00:34:35.429 planet X left kind of a gravitational ghost in 00:34:35.429 --> 00:34:38.530 the scientific imagination, if you will. Once 00:34:38.530 --> 00:34:42.070 Pluto was found, it didn't exactly solve the 00:34:42.070 --> 00:34:45.449 orbital oddities Llewell thought it would. Pluto 00:34:45.449 --> 00:34:49.630 was way too small. So the hypothesis lingered 00:34:49.630 --> 00:34:51.969 in the background. And over the decades, every 00:34:51.969 --> 00:34:54.389 time an astronomer saw something a little strange 00:34:54.389 --> 00:34:57.469 in the outer solar system, the old dream of a 00:34:57.469 --> 00:35:01.969 hidden massive world got revived. And then, of 00:35:01.969 --> 00:35:04.849 course, the conspiracy world grabbed a hold of 00:35:04.849 --> 00:35:08.070 it too. Nibiru. I think I'm pronouncing it right, 00:35:08.110 --> 00:35:11.309 or Planet X, the supposed doomsday planet that 00:35:11.309 --> 00:35:14.809 was always conveniently just about to swing into 00:35:14.809 --> 00:35:18.469 the inner solar system any moment now. People 00:35:18.469 --> 00:35:20.650 wrote books, made documentaries, and predicted 00:35:20.650 --> 00:35:22.949 the end of the world more times than I can count, 00:35:23.030 --> 00:35:26.949 and way more times than I have episodes. None 00:35:26.949 --> 00:35:30.199 of it based in observation. All of it nonsense, 00:35:30.679 --> 00:35:34.079 but it shows just how persistent the idea of 00:35:34.079 --> 00:35:38.440 missing giant planet can be. Once it's in the 00:35:38.440 --> 00:35:41.539 culture, it sticks. Scientifically, though, the 00:35:41.539 --> 00:35:44.320 question is still interesting, but for very different 00:35:44.320 --> 00:35:47.239 reasons. In the last decade, several teams have 00:35:47.239 --> 00:35:50.000 noticed unusual clustering in the orbits of distant 00:35:50.000 --> 00:35:52.440 Cooper Belt objects. These are objects that are 00:35:52.440 --> 00:35:56.340 way out there, beyond kind of, Pluto's kind of 00:35:56.340 --> 00:35:58.900 right on the edge of these objects. And some 00:35:58.900 --> 00:36:01.199 astronomers argue that the alignment of those 00:36:01.199 --> 00:36:03.920 orbits might, just might be explained by a large 00:36:03.920 --> 00:36:06.860 unseen body further out. Maybe in the Oort cloud, 00:36:07.179 --> 00:36:09.920 which is a region even beyond the Kuiper belt, 00:36:10.019 --> 00:36:13.000 or approaching it. Something several times the 00:36:13.000 --> 00:36:16.139 mass of the Earth on a long stretched out orbit. 00:36:16.559 --> 00:36:20.019 It's not proven. There are competing explanations, 00:36:20.260 --> 00:36:23.440 including observational biases, but the fact 00:36:23.440 --> 00:36:26.670 remains that the... Planet 9, ideas very much 00:36:26.670 --> 00:36:29.409 alive in serious academic scientific circles 00:36:29.409 --> 00:36:33.150 today, just not as doom or mythology, but as 00:36:33.150 --> 00:36:35.630 a legitimate open question in orbital dynamics. 00:36:36.710 --> 00:36:39.690 Of course, Pluto's status didn't survive the 00:36:39.690 --> 00:36:42.349 21st century. The better our telescopes got, 00:36:42.469 --> 00:36:44.590 the more icy worlds were found in the Cooper 00:36:44.590 --> 00:36:47.869 Belt, many of them similar in size to Pluto. 00:36:48.050 --> 00:36:51.590 Some of them like Eris, even slightly larger. 00:36:51.829 --> 00:36:55.119 At that point, astronomers had to choose. Either 00:36:55.119 --> 00:36:59.260 suddenly we had dozens of planets, or we refined 00:36:59.260 --> 00:37:04.079 the definition. In 2006, the International Astronomical 00:37:04.079 --> 00:37:08.400 Union drew the line, and Pluto fell on the dwarf 00:37:08.400 --> 00:37:12.199 planet side. No, not because it wasn't interesting, 00:37:12.320 --> 00:37:15.199 not because it wasn't beloved, but because it 00:37:15.199 --> 00:37:17.500 hadn't fully cleared out its orbit or neighborhood 00:37:17.500 --> 00:37:21.019 of other debris. The rules changed, and Pluto, 00:37:21.199 --> 00:37:25.630 poor Pluto. lost its gold medal status. And that's 00:37:25.630 --> 00:37:28.210 where I'm ending this episode. From the nationalistic 00:37:28.210 --> 00:37:31.389 chaos of Neptune's discovery to the quite careful 00:37:31.389 --> 00:37:34.829 plate blinking that earned Pluto its brief time 00:37:34.829 --> 00:37:38.010 among the planets and finally its demotion. A 00:37:38.010 --> 00:37:41.130 reminder that science isn't just equations. It's 00:37:41.130 --> 00:37:45.429 also people, pride, timing, and sometimes the 00:37:45.429 --> 00:37:48.550 willingness to say we were wrong. Let's classify 00:37:48.550 --> 00:37:53.239 this properly. So once again, Happy holidays, 00:37:53.500 --> 00:37:56.900 Merry Christmas, Happy Solstice, and all the 00:37:56.900 --> 00:38:00.179 others that are out there. I'm so looking forward 00:38:00.179 --> 00:38:03.400 to the new year right here on Whimsical Wavelengths, 00:38:03.400 --> 00:38:05.480 and I really hope that you're going to join me. 00:38:05.820 --> 00:38:09.739 Yes, today's episode wasn't the star of Bethlehem, 00:38:09.780 --> 00:38:12.380 but we were looking at the wandering stars, the 00:38:12.380 --> 00:38:15.679 planets. Still kind of Christmas themed. I wasn't 00:38:15.679 --> 00:38:18.179 going to try too hard, don't worry. So if you 00:38:18.179 --> 00:38:22.690 haven't already done so, subscribe. Tell a friend. 00:38:23.469 --> 00:38:26.090 It's really important. So I'll catch you guys 00:38:26.090 --> 00:38:29.150 in the new year with the new episode with my 00:38:29.150 --> 00:38:33.570 past PhD supervisor, Dr. Glynn Williams -Jones. 00:38:34.210 --> 00:38:36.449 Remember, I'm going to do that encore edition 00:38:36.449 --> 00:38:39.349 for the next episode in two weeks. I'll see you 00:38:39.349 --> 00:39:02.289 then. Swaying to rhythms as the galaxies fly 00:39:02.289 --> 00:39:10.449 by. Ooh, we're tuned in, feeling the beat of 00:39:10.449 --> 00:39:15.969 the unknown. Can you hear it? It echoes deep 00:39:15.969 --> 00:39:31.760 in our bones. Chasing down wonders, always seeking 00:39:31.760 --> 00:39:32.460 more