How I Killed Pluto and Why It Had It Coming

What i red the book for:

• A good explanation of “cleared the neighborhood”
  
• A defense of “cleared the neighborhood”
  
• A discussion that astronomers not calling (134340) Pluto a planet does not change the actual ice ball in any way
  
• A discussion that it is OK to hav different definition of different precision for the same thing in different domains. That is, when astronomers don’t call (134340) Pluto a planet in their scientific writing, the rest of the world is free to talk about nine planets, one of them Pluto.¹
  

Yu get none of that. Which is really annoying. I am a big fan of the “eight planets” definition. Pluto is too small and too close to Neptune to count.

And yu don’t even get end notes. How do yu write a book about a scientific topic like discovering dwarf planets without end notes‽ How do yu write a book about what is or isn’t a planet without writing down the central IAU definition‽

“‘Brown’s team had discovered three big objects many months ago, but they were hiding (their) existence from the international scientific community, as they did before with Quaoar and Sedna.
This secrecy was useful to Brown, as it allowed him to study his own findings in detail and exclusively. But his actions harm science and don’t follow the established procedures, that imply notifying the existence of a new object to the astronomical community as soon as it’s discovered.’”

Large parts in the middle of the book is Brown ranting and raving and being a sore loser about not managing to keep his discovery secret.

“It seemed to me that in Ortiz’s view he had not stolen K40506A; he had liberated it.” Brown’s reaction to this liberating is to try to get Ortiz fired. No, really. “If this is the case, the behavior amounts to scientific fraud and is deserving of termination.”

“I posted the records of Ortiz’s access to our database on the Web.” This is a lie. That was not their database. Brown did not know about that database, much less own it.

Oh, look. “It is true that Ortiz never publicly denied having used the data, even in the early days.”

“I wonder if (a German amateur astronomer) secretly suspected that something was amiss or if he was simply as trusting and naïve as I used to be.” This is a false dichotomy. Maybe he knew what was going on but simply couldn’t stand this Brown fellow, thinking of him as a pompous ass from Alabama, or something like that.


“Ortiz was named Worst Person in the World by Keith Olbermann”. Oh, him. Well, that settles it.

As I write this review, New Horizons is just under a half-million miles from Pluto, already used to making headlines for its ground-breaking imagery and other discoveries. NASA's website says, "If New Horizons is successful, it will allow the U.S. to complete the initial reconnaissance of the solar system." Embedded in this somewhat boastful statement is an implied defiance of what the International Astronomical Union declared nearly a decade ago: Pluto is not a planet.

In his highly entertaining and enlightening book, Caltech professor (and Huntsville native!) Mike Brown tells his side of the story of Pluto's "demotion," which is connected with his discovery of many other icy distant worlds. Along the way we learn a great deal about how professional modern astronomers work, including their extensive use of computers, databases, and hand-written programs, as well as increasingly limited use of older technologies such as photographic plates. Politics and even intrigue is involved, as Professor Brown shows again and again, especially in the CSI-like case of the almost stolen discovery of Haumea.

I enjoyed his level-headed discussion of the "what's a planet?" controversy. We humans have been writing our stories on the stars and planets from the dawn of man, and we continue to do so. Pluto is one of the more recent chapters. As Professor Brown shows by comparing the growth of the known Solar System with his own young family, these abstract wanderers of the sky can take on very personal symbolism. Perhaps that is why some people feel so strongly about Pluto being a planet.