About book Wie Ich Pluto Zur Strecke Brachte: Und Warum Er Es Nicht Anders Verdient Hat (2012)
The title is misleading, Mike Brown didn't end Pluto's reign as a planet....but nevertheless this is an absolutely fascinating book telling what lead to it's downgrading, how planets and other astronomical objects are discovered and registered and named, and the whole thing told with a great deal or humour and ease for non-scientists. It's also a lovely story about family life which I didn't expect. The book is not what you'd expect but that's a good thing (I'm a Pluto fan, having been several times on the guided tour to the Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff where it was discovered so I wanted to read this to be annoyed with Mike Brown....and ended up far from this). This is the book I was wanting to read about the scientific explanation for Pluto's demotion. Or, in line with the title, about the guy who declared Pluto is dead. A comment he actually made to the media at the time of the announcement by the IAU....which comes off as not very much a good guy in this book. This guy is an astronomer at Caltech. In spite of the way he dismisses himself, obviously a very good astronomer since only the best are going to make it at a place like Caltech. Here he describes the adventures and excitement of finding dwarf planets. Although, of course they weren't called that when he started finding them. They were Kuiper Belt Objects. One of these, Eris, although called Xenia for most of the book for reasons that make perfect sense, was the murder weapon. Err, the KBO that was used to change Pluto's classification. Although as he points out, Pluto never really fitted the rest of the planets from the very beginning. For starters the other 8 all orbit the sun in the same plane. Pluto, and it turned out, most KBO's, have orbits way off from that pathway. The rest of the planets break down into two groups: the Terrestrial (first 4, including Earth) and Gaseous (last four). Pluto had an entirely different makeup for it's planetary body. There are other points but those are two of the most obvious reasons Pluto was always different. Brown acknowledges that to some degree this is all semantics and not really important. However, he says it is also a matter of classification which IS important. To learn more about the solar system and universe, you need to start by putting like with like which is what classification is all about. Pluto fits in with KBO's a lot better than it fits in with the 8 planets where it really didn't fit at all. You can count his wife as one of the disappointed ones that Pluto was demoted, since it meant that Eris wouldn't be considered a planet either which meant he wouldn't be pointed at as the only living discoverer of a planet. However, since Eris's moon is named for her, I suspect she got over her disappointment eventually since Dysnomia which has the same beginning sound as his wife Diane's nickname, Di. Brown is not enamored of the way the IAU tried to have it both ways but the voting astronomers refused to go along with it and he was happy with the results even if not thrilled with the term "dwarf planets". I highly recommend this book for anyone who wants to understand why the old 9 planet system was outdated.
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Who knew all of this controversy, international stealing and intrigue happened prior to and up to the day they demoted Pluto from being a planet! Very informative about astronomy as a science but also as something we should all be more aware of because it's right there for us to see every night!! A bit detailed in the beginning so if you want to know only the juicy parts, skim through the first 100 pages. Also, he does an excellent job of detailing how the birth of his daughter affects his life-so sweet!
—sweetyalina1
I love the way Mike Brown talks about science. He makes me want to drop what I'm doing and go get a degree in astronomy so that I can understand this stuff as well as possible.This book is mostly concerned with Brown's research at a time when his family grew to first include his wife and then their first daughter. That was something I could easily relate to and that I really enjoyed taking in.Highly recommended for anyone who likes science.
—succubus_angel
I liked it for the science; but I loved it for the romance, the intrigue, and the humanity.
—ayamchy
Readable account of finding the larger Kuiper Belt objects by Astronomer Mike Brown
—bluerose
