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By Root 196 0

every day. I went to the same busy corner just down the road from my office; I ordered the same sandwich from the bagel store; I sat staring into the same steaming cup from the coffee shop next door. I like things that stay the same. The sun was shining and the seats on the outside patio were packed and everyone was emerging for a several-day break in the record-setting rains that were pummelling southern California that winter. From my spot on the patio I could see the temporarily snow-covered peaks of the San Gabriel Mountains just a few miles to the north. To me, there is almost nothing more relaxing and serene than this particular cup of coffee drunk at this particular spot on the planet Earth at this particular moment in the year, when the winter storms have come from across the Pacific Ocean and cleared the skies and coated the mountains, and the sun, low even at high noon in the clear skies just a few days after the winter solstice, is shining on the tables outside and quickly melting the snow on the mountains beyond.

I particularly like the stability and predictability of this spot when I know that everything is about to change. I sat in this same spot staring at these same mountains in the last hour before my wedding, thinking about the future, thinking about the past, suddenly remembering that I had left my bow tie at home. It was the same spot where I sat with Diane for hours on a workday and realized that she was choosing to stay and sit with me rather than going back to work and that I had been stupid all along. Later, I sat in the same spot with Antonin Bouchez as he convinced me not to quit searching the skies. And, though I didn’t know it at the time, six months from now I would momentarily pause at this same spot—no time for sitting now!—as the last stop as I was taking Diane to the hospital for the birth of our Petunia, thinking only about the impending present and how long the night ahead was going to be.

This clear January day, one in which I watched the waterlogged people enjoy the fleeting sun and stared at the snow quickly melting on the mountains, was a day I would remember as well as those other momentous days at this spot. After sitting on the patio, drinking my coffee, and staring one last time at the mountains, I walked back to my office, sat down at my desk, and carefully composed a short e-mail that I knew would set in motion a series of events that would lead to a change in our view of the solar system. Eventually the news would spread across the planet, but, for now, I sent copies to only two people: Chad, 2,500 miles west of me on the Big Island of Hawaii, and David, 2,500 miles east of me at Yale University. They were about to become just the third and fourth people in history to know what I had known for several hours (Diane was, of course, the second) and had been thinking about as I stared at the mountains over lunch: The solar system no longer had nine planets.

When I had left home to go to work that morning, the nine-planet solar system was still intact. Sure, the discovery of Santa was exciting, but given our track record of discovering things that turned out to be smaller than Pluto, I was pretty sure that Santa would be, too. It seemed likely that the solar system would retain nine planets. It seemed likely until I sat down at my desk that morning and discovered the tenth. There it was, moving across the sky, visible on a series of pictures blinking across my computer screen. Two weeks after the discovery of Santa, the almost-planet, I had found the real thing.

There aren’t many chances in life to write an e-mail like the one I sent to Chad and David. I’d thought all through lunch about how exactly I would word it. I went for carefully calculated obscurity:

Subject: why we get up in the morning

And then I went on, staccato style:

new bright object

please sit down and take a deep breath

mag = 18.8, making it brighter than anything out there except Santa

distance = 120 AU

and, by the way, if you moved Pluto to 120 AU it would be about mag 19.7

That’s all they needed to