How I Killed Pluto and Why It Had It Coming - Mike Brown [69]
Jose—
Along with 2003 EL61, which you discovered this week, we have also been tracking two larger Kuiper belt objects. After the 2003 EL61 announcement someone tapped into an online database to see where we had been pointing our telescopes and, in doing so, reconstructed the positions of these two other Kuiper belt objects. They have now made these positions public. Because of all of this, we have had to announce these discoveries this morning.
I am very sorry that this announcement has to come the day after the announcement of your own discovery and that this will likely overshadow your very nice work. I will continue to try to make sure that you get the credit you deserve for the 2003 EL61 discovery.
Mike
Next, I needed to quickly make public webpages about Xena and Easterbunny, which would soon be getting new names. I would probably need to work on a press release. I kissed Diane and a sleepy Lilah goodbye and drove down to Caltech for the first time in twenty days.
At work, I called the Caltech press office and told the person who writes press releases, “We’ve discovered something bigger than Pluto and need to have a press release about it go out today.”
“Bigger than Pluto!” he exclaimed. “Wow! So it’s the tenth planet?”
I hadn’t figured that part out yet. I had strong opinions about planets. I didn’t believe that Pluto should be classified as a planet. The word planet should be reserved for the small number of truly important things in the solar system. Xena, though bigger than Pluto, did not rise to the level of a truly important object in the overall context of the solar system.
But but but but still.
“I don’t want the press release to say it’s a planet. Just say it’s something larger than Pluto,” I replied.
“Are you crazy?” he said. “This is the biggest astronomical discovery in the solar system in a century, and you’re going to be the one arguing that it’s not a planet?”
Uh. Yeah.
“If you call it the tenth planet, the public will be excited and engaged. If you call it the biggest not-a-planet, people will just be confused.”
I remembered Diane’s words from before Lilah was born. I gave in. The press release that went out to the world that day was titled “Caltech Astronomer and Team Discover the 10th Planet.”
I would have a lot of explaining to do, once I got some sleep.
Next up was to arrange a press conference. I called my NASA contacts and told them that I needed to arrange a press conference that afternoon to announce the discovery of the tenth planet.
Impossible, they said. The space shuttle was up at the space station with missing tiles, and people were worried about a crack-up on the way down. They were having a press conference about that this afternoon. How about Monday?
Impossible, I said. If the announcement was not made before the sun went down, almost anyone with a modest-sized telescope could point to the now publicly available positions and say they had discovered the thing.
“Did you just say tenth planet?” they asked. We set up an international press conference for 4:00 p.m.
As soon as I hung up the phone, it rang. It was an old friend from college, Ken Chang, who happened to also be a science reporter for The New York Times.
“Tell me about this big object,” Ken said.
“Which one?” I asked.
“Um, what?” he said.
He was calling about Santa/2003 EL61, of course. He had not yet received the press release about the tenth planet. I quickly told him about our big discovery and asked him if he could wait until the 4:00 p.m. press conference to get the details.
“Four p.m.? On a Friday afternoon? To announce the discovery of the tenth planet? Are you nuts?”
It seemed to be the question everyone was asking me that day. I hadn’t even realized that it was a Friday, but that was good information to try to store in my brain. And, oh yeah, that it was July.
“Friday at four p.m. on the West Coast is too late for me,” Ken said. “It’ll miss the Saturday and Sunday