How I Killed Pluto and Why It Had It Coming - Mike Brown [71]
Chapter Ten
STEALING THE SHOW
The Internet chat group that had been irritated with me over the discovery and naming of Quaoar and Sedna was up in arms again. I didn’t know it, but Ortiz himself was apparently an occasional member of this group, and many were rallying around to defend him against the onslaught of the evil American astronomers trying to deny him credit for his discovery. Except, of course, there was no onslaught. I told anyone who would listen that Ortiz had indeed discovered 2003 EL61/Santa. Since I couldn’t really be excoriated for trying to steal Ortiz’s credit, they would find something else to rail against. They then argued that I had made up the story that someone had found the coordinates of Xena and Easterbunny, so that I would have an excuse to hold a press conference the day after Ortiz’s discovery in order to overshadow him. And then they hit on a new accusation: I was bad because I had been trying to keep Santa and Xena and Easter bunny secret. I chuckled and shook my head, given how hard we had tried to do everything correctly by scientific standards.
Even Ortiz got into the act, declaring in an interview:
With technology many times more advanced than ours, Brown’s team had discovered three big objects many months ago, but they were hiding its [sic] 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.
Sigh. I almost sat down and wrote a long article on why the instant announcement of discoveries is precisely what good scientists don’t do and that the established scientific procedures are to confirm findings and write scientific papers before making public announcements, but I decided that the accusations were sufficiently ridiculous that I should ignore them and let them fade into their deserved oblivion.
I will admit, though, to being stung and irritated to read Ortiz’s comments. I didn’t care about what nonastronomers were saying on chat groups, but I thought it harmful for professional astronomers to spout such nonscientific nonsense. And it seemed particularly uncharitable given how hard I had been defending Ortiz against all accusations and deflecting credit to him whenever possible. Odd, I thought.
Given all of the chatter, I decided to write to Ortiz again to assure him that I considered him the legitimate discoverer of 2003 EL61. I asked him if he had thought about what name he would like to give it. Only the discoverer is allowed to propose a name, so this was a pretty unambiguous signal of my intent. I told him that we would be interested in giving the moon that we had discovered a name that fit with the name that they proposed for 2003 EL61. Ortiz wrote back thanking me for asking but saying that because of the recent onslaught they had had no time to even begin considering a name.
The chat group continued to try to prove my malicious nature. One of the main proponents of this theme was the German amateur astronomer who had, a year and a half earlier, tried to thwart our naming of Sedna by naming some of his own objects Sedna. He had, interestingly, even taken part a bit in the Ortiz discovery. After Ortiz found the object in his old data, he had contacted the German amateur to get a current picture of the object. The amateur had promptly complied, becoming in the process a secondary member of the discovery team. It was an odd coincidence