How I Killed Pluto and Why It Had It Coming - Mike Brown [74]
When the initial announcement received no acknowledgment (having never discovered anything before, they were unclear on the proper methods of sending in a discovery), they must have decided they needed more images to demonstrate that it was real.
At this point, it remains possible that Ortiz was in the dark about what had happened. Perhaps Santos-Sanz had not told him about the computer access. Perhaps he was going to try to make it appear as if he had gotten all of his software written after all and had made a quick and spectacular find. But on Thursday morning, the day they decided they would need more images to convince people that their discovery was real, the database was accessed again. This time the access came from Ortiz’s own computer. He did the same tricks to find more positions. Twelve hours later, Ortiz’s German amateur astronomer friend—the one who passionately disliked me—was observing the object from a telescope in Majorca. Two hours later, Ortiz re-sent an announcement of the discovery including the images from that very evening, in addition to old archival images that the German amateur had tracked down for them.
This time the announcement went through the right channels. I would find out about it a few hours later, on a Thursday afternoon, while home with Diane and a twenty-day-old Lilah. Seven hours later, I sent my e-mail to Ortiz congratulating him on his fine discovery, thinking he had discovered something in the sky, not in the bowels of the Web.
Brian Marsden had two more questions for me: What about the German amateur? Surely he was involved in this somehow. I told him no. Only the Spanish computers had accessed the database. I was certain that if the German amateur had learned about the computer logs he would not have been able to resist looking at them himself. I suspected that he had been duped like the rest of them. And he had been duped so well that he felt it right to be a vicious defender of the honesty of Ortiz.
Brian’s last question: What are you going to do about this?
I didn’t know. I hung up the phone. My anger was beginning to grow. These guys had stolen our discovery and, what seemed even worse, forced us to make an incomplete and hasty announcement of the biggest astronomical discovery of my lifetime. They had caused me to spend most of my past week at work rather than at home, where I was supposed to be on family leave. And these guys would have gotten away with it, too, if not for the careful sleuthing of Rick Pogge. What would be the right response? Public humiliation? An interstellar smack-down? I decided that, for now, the main thing I needed to do was go home.
Diane and Lilah were home. The three of us sat in our favorite resting spot—Diane and I lying in opposite directions on the sofa, our feet intertwined, Lilah alternately resting on one or the other of us.
I told Diane what had happened that day.
“What are you going to do?” she asked.
I still didn’t know. I was tired. I was angry. At one stage in my life I suspect that I would have gone immediately on the offensive and publicly blindsided Ortiz with what we knew. It would have been a thorough and exceedingly satisfying public crushing. It was certainly what I believed that Ortiz deserved.
But I didn’t do it. At least not yet.
Why not?
Try as I may, I can’t put myself back into my state of mind that day. I can’t remember exactly all of the different things going on. One thing I can do, though, is go back to look at Lilah’s website from the day.
After sitting on the sofa with Diane that evening, Lilah was being fussy and wanted more attention from her parents. I got up to put her in her crib. When she finally got to sleep, I sat down at my computer and wrote a post on Lilah’s site.
It went like this:
Day 33 (9 Aug 2005): Approximately 7:30 pm. Lilah was crying immediately after being fed and I pulled out my best move,