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By Root 225 0

the story as complete as possible before making an announcement. Consider, for example, the instantaneous Ortiz et al. announcement of the existence of 2003 EL61. Headlines in places like the BBC web site breathlessly exclaimed, “new object may be twice the size of Pluto.” But even at the time we knew that 2003 EL61 had a satellite and was only 30% the mass of Pluto. We quickly got the truth out, but just barely. Sadly, other interesting aspects of 2003 EL61 also got lost in the shuffle. No one got to hear that it rotates every 4 hours, faster than anything else known in the Kuiper belt. Or how that fast rotation causes it to be shaped like a cigar. Or how we use the existence of the satellite to calculate the mass. All of these are interesting things that would have let the public learn a bit more about the mysteries of physics and of the solar system. In the press you get one chance to tell the story. In the case of the instantaneous announcement of 2003 EL61 the story was simply “there is a big object out there.” We are saddened by the lost opportunity to tell a richer scientific story and to have the public listen for just one day to a tale that included a bit of astronomy, a bit of physics, and a bit of detective story.

Given that we do precisely what other astronomers do and that we are actually very prompt about making announcements, where did the crazy idea that we should be announcing objects instantly come from? Interestingly, there is one area of astronomy in which instantaneous announcement is both expected and beneficial to all. In the study of rare, quickly changing objects, such as supernovae, gamma ray bursts, comets, and near-earth asteroids, astronomers quickly disseminate their results so that as many people as possible can study the phenomenon before it disappears or changes completely. No one discovers a comet and keeps the discovery to himself to study, because by the time the study would be done the comet would be gone and no one else could study it ever again. The people initially suggesting that we were wrong not to announce our objects instantly are, for the most part, a small group of amateur astronomers who are familiar with comet and near-earth asteroid observation protocols. We can only assume that this familiarity led them to their misconceptions. Kuiper belt objects are not quickly changing phenomena. Astronomers will be intensively studying Xena for a long time to come.

We hope to discover a few more large objects in the outer solar system. When we do, we will do everything we can to learn as much as possible about them before we make their existence public, and we will try to make the announcement as complete and scientifically and publicly interesting as possible. We will take the chance—as all scientists do—that by taking the time to do the scientific job correctly someone else may beat us to the announcement, and if they do we will congratulate them heartily.

The chat group went crazy at this point, but I never read it again, and forbade anyone from relaying stories to me. For most of the next year, Ortiz was not seen or heard from at any of the various scientific conferences around the globe. I assumed—incorrectly—that we would never hear from or about him again.

In the years that have followed, I have occasionally wondered what really happened. I will never know. In his few public pronouncements, Ortiz has claimed the only thing that he could: that he legitimately discovered K40506A/2003 EL61/Santa/Haumea one day before he stumbled upon our website, and when he had announced his discovery, there was no good mechanism for mentioning that his team had accessed our database. It was a simple oversight. What if that story is true? What if I put these guys through hell over a discovery that was legitimate? How will I ever get rid of that nagging feeling that maybe they were hardworking underdogs who had made the discovery of their lives?

But but but. But if they were on the up and up, why would they hide the fact that they had accessed the data? Why wouldn’t they mention it in the early