{"id":318,"date":"2011-10-16T18:05:53","date_gmt":"2011-10-17T01:05:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wkiri.com\/comphist\/?p=318"},"modified":"2011-10-16T18:07:08","modified_gmt":"2011-10-17T01:07:08","slug":"alternate-history-discovery-of-neptune","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.wkiri.com\/comphist\/2011\/10\/alternate-history-discovery-of-neptune\/","title":{"rendered":"Alternate History: Discovery of Neptune"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Neptune was almost discovered by Galileo, but he mistook it for a star. Lalande, a French astronomer who created tables of the planetary positions also recorded Neptune\u2019s position but also thought it was a star. One of the people responsible for discovering Uranus, John Herschel, also thought that it was a star. When Delambre was computing tables of Uranus, he discovered discrepancies in the position. He noted that there were discrepancies. During his time at Cambridge, John Couch Adam decided to begin investigating the irregularities of Uranus\u2019 orbit. At relatively the same time, a French astronomer Urbain Jean Joseph Le Verrier also recognized the irregularities in the orbit of Uranus and thought this was due to an undiscovered planet. He then did computations based upon Newton\u2019s gravitational laws and deduced the location of the undiscovered planet. Le Verrier gave his calculations to Johann Gottfried Galle who discovered the planet Uranus.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

John Couch Adams<\/p><\/div>\n

According to many stories, and as stated in Jacquard\u2019s Loom<\/em>, the reason why the planet was not discovered due to Adam\u2019s calculations was because \u201c[i]nstead of instigating a major telescopic search that would almost certainly have resulted in the discovery of the new planet, Neptune, Airy chose not to act on Adam\u2019s information.\u201d (104). Due to Airy overlooking Adam\u2019s calculations, it was decided that Adams and Le Verrier needed equal credit in the discovery of Neptune. However, according to the Neptune file, found again in 1998, this is not the full story.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Urbain Le Verrier<\/p><\/div>\n

In the file it is revealed that instead of being ignored by Airy, Adams was actually vague and inconsistent in his planetary position. Adam\u2019s predictions ranged over 20 degrees of the sky, and after the planet was searched for during six-weeks at the Cambridge University Observatory was still not found. This was far different than Le Verrier\u2019s calculations, which were one degree off of the actual planet\u2019s location. Galle found the planet in half an hour. From Adam\u2019s journal transcriptions, it shows \u201chim still working on a problem which (one gathers) it was first necessary to solve in order to achieve a full solution.\u201d (Kollerstrom, 5.42). After Galle\u2019s discovery based on Le Verrier\u2019s prediction, British astronomers contrived a selected story of events. Only Adam\u2019s more accurate mathematical results were made public and made to appear as if Adam\u2019s had the predicted the exact location of the planet. While Le Verrier protested at the time, it was in vain. He became very bitter about the lack of recognition for his work.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

The God Neptune<\/p><\/div>\n

If there was a difference machine to facilitate in Le Verrier\u2019s calculations, I feel that he would have predicted the location of the planet quicker. While a difference machine would also help Adam, it was shown that his earlier calculations were more accurate than his later ones. For this reason I suspect that Adam\u2019s predictions would have just become continually worse. From this, I feel that Le Verrier would be proven as the true discoverer of Neptune, and Adam would be recognized for his calculations and work to discover the location of the planet, but wouldn\u2019t be considered a co-discoverer.<\/p>\n

If it had not been for the lack of recognition of his discovery, I feel that Le Verrier would have been a more likeable person and wouldn\u2019t have been so unpopular. This would have resulted in a more productive appointment as director of the Paris Observatory and probably would not have ended in him being overthrown and when later reinstated, stripped of most of his authority. This productive appointment would have led to more astronomical discoveries. This amount of astronomical discoveries would have caused Paris to be a center of astronomical discovery.<\/p>\n

One such astronomical discovery, I feel, would have happened sooner is the discovery of Pluto. Since Le Verrier had already done work on the orbit of Neptune, I feel that if the orbit of Neptune would have continued to be tracked Le Verrier would have discovered perturbations in the orbit due to the planet Pluto. Such perturbations would have been linked through Newtonian orbital theory, which could have been further developed by Le Verrier if his view on Newtonian orbital theory had not been poisoned by his lack of recognition for the discovery of Neptune. Such an early discovery of Pluto would give it historical significance as a planet, and perhaps its planetary status would not have been taken away.<\/p>\n

Sources:<\/p>\n

Coimbra, Miguel. \u201cNeptune \u2013 God of the Seas and Oceans.\u201d Web. 12 Oct. 2011. <http:\/\/www.miguelcoimbra.com\/images\/gallery2.php?bimg=galerie\/books\/2romans\/neptune.jpg&l=820&h=820><\/p>\n

Essinger, James. Jacquard\u2019s Web<\/em>. New York: Oxford University Press, 2002. Print.<\/p>\n

Kollerstrom, Nicholas. \u201cRecovering the Neptune Files.\u201d RAS Research<\/em> (2003): 5.23-5.24. Web. 12 Oct. 2011. <http:\/\/www.dioi.org\/kn\/neptunefile.pdf><\/p>\n

O\u2019Connor, John, and Edmund Robertson. “Neptune and Pluto.\u201d\u00a0The MacTutor History of Mathematics archive.<\/em> University of St Andrews. Sept. 1996. Web. 12 Oct. 2011. <http:\/\/www-history.mcs.st-and.ac.uk\/HistTopics\/Neptune_and_Pluto.html><\/p>\n

O\u2019Connor, John, and Edmund Robertson. \u201cUrbain Jean Joseph Le Verrier.\u201d The MacTutor History of Mathematics archive.<\/em> University of St Andrews. Dec. 1996. Web. 12 Oct. 2011. <http:\/\/www.gap-system.org\/~history\/Biographies\/Le_Verrier.html><\/p>\n

\u201cPortrait of John Couch Adams.\u201d DSpace<\/em>. University of Cambridge. 2008. Web. 12 Oct. 2011. <http:\/\/www.dspace.cam.ac.uk\/handle\/1810\/214762><\/p>\n

Sheehan, William. \u201cSecret Documents Rewrite the Discovery of Neptune.\u201d\u00a0Social Sky & Telescope: The Essential Magazine of Astronomy <\/em>(2003): n. pag. Web. 12 Oct. 2011. <http:\/\/www.skyandtelescope.com\/news\/3307531.html><\/p>\n

\u201cUrbain Le Verrier.\u201d Random Knowledge<\/em>. WordPress. 11 Mar. 2008. Web. 12 Oct 2011. <http:\/\/randomknowledge.wordpress.com\/2008\/03\/11\/urbain-le-verrier\/><\/p>\n

William, David. \u201cNeptune Fact Sheet\u201d. Planetary Fact Sheets<\/em>. NASA. Nov. 2010. Web. 12 Oct. 2011. <http:\/\/nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov\/planetary\/factsheet\/neptunefact.html><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Neptune was almost discovered by Galileo, but he mistook it for a star. Lalande, a French astronomer who created tables …<\/p>\n

Continue reading »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wkiri.com\/comphist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/318"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wkiri.com\/comphist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wkiri.com\/comphist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wkiri.com\/comphist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wkiri.com\/comphist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=318"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.wkiri.com\/comphist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/318\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":326,"href":"https:\/\/www.wkiri.com\/comphist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/318\/revisions\/326"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wkiri.com\/comphist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=318"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wkiri.com\/comphist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=318"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wkiri.com\/comphist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=318"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}