The Hunt for Vulcan: . . . And How Albert Einstein Destroyed a Planet, Discovered Relativity, and Deciphered the Universe
Thomas Levenson
Language: English
Pages: 167
ISBN: 2:00347006
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
The captivating, all-but-forgotten story of Isaac Newton, Albert Einstein, and the search for a planet that never existed
For more than fifty years, the world’s top scientists searched for the “missing” planet Vulcan, whose existence was mandated by Isaac Newton’s theories of gravity. Countless hours were spent on the hunt for the elusive orb, and some of the era’s most skilled astronomers even claimed to have found it.
There was just one problem: It was never there.
In The Hunt for Vulcan, Thomas Levenson follows the visionary scientists who inhabit the story of the phantom planet, starting with Isaac Newton, who in 1687 provided an explanation for all matter in motion throughout the universe, leading to Urbain-Jean-Joseph Le Verrier, who almost two centuries later built on Newton’s theories and discovered Neptune, becoming the most famous scientist in the world. Le Verrier attempted to surpass that triumph by predicting the existence of yet another planet in our solar system, Vulcan.
It took Albert Einstein to discern that the mystery of the missing planet was a problem not of measurements or math but of Newton’s theory of gravity itself. Einstein’s general theory of relativity proved that Vulcan did not and could not exist, and that the search for it had merely been a quirk of operating under the wrong set of assumptions about the universe. Levenson tells the previously untold tale of how the “discovery” of Vulcan in the nineteenth century set the stage for Einstein’s monumental breakthrough, the greatest individual intellectual achievement of the twentieth century.
A dramatic human story of an epic quest, The Hunt for Vulcan offers insight into how science really advances (as opposed to the way we’re taught about it in school) and how the best work of the greatest scientists reveals an artist’s sensibility. Opening a new window onto our world, Levenson illuminates some of our most iconic ideas as he recounts one of the strangest episodes in the history of science.
Praise for The Hunt for Vulcan
“Delightful . . . a charming tale about an all-but-forgotten episode in science history.”—The Wall Street Journal
“Engaging . . . At heart, this is a story about how science advances, one insight at a time. But the immediacy, almost romance, of Levenson’s writing makes it almost novelistic.”—The Washington Post
“A short, beautifully produced book that tells a cautionary tale. . . . Levenson is a breezy writer who renders complex ideas in down-to-earth language.”—The Boston Globe
“Looping through science history from Isaac Newton onwards, Levenson elegantly reveals the evolutionary nature of scientific thought.”—Nature
“This delightful and enlightening drama tells the story of the hunt for a planet that did not exist and how Einstein resolved the mystery with the most beautiful theory in the history of science.”—Walter Isaacson
“Equal to the best science writing I’ve read anywhere, by any author. Beautifully composed, rich in historical context, deeply researched, it is, above all, great storytelling.”—Alan Lightman, author of The Accidental Universe
“Levenson tells us where Vulcan came from, how it vanished, and why its spirit lurks today. Along the way, we learn more than a bit of just how science works—when it succeeds as well as when it fails.”—Neil deGrasse Tyson
“Science writing at its best. This book is not just learned, passionate, and witty—it is profoundly wise.”—Junot Díaz
From the Hardcover edition.
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appeared in an eyepiece was already a known and distant star. Still, it remains odd that none of the astronomers who had first crack at Le Verrier’s conclusions thought to try. All they risked was a night or two under the observatory dome, against a potential gain of a whole new world. But none did. Finally, on September 18, Le Verrier lost patience with his compatriots. He wrote to a young German astronomer named Johann Gottfried Galle. Galle had tried and failed to catch the more senior man’s
research teams concentrated on the Rawlins area, following the same logic that brought Edison: the adequately long totality there could be viewed within range of a transportation system that could carry the full arsenal of modern observing tools. And among the most prized trophies that brought them all to Rawlins? The outstanding solar system mystery: where, if anywhere, the elusive Vulcan might be seen. Henry Draper, a physician-turned-astronomer and a pioneering astrophotographer, led the
after both had chased the bright comet of 1682—the one we now know as Halley’s.*1 But in the last months of his work on Principia, a different object held Newton’s attention: the Great Comet of 1680, discovered by the German astronomer and calendar maker Gottfried Kirch. Kirch’s comet was itself something of a milestone within the scientific revolution. On the night of November 14, 1680, Kirch had begun his regular night’s work looking for something else entirely, mapping stars as part of a
simultaneously. Finally, in the bottom drawing, as the train moves yet farther, light from the rear bolt catches up to the passenger, who thus concludes that the two strikes hit at different times, disagreeing—in good faith—with the observer at trackside. What’s more, Einstein realized, this disagreement holds true for distance too. Following the same reasoning as he did for time, Einstein emphasized the importance of the measuring apparatus, in this case an ordinary ruler. Imagine the passenger
Collected Papers of Albert Einstein, available online at http://einsteinpapers.press.princeton.edu/. Preface “subjecting matter to number” Here I must acknowledge Alexander Koyré, who coined the notion of matter subject to number to describe Galileo’s achievement. It’s too wonderful a phrase to employ only once. “When he completed the calculation” Einstein to Paul Ehrenfest, CPAE 8, document 182, 179, and Einstein to Adriaan Fokker and to Wander Johannes de Haas, quoted in Abraham Pais,
