The discovery of Pluto itself was the result of a miscalculation. For years people had noted that the motion of planet Neptune was a little irregular, as if it were being pulled backwards and forwards by a large planet in its vicinity. Mathematicians applied the best techniques they could devise in order to locate where that unseen big planet ought to be, and someone discovered Pluto in precisely that spot. Heres the funny part: Pluto is too small to affect the motion of Neptune. This was true before anyone knew about Plutos moon but became even more true once the moon was discovered because Pluto was now only half as big as it had looked to earlier astronomers. So the mathematicians went back to their calculations to find out where the real source of all that gravitational pull was. And guess what? They found that their earlier calculations were wrong. Neptune was behaving exactly as it should be given the influences of the known planets in its neighbourhood. The search for the ninth planet had been inspired by a mathematical error. This is not to say that the early mathematicians didnt know what they were doing. The calculations are incredibly complex and require a lot of pen-pushing. Earlier mathematicians had to simplify things to get through it all. It was only in the age of computers that it was possible to perform the calculations precisely and see that things were as they ought to be. Lesson to be learned: Sometimes even mistakes lead you to discover unexpected things. Maybe a wrong idea is better than no idea at all.
Posted on: Sun, 16 Feb 2014 22:16:52 +0000
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