March 21, 2020 • 54 mins
Pluto may not be a planet, but it definitely exists. Not every case is so clear. The history of near-Earth astronomy contains many cases of bodies that may or may not have ever existed in the solar system we call home. In this episode of Stuff to Blow Your Mind, Robert Lamb and Joe McCormick take a journey through space to survey once-hypothetical bodies that took work to prove, once-imagined bodies that are now confirmed phantoms, and the unsolved mysteries where questions remain. (originally published 2/28/2019)
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:05):
Hey, you welcome to stuff to blow your mind. My
name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and it's Saturday.
Time to go into the vault. This time it's for
an episode that originally aired February nineteen. This was the
first of our two part series looking at what we
call the Lost Daughters of autun, the the planets once
believed to occupy our solar system that either weren't there
(00:27):
or at least haven't been confirmed yet. Yeah, and it's
a it's a two parter, so the the next of
old episode will be part two. But this was a
fun way to to get into basically like the history
of celestial mechanics to a certain extent, you know, by
looking at the errors that reveal the journey of understanding. Yeah,
I remember. This one was a lot of fun, so
(00:48):
we hope you enjoy it. Greetings traveler, take a seat,
strap yourself in pre order any of the various micro
gravity snacks and cocktails on our in flight menu. As
we leave Earth's atmosphere, we will engage the local Knot engine,
which will allow us to cross the boundaries between our
world in other worlds that could have been instead of
(01:10):
visiting the actual planets of our Solar system, we will
visit the various hypothetical Solar System objects that all seemed
possible at one point. Counting down five four, three two one.
(01:32):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stop
works dot Com. Hey, welcome, it's stuff to blow your mind.
My name is Robert lamp and I'm Joe McCormick, and
we're back to explore some of the furthest reaches of space,
about as far as you can go into space, the
(01:52):
part of space that never existed in the first place,
or is or in some cases, as we'll get into
in an upcome episode, things that have not been completely
substantiated in the dark outer regions of our Solar system. Right, So,
today Robert and I wanted to explore hypothetical Solar System objects,
objects believe to be out there in our local galactic neighborhood,
(02:16):
within the domain of influence of our home star, the Sun. Uh.
And there have been tons of objects like this over
the years that have been proposed to be out there,
some that we now know aren't actually there or were
never there. Others that maybe there's still an open question,
right and uh, you know, especially in the first one
we're going to discuss. You have something that is it
(02:36):
emerges as a model for the Solar System or a
model for the universe beyond Earth, based on a mix
of the best available information at the time, and then
also perhaps some some other concepts that maybe didn't need
to necessarily influence a scientific or pre even pre scientific
(02:59):
understanding of what the universe might consist of. Well, one
of the things that this episode will and uh will
cause us to have to consider is what are the
ideas that people bring to the table when they're when
they're trying to decide what exists out there in the
void of space. And it's not always as simple as
just well, we look up in the sky or we
(03:19):
look through a telescope and we see what we see,
and if we see something then then we think it's there.
A lot of times there are reasons people have for
concluding that objects must be up there in the Solar System,
and what those reasons are are about as interesting as
the models themselves, right, because you end up going from say,
just pure observational data to a working understanding of the
(03:43):
physical world, to mathematical models that are based on all
of these things. And you kind of expand outward from there. Uh.
And along the way there's there's room for you know,
expectations to build around things that end up to be
uh illusory. And so our first illusory destination is going
(04:04):
to be the planet and Tikathon and Tikathon. So this
includes I would say, a sort of a a little
bit of a hint of Cathulu. There's a cosmic horror
to behold. Uh. It's it stands for, of course, the
opposite Earth, the counter Earth. Yes. Uh, so please keep
(04:25):
all seatbelts fastened as our as we approach this hypothetical planet,
because we're gonna we're gonna be coming into into a
close proximity to some some very old, very alien cosmic
forces here, uh, namely a cosmos or a model for
the cosmos, in which everything, including our Sun, gravitates around
the Great Central Fire. The Great Central Fire is not
(04:49):
the Sun, right, this is something else. This is Dio's Philock,
the watch tower of Zeus, the prison of Zeus, the
heart altar of the universe, all these things, depending on
your translation. Well, I am on board for this journey. Robert,
tell me, where does the idea of the Antikathon come
from well. The Antikathon was first proposed by Greek philosopher
(05:10):
or Philolas, who lived from four seventy to three five BC.
He worked with a Pythagorean cosmological system. In his system,
you had a sphere of fixed stars, and you had
the five planets. You're the Sun, you have the Moon,
but you didn't only have Earth. You had a counter Earth,
the counter Earth, right, and all of this is moving
(05:31):
around the central fire, which again is not the Sun,
and the planet Antikathon. Uh, in this model remains unseen
to us. It's always hidden. Um, you know, it's it's
either below the horizon or or hidden by by by
some other factor of the movements of this uh. This model. Okay,
(05:53):
So I'm trying to picture this if the Sun is
not the central fire, but it's always but Antikathon, the
on Earth is always on the opposite side of the
central fire. I guess I'm having trouble picturing it, but
maybe you can lay it out for me. We'll lay
it lay it out more. But basically, some of these things,
like the central fire and and Tikeathon, they would be
eternally in our blind spot in this model. Okay. So
(06:16):
the model here explains the movement of observable and unobservable
bodies as being dictated by their distance from the central fire,
so that the distant spheres of fixed stars well that
that barely moves at all. The Moon takes a month
to complete its revolution, the Sun a year in each
planet in its own interval. The Earth is closest to
(06:39):
the central fire, and so it takes only twenty four hours.
And all of this accounts for the apparent movement of
the spheres and our cycles of night and day. So
a large part of the model is attempting to explain
why things are moving the way there they appear to
be moving. And this was something that was worth trying
to explain because even back in the ancient world in
the fourth or fifth century BC, we didn't have telescopes yet,
(07:01):
but there was plenty of naked eye astronomy. I mean,
the inner planets were known about back then by the
Babylonian astronomers. There's a lot you could learn and study
just by looking up at the sky at night with
the naked eye. But the big question is, obviously there
are things that are part of the solar system that
that these uh early astronomers could not see and had
(07:22):
no idea existed. And yet at the same time, why
would a model like this need to by necessity incorporate
things that are invisible? Right? Yeah, why would you invent
an antikathon if you don't have direct evidence that is there? Well,
Aristotle would later, And then this depends on who you're reading.
In some cases, people interpret this as a joke. Would
(07:44):
perhaps joke about this theory and say that that the
Pythagoreans and in particular field House made up the hidden
tent solar body in order to reach a perfect number
of tin Okay, because they are really into like numbers
and symmetry and all that, right, And and a lot
of what we understand about this theory does come from
(08:07):
from the writings of Aristotle, and or at least what
we can decipher his writings about it. Uh So you know,
whether he was whether this was he was truly joking
about this ten planet thing, I'm not sure. But we
we still have to give fuel else a great deal
of credit because no matter what he got wrong here,
in an attempt to understand the movement of the cosmos,
(08:29):
he at least used a system that didn't position the
Earth or even the Sun at the center of everything,
So he was ahead of the geocentrics and the heliocentrics
in that regard. He was also the first to create
a model that that actually lists all five planets known
to antiquity in the correct order, and in many respects
he simply built the best model possible based on existing theories,
(08:50):
current current data, and observations. Again with the with the
caveat here that he also threw into non existent bodies.
So first, let's talk about the whole center of this
whole thing, um, the central Fire, and why why it's
there instead of the Earth or the Sun, which is
further out from the center in this model, like Earth
(09:13):
is closest to the central fire and Sun is beyond,
and the Sun is beyond that, but the central fire
is always on the opposite side of the Earth. We
can't see right, We never get to see it. So
it's possible that it was because fire rather than Earth,
seemed a more fitting elemental center to things, and the
Sun in this model is apparently actually interpreted more as
(09:33):
a like a glass that reflects the inner fire to
our world. And then there's a there's a great deal
of disagreement about all the details in this model and
and interpretations vary, but something that the counter Earth is
there to balance out our Earth in some way, or
that it's there to account for eclipses, which is an
interesting theory that that that Aristotle backs up to some degree,
(09:56):
and it does remind me of similar contemplations in in
Indian astronomy that led to the creation of the eclipse
demon ra who which is also an astronomical body. Uh.
It was you know, determined this is a thing that
is causing eclipses. So ra who would be the demon
that would come out and eat the sun? Well, yes,
in the in the purely when we've discussed this on
(10:18):
an older episode of stuff to blow your mind. But
but ra who was at once this demon that would
come out and eat the sun? But also uh an
astronomical calculation as part of the model for how eclipses
were occurring. And as one of the curious facts of
all this is that as uh Indian astronomy advanced and
(10:40):
created a more accurate view of what was going on
with eclipses, instead of like keeping the religion the mythology untouched,
they also adjusted that to make up for these new
advancements and science. Interesting. Yeah, so go back and listen
to that episode. I'll make sure to link to it
on the landing page. For this episode of Stuff to
Blow Your Mind dot Com. So fuel Allows explains that
(11:03):
the Earth rotates so that it always faces away from
the central fire, so we never see it. We're tidally locked.
I guess they wouldn't have those terms back then, I suppose,
But yeah, yeah, that's an interesting idea that lots of
uh objects that orbit other objects are not rotating freely
as they orbit like we are. They're tidally locked, meaning
their rotation is synchronized to their orbit, so the same
(11:24):
side of the body always faces the inner object. Now,
of course there would be a number knowing what we
know now, there would be so many problems with this model.
Right if one side of the Earth where we're just
perpetually I guess in flames due to facing uh this
this weird cosmic non sun fire at the center of things,
that would be very bad. Yeah. But again, in this model,
(11:45):
the planets locked, it's never it never never sees that
we never see the fire from our side of the planet,
and likewise we never see the counter Earth, which moves
at the same speed as our planet. So I wonder
did he think that there were people on the other
side of the planet who could see the central fire.
I don't believe. So, I mean we have to we're again,
we're we're thinking with with our modern model of of
(12:08):
of what we know to be true about the world
and the Solar System, and we have to to realize
that this system was was partially constructed on just the
best materials they had at the time. Now, it's also
been suggested that the notion of a counter Earth was
introduced in this model, you know, not for any physical reasons,
not for any kind of counterbalancing reasons, etcetera, but for
(12:31):
the same reason that we find the concept fascinating today,
that the you know, the notion of another Earth is
mysterious and intriguing. It, you know, it's a mirror realm
just beyond our reach. In particular, ancient philosophy scholar Peter
Kingsley has proposed that aspects of the model attempt to
(12:51):
factor in Hades and Tartarus Um Hades and tartar Us
of course, um uh, you know, our our locations real
ms within Greek mythology, the realms of the dead. Right,
so Hades is like the sort of general realm of
the dead, and Tartarus is more like a hell yeah,
like if you were one of the Titans who rebelled
against the gods, then that is you're likely abode. So
(13:16):
Kingsley's argument is that both of these realms are considered
to be below the earth. Uh, Tartarus furthest of all
and that would make the counter earth Hades and the
central fire Tartarus. And this is where we get to
come back to the to Kingsley's interpretation of it is
not being like the Tower of Zeus, but the prison
of Zeus, the prison of the Titans. And this is
(13:39):
so is this an interpretation, to be clear, sometimes described
as provocative. So this is not necessarily like the UH
the agreed upon explanation for the system. But it's an
interesting tape take, and it does attempt to understand the
motivation for skewing the model so and introducing two invisible
realms into a model of celestial mechanics. But it would
(14:02):
mean that the counter Earth here is the realm of
the dead, a planet of the underworld. Now a Philolouse's
model of the heaven certainly doesn't hold up to later
much less modern astronomy. But you're probably wondering, what if
there was another Earth? Maybe he's onto something here, right, Well,
what if there there was another Earth orbiting at the
(14:23):
just the right speed so that the Sun is always
between us and our evil twin? What what if it
was always in our blind spot? Could that work? Would
we have seen it by now? If there was such
a planet, that's a good question. Yeah, if it was
on the opposite side of the Sun, we wouldn't really
be able to see it normally, would we. Well, on
surface level, this sounds possible, and I can that can easily.
(14:46):
You can easily see where the spirals into conspiracy theory,
thinking right right, Well, I mean, try to find this
object with your telescope and you will suffer a problem
with the eyes. Right, But here's the thing. It wouldn't
work because yes, we would have spotted it. Because here's
the thing, the movement of the planets around the Sun
are not quite this simple clockwork model that we sometimes
(15:06):
fix in our heads. It's not just planets going around
the Sun at at constant speeds. Now, the gravity of
other planets has a subtle influence on our orbit, absolutely
slowing us down or speeding us up. So if there
was another Earth on the other side of the Sun,
it would it would get a Jupiter pull or boost,
(15:27):
and it would inevitably give us a peek at the
hidden planet behind the Sun. So it wouldn't be able
to remain perfectly hidden forever. It would be one of
the one of the one of our Earth's would would
outpace the other just enough to get a peak of it,
and it would be revealed. But it wouldn't just be
the influence of say Jupiter and the other planets on it.
It would also be the influence of it on the
(15:47):
other planets we can see, right, Yeah, given the effect
that the mass of one planet has on the orbits
of other planets, we'd see it. In the math. If
there was a hidden body of planetary mass on the
other side to the Sun, we would we would see
it. It It would have disrupted the orbits of our satellites.
And this would hold true according to NASA scientists Michael Kaiser,
(16:08):
even if the counter Earth were only a hundred miles wide,
so it doesn't even have to be a full sized
counter earth. Uh, even if it were just relatively small,
we would be able to experience the effects detect the
effects of its presence. But let's say you're one of
those people who's like, I don't trust all that math
and detection stuff. I I I won't believe until I
(16:29):
can look for it and see it and it's not there. Well,
I mean, if if that's who you are, I probably
can't convince you. But in two thousand six, NASA's Solar
Terrestrial Relations Observatory or STEREO mission sent to satellites around
the Sun to study the solar surface, and they allowed
us a peek beyond the Sun and guess what, there's
(16:50):
no planet Hades there. So we have looked, we have
looked in the in the closet for the monster, and
Anti Kathon is nowhere to be fat. Yeah, we've looked
in all three ways that it would be revealed to us. Yes,
and it is not. It is not there. It's it's
not even I can't I can't stress it enough. It's
not just a matter of well we haven't seen it yet. No,
(17:11):
it's it is not there. Definitely not right. However, if
you do want to find a counter Earth, your best
place to experience it is in science fiction. Oh yeah,
I'm sure though. I bet there's some wonderful counter earth
conspiracy theories out there. Oh, I'm sure there are, but
I can't imagine they're as delightful. Well, I don't know
if all these are delightful. Uh, let's say, I'm not
(17:32):
sure that they could possibly be as interesting as some
of the counter Earth models that we've seen in science fiction. Though. Now,
isn't Gore a counter Earth? Yes? It is. John Norman's Gore.
These are a series, a long series of sci fi
fantasy novels in which the counter earth Gore is a
world of swords, techno priest King's sexual philosophy, and the
(17:56):
Solar system strategic reserves of misogyny. That's about right, because
I have not read any of these books, but I
have seen the film the MST. Three K treatment of
Outlaw of Gore. Yes, just Outlaw at Gore, I think, Yeah,
that's the title. Usually see uh with Jack Palance, Jack Palance,
(18:17):
that's all right? Yeah, with the guy who keeps yelling
the other character's name about five hundred times in the
movie Cab Cabin yea. And this was a sequel to
nine seven's Gore, which also had Palents in it as
well as Oliver read. I have not yet seen that
Filiver read it looks fabulous. I'm waiting for for one
of the riffing services, riff tracks or Mystery Sense Theater
(18:39):
to finally riff this film for me. Yeah, I just
remember about this movie. It's it's very it's like obviously
like super sexist, just woman hating off the chain and
like really silly fight scenes. Yeah. Well, my understanding of
the book series and I haven't and I haven't read them, presps.
We can hear from some listeners who have and have
some some feedback on them. Um. Apparently they start out
in the again thirty four book series here, so they
(19:01):
start out a little more based in just sort of
spaceship and sword and sorcery, you know, kind of a
John Carter vibe to them, and then they increasingly get
more into the author's quote unquote sexual philosophy. Oh boy. Um,
so I'm sure that's highly interesting. Now. Another great example
that also has some Mystery Sense Theater three thousand um
(19:24):
tie in is uh my favorite Gamera movie, Gamera Versus Guron,
which features a counter earth named Kara and it's home
to a humanoid species on the verge of extinction due
to NonStop Gaos attacks. Gaos being the sort of winged
shark creature that Gammera fights a lot with the sort
of radioactive bats that emit rays. Yeah, so this planet
(19:48):
has just been devastated by this because I guess they
don't have a Gamera. Uh, but they do have one
loan planetary Guardian, and it's the blade headed gearon which
if if you've ever seen a kaid you whose head
looks like just a giant blade and he's fighting Gamera,
that's him. Now, as with many of the verses things here,
(20:08):
is it actually in the end of the movie Gammera
versus Giron or do they team up? Oh? No, the
Guron is a total villain, So it's just said a
long dooey fight between the two. Yeah. Now, what's the
Godzilla movie where Aliens kidnapped Godzilla to bring him back
to their home planet to fight a monster that's attacking them. Who?
I don't remember that one. It sounds like it probably exists, though,
(20:32):
Is that Godzilla versus Monster Zero? Maybe? So I just
looked it up. Yes, I think that is it. I
don't think that took place on the counter Earth though,
I think it's just another planet. Okay, we'll see some
other quick examples of of counter earths and fiction. Uh.
Britton Marling's Another Earth as a film that apparently explores this.
(20:52):
I haven't seen it, but I love her work on
the o A, the Netflix sci fi series. I haven't
seen it, it's good. Uh. Lars von Trier's uh Melancolia
is another film, another one I have not seen, which
also features a counter earth in some fashion, but I
don't I don't really watch films by that director, so
I can't speak to it. And then, of course, counter
(21:14):
earths pop up in various other sci fi properties of note,
many many a good deal better than what we've mentioned here.
But but hey, this is where you come in, the listener.
If you have a favorite counter earth or counter earth
treatment from science fiction, let us know. I would love
to hear from it. I always enjoy hearing, especially from
those of you who have really steeped in like seventies
and eighties sci fi UH novels you know, and can
(21:36):
write in and uh and and you know and educate
us on what we're missing. All Right, we gotta take
a quick break, but we'll be right back with more
on lost planets. Alright, we're back. What's our next destination, Joe,
we gotta be turning in and turning down this. I
want to get on a hobby horse for a second. Okay, okay.
You know that old expression that in space there is
(21:58):
no up or down. It's very It's like in the
Wrath of Cohn, right, you know, it's like con is thinking,
is not thinking three D enough, He's not thinking about
space the right way. Uh. And so it's technically advantageous
to recognize when you're flying around in the space there's
no real top or bottom. You can orient in a
new direction. And in a sense that is true if
we go into orbit around the Antikathon, say, there's no
(22:21):
reason to assume that the north pole of Gore is up,
in the south pole of Gore is down, or vice versa. Right.
And then, as we've discussed before in the show, you
have more of an up and down feel in Star
Trek because it's basically a world of ships, a world
of seagoing vessels translated into a space scenario. And then
you have more recent models of especially visual science fiction,
(22:44):
such as the television series The Expanse, which which demonstrates
him more three dimensional realm of of a cosmic military engagement. Exactly. Yeah,
uh so, so it is true that out here in
space there's no ground down beneath our feet. But in
another sense, I think that's really under selling how far
(23:04):
down down goes, because down means toward a center of gravity.
That's how we use it to mean, you know, down
on Earth, and the Solar System actually does have a bottom,
and it's about fifteen million degrees celsius. It's the core
of the Sun, the star I whose gaze you cannot
hold without going blind. That's all the way down in
(23:24):
the Solar System. So you're talking about just being if
you were pulled down the gravity well, as it's called, Yes,
that's the bottom. Yeah, straight down into the pit, straight
into the open mouth of autun And so I like
thinking about it that way, thinking about that, as you
get closer to the Sun, you're actually going down into
the pit. You're almost in a way, going into the underworld.
(23:46):
And so for literally thousands of years we mentioned this
earlier in the episode, but since no later than the
Babylonian astronomers of the second millennium BC, humans have known
about the first six planets you can see them with
the naked eye. Mercury, Vus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn. They're
bright points of light passing and regressing across the night sky.
(24:07):
You don't need to telescope. Sometimes we've watched them, we've
charted their movement. And when Newton came along, there was
a revolution because we discovered the laws that govern the
way they move. And crucially, you know, Newton came up
with laws of motion that allowed us to see that
the same physical laws that controlled the movements of the
planets also controlled the movement of regular objects here on Earth,
(24:29):
whose things like gravity and momentum. But now that we're
out of the realm of saying the ancient Greeks who
are reasoning on the basis of maybe something like Pythagorean
symmetry or something like that, Now we've got real scientific
tools under our belt that actually help us learn what
things are out there, and they are good at producing
accurate results. Could we use those tools to see if
(24:52):
there's something else out there that we weren't seeing, And specifically,
could we peer deep down into the well, all the
way down down into the well of the Sun to
see if there's something in that direction we're not seeing,
so I wanna turn to my man urbane. You know
it's spelled urbane. That is not the French way. I
think is their bond or bond. Jean Joseph Laverier a
(25:16):
French astronomer who lived eighteen eleven to eighteen seventy seven,
and in eighteen thirty seven Laverier was appointed to a
position at the Polytechnic School in Paris, where he began
a long study of the planet Mercury, which is of
course the innermost planet in the Solar System that we
know about now. It's the closest to the Sun. And
he was doing things like creating tables of observation of
(25:38):
the planet's orbit. And if that sounds like boring work,
you should know that there's a wrinkle here. There's actually
a mystery involved in Mercury's orbit. See, Mercury's orbit is
not what it should have been, given the planet's momentum
and the gravitational influences on it that we knew about.
There's this phenomenon known as the precession of the parahelion
(26:00):
of Mercury. Real quick point, a parahelion is the point
of least distance from the Sun during an object's orbit, right, Yes,
it's the point when it comes closest. So essentially, the
precession of the parahelion of Mercury means that every year
on Mercury, every time Mercury goes around the Sun, its
orbits sort of shifts forward. So if you imagine getting
(26:24):
up on the north pole of the Sun and of
Mercury and looking down at the solar plane, um you're
looking down at Mercury's path with a time lapse tracing
its movement across the years. It would not repeat the
same path every year, but instead it would sort of
shift forward a bit with every trip around the Sun,
drawing more kind of a daisy pedal or spirograph type pattern.
(26:46):
And the question is what caused this? So fortunately the
astronomers of the nineteenth century were armed with that great
investigative tool in the history of science, the physics of
Isaac Newton, and the physics of Isaac Newton was extremely
good at predicting the movements of a planet by knowing
it's inertia, the uniform motion of the planet through space,
(27:07):
and by knowing gravity the mutual attraction to other centers
of mass that we're out there, and generally, Newton's laws
had proved really accurate, astonishingly good actually at predicting planetary motion.
And if you took into account all the relevant influences,
the physical influences we knew about, you could just predict
where the planets would go, except Mercury. And so Newton's
(27:27):
laws accounted for almost all of the observed procession of
the orbit of Mercury, but not quite all. There's still
just a bit of steady change in the planet's orbit
that stubbornly remained unexplained, making the orbit of Mercury this
stubborn and mysterious problem in Laverier's time. But in eighteen
forty five, Laverier he's working on a different problem. He
(27:49):
changes his focus briefly to focus on the curious case
of another planet in the Solar System. See I mentioned
earlier that we've known about the first six planets in
the Solar System since ancient times, but in the nineteenth
century astronomers were still dealing with a relatively recent edition.
And think about how weird this is, like too at
a time, for the first time in thousands of years,
(28:10):
that we knew about another planet, and that planet was
how do we say this planet's name on the podcast
Robert Do we just say Uranus? Well, Uranus is fun.
Is is more fun, It's more humorous. Um. I often
often say urin us, though that almost sounds like a uranist.
Like uranist, it's a professional urinator in many respects. It's
(28:31):
an unfortunately named planet. Yeah, it maybe could have been worse.
I don't know if this would be worse or not.
So it was discovered in seventeen eighty one Uranus. That
was Uranus. Sorry, that was the first time it was
seen by a human and it was by the German
born British astronomer William Herschel, who found the planet during
a survey of the stars, and he wanted to call
(28:51):
it not Uranus or Uranus, but George m Stas or
the Star of George, after King George the third of England. Uh.
And I'm glad that name got scrapped in in favor
of a much more dignified mythological anus reference. Yeah, even
even with the the anus right in there, it it
has more of a ring to it than than this Georgia.
(29:12):
UM citizen business. Well, I mean, oh, how horrible that
would be the name of planet after just like a
human king. Kings suck, Yes, absolutely, I mean kings, they
have all these other things. Let's at least leave their
names off of the planet. Yeah, stick to mythical references please.
But anyway, like Mercury, Uranus was this kind of like
(29:33):
sphear mysterious right. Uranus also wobbled in its orbit. Its
path around the Sun was different from what we would
predict given the gravitational influences that we knew about. So
Laverier took this mystery and he turned it into one
of the great success stories in the history of any
scientific theory. He conjured a planet out of the void,
(29:54):
and his assumptions were really simple. So he took the
known laws of physics. He took Newton's laws, and he
you know, given these laws, what could make Uranus orbit
as irregular as we observe? And the answer he came
up with was, well, another planet could do it. He
calculated how big that other planet would have to be
and where exactly would have to be in relation to Uranus,
(30:17):
and then he put that prediction to the test. He
wrote down his predictions in a letter to a German
astronomer named Johann Ji Gala and asked him to look
for this eighth planet with his instruments and using Laverier's predictions.
Gala found the planet Neptune after only about an hour
of looking for it, within one degree of exactly where
(30:38):
Laverier had predicted. And I should also just note that
an English astronomer named John c Adams also calculated the
position of the planet that would come to be known
as Neptune independently around the same time. But in both
cases they're essentially using the math to determine where this
this unknown planet would be. And then it is confirmed
that there is of course a planet there, and yeah,
(30:59):
and this is like the classic case of like when
when a scientific theory works best, right, when a scientific
theory tells you how things work in a way that
allows you to extrapolate from what you know to what
you predict you should find in the future, and then
you go out and look and you find exactly Yeah,
you find exactly what you predicted. So this is like
(31:20):
a great win for Newton's theories. Right then, the prediction
was a huge success. It led to Laverier being given
all kinds of medals and honorary appointments and he was
eventually made the head of the Astronomical Observatory in Paris.
He had he had plucked Neptune out of space, armed
with nothing but the power of Newton's laws. And so
then after this, Laverier decides to go back to his
(31:41):
old subject. He turns his attention back to Mercury and
the problem of Mercuries. Or I think everybody can see
where we're going here, right, Yeah, so you can guess
what the temptation might be. Laverier had just achieved awesome
fame by predicting a previously undiscovered planet. What if there
was another? So he came up with a prediction for
(32:02):
something with mass very close to the Sun inside the
orbit of Mercury, maybe another asteroid belt or another planet.
It would be something with mass that that could cause
Mercury's orbit to wobble in the way he had measured
so precisely when making his tables. And then here's the
real kicker. Just like Neptune, this InterPlaNet was also discovered.
(32:26):
So here I want to rely on the work of
a of an author named Thomas Levinson from a book
called The Hunt for Vulcan from Random House in and
in an interview with nat Gio. Levinson describes the first
sighting of the planet at the bottom of the pit,
which was by an amateur French astronomer named Edmund Modesta
(32:47):
Lescarbot on March nine. So you've got that he's this
country doctor. Uh he was a country doctor by trade,
and he's got an observatory in a stone barn in
his backyard. Yeah, this is this is often the case
when we're talking about astronomy from this area. We're getting
into the realm of the gentleman scientist. Yes, yeah, he's
sort of like he dabbles. Maybe. So one day in
(33:09):
eighteen fifty nine, less Garbo took a break in between
seeing patients and he went out to his telescope to
observe the Sun. And uh uh, and Levinson says quote,
as he trains his telescope on the Sun, he sees
a round object on the face of the Sun. He
times it as it moves steadily across the Sun, records
the data. Then another patient arrives, so he checks out
(33:32):
that patient, then comes back to the barn. This round
dot is still crossing the Sun. He tracks it continuously,
taking notes on its path until it finally goes over
the other edge of the Sun. And so after making
this observation, Lescarbo he reads about Laverier's prediction and he
gets all excited and he writes a letter to Laverier
(33:52):
describing what he saw crossing the disc of the Sun.
So Laverier had predicted this planet would be in there,
and then let's go bow saw it. And apparent Laverier
was at a New Year's Eve party when he got
the letter, and he just left and he's like, oh boy,
and he went out to Lescarbo's house, which was a
trip that Levinson said involved a train ride in a
(34:12):
twelve mile walk. So he was obviously excited. I mean,
you find one planet, you kind of get hooked on it, right,
We've got to find another. Um So lavery A confirmed
the observation, and this InterPlaNet got a name. It came
to be known as Vulcan. That's a good name because
Vulcan in in in the mythological senses, is close to
the forge. Yes, he's the forge, got exactly. He's the
(34:35):
Hifastus type figure. He's down there with the fires beating
the steel. And this triggered a period of what Levinson
called vulcan Mania. So Suddenly astronomers all over the world
are trying to find Vulcan, and quite a few reported
finding it, like during an eclipse in eighteen seventy eight.
Levinson tells the story that Thomas Edison happened to be
(34:55):
in the path of totality for a for a solar
eclipse in Wyoming, and he is there to try out
an infrared radiation since or he had created, which actually
did not work in the end, But so he's out
there for the eclipse and he ends up coming across
a pair of Vulcan hunters who were using the eclipse
to try to spot the planet, because obviously, if you
think about this, it's hard to see a planet that's
(35:15):
close to the Sun under normal circumstances. But if you
wait for a solar eclipse and the Moon blocks out
the light of the Sun, suddenly you can look up
there and say, okay, is there anything there. The two
Vulcan hunters here in the story where Simon Newcomb and
James Craig Watson, and the report goes that Newcomb could
not find the planet he looked for Vulcan during the eclipse.
(35:35):
He didn't see anything, but Watson said he saw it
he said a star was near the Sun which had
never been documented before. It was not on any of
his charts, and it had to be the planet Vulcan.
In an article for Nautilus, Levinson writes about Watson, citing
quote Watson saw, very close to the limb of the Sun,
a ruddy star, just where Vulcan ought to have been.
(35:57):
So the discovery of Vulcan was reported in the New
Times in papers around the world. It was huge and
exciting news, and there were even cases were like doubters
and skeptics about Vulcan were sort of pooh pooed and
made fun of. But if you know your solar system now,
you might be wondering. Okay, so what happened? We didn't
memorize that one in school, right, So yeah, what happened
(36:18):
to Vulcan and vulcan Mania. Well, of course many others
simply failed to find the planet. Other people look for
it and never saw what the people who found it
said they saw. But what really killed it was a
change in the theoretical framework that had predicted it. That
change was what was brought about with Einstein in the
theory of general relativity. So when Einstein devised his theory.
(36:39):
One of the key elements is that space and time
may have their geometry altered by large amounts of mass
and energy, and that an object traveling close to a
massive object like a star would be effective by these
deformations of space time. And what Einstein found here was
that his theory, when he did the math, almost perfectly
predict did the precession of the parahelion of Mercury without
(37:03):
invoking any elusive hidden planets. Reportedly, you know, when Einstein
made these calculations and discovered that his theory had finally
explained the leftover bits of Mercury's wobble, he was so
excited that he felt heart palpitations and couldn't work for
days because here's this lingering mystery and astronomy. It had
led people to hypothesize phantom planets that weren't actually there.
(37:25):
And finally, just by re envisioning exactly how gravity worked
and what the shape of space time was, he had
explained it. Now with this new theory, it matched all
of the observations from the past. Like this is like
a Scooby Doo mystery, like the ghost is no longer
required because because he has pulled the mask off of
the villain and exposed it. Yeah, Einstein, he made a
(37:47):
name for himself by killing a planet. Vulcan was dead.
But I like to think about and Levinson points out
some stuff about this too, the interesting fact that in
a way Laverier was sort of doing everything right right,
you know, he was like as a scientist, he was like, Okay, well,
I've got a theory that I think works right. You know,
you've got Newtonian mechanics. They they have made correct predictions before,
(38:10):
so I'll use them to make a prediction again, and
in much the manner of predictions that have worked out
in the past. And then you go to the tests
and say, okay, does anybody empirically confirm what I predicted?
And people did, Yeah, I mean this is I mean,
getting it wrong too is part of the process here. Uh.
You form the best hypothesis based on the materials you
(38:31):
have to work with, and then eventually you know it's
going to be proven disproven or or or somewhere in between,
tweaked to account for new information about the world. I mean,
I wonder what was going on in the case of
the people who said that they saw Vulcan, Like, were
they I mean, was it just the case that these
(38:53):
were instances where people did see something and they were
just confused about what it was, or were they cases
where people were so excited to you know, want to
see what they were expecting to see, that that it.
You know, maybe they wouldn't have seen something otherwise, but
they just had their their biases going. Oh. I think
I think it was all of those. I mean, we've
talked about on the show before, the enthusiasm around spying
(39:19):
the canals of Mars, you know, um, and and certainly
that similar excitement involved there. But in this case we're
dealing with something that is perhaps even less obvious to
untrained eyes, perhaps just a little easier to fool yourself
on if you have just just the right amount of enthusiasm,
(39:39):
if you're gazing up at at an eclipse like which
which even with appropriate gear, is an overwhelming situation, it's
emotionally arousing. Yeah, you might say, just a generally extreme proposition. Yes,
And and I'll advise it just in case we're not
clear here, do not listen to the show and go
out and stare at the sun looking for phantom planets,
(40:00):
right though, I would advise you do visit a solar observatory. Absolutely, yes.
Should we take a break and then explore one last
lost daughter of Aten? Let's do it. Alright, we're back.
So we've cast vulcan aside, vulcan Vulcans out, so dead.
So let's go through the planets. We have Wait a minute,
what about Antikathon always dead too? Was dead too? Matrol
Fire also gone. So we have Mercury, okay, Venus, Earth, Mars,
(40:27):
and then of course, oh okay, we'll see did you
say Phaeton? I said Phaeton? What is Phaeton? All right, yep,
this is the this is our next destination in the podcast,
named for the son of Helios and Greek myth, and
this was the This was for a brief period, a
hypothetical planet between Mars and Jupiter. Now I know that
(40:50):
there is something between Mars and Jupiter. Well yeah, so
we have the rubble of an asteroid belt between Mars
and the gas giant. So the hypothesis here, just to
get it out of the way right from the start,
is that the asteroid belt used to be a planet,
which we are going to call Phaeton. Okay, So it's
like in Star Wars. After the planet al durand gets
(41:12):
blown up by the Death's exactly. And they arrive in
the millennium falcon and what's there a bunch of like
rocks floating around in space that's sort of like the
asteroid belt after the planet Phaeton has been destroyed. Right,
So the basic idea here is Phaeton. The planet is
gone and all we have is is rubble. Now why
name it Phaeton? This is pretty fun too. That's because
(41:35):
in mythology, um Phaeton borrows his dad's sun chariot, he
borrows the chariot of Helios, and I just guess guests
just goes on a wild ride on this thing and
just totally wipes out. So there are a number of
different paintings of him falling off the chariot of the Sun,
crashing the chariot of the Sun. Um. There's there's one
(41:57):
particular fresco eight fresco Um, this was done eight. This
is not an Internet humor thing, no, no, but it's
like it's like a fresco and you're looking up and
there is a Phaeton driving the chariot and he is,
as you said, you might say, straight porky, pigging it.
He's just he's wearing robes and all at least on
(42:20):
his torso, and it's just naked button genitals hanging out.
This is absolutely the most prominent scrowdom I have ever
seen in a Renaissance painting. So I don't know, Maybe
he wrecked the chariot because he was wearing no pants.
I don't know. Maybe, uh, maybe this is part of
the accident, like he's he's wiping out so bad that
his pants are just immediately vapor us. Well, no, I
(42:44):
think what we need to what we must accept, is
that actually this painting by Dominico Riccio, I don't know
if you said the name that I that's the painter here.
This painting here is anatomically correct. This is what a
chariot wreck would look like for god wearing robes. We
just normally are coddled by painters who must represent the
(43:04):
gods in a tasteful pose. This is like the cinema
verity of Renaissance painting of of classical gods. So I
highly recommend looking it up if you get a chance. Um,
and maybe I'll include a link on the landing page
that though it will almost certainly not be the main
art for the episode. So so anyway, I know what
everyone's thinking or sorry, okay, I've got it. There's this
(43:25):
idea that what's the asteroid belt doing there? Okay, maybe
it used to be a planet. But the way we
actually get to the formation of this Phaeton hypothesis is
a lot more interesting than that. And it comes down
again to UH, to the math, to a mathematical model,
and then and then someone saying, well, what what should
(43:46):
go here? What would what would make this model work?
What would fill in the missing blank or a planet?
Of course, so you're saying there's a mathematical UH prediction
or mathematical theory that otherwise holds true, that the predicted
other things accurately and would have predicted a planet where
the asteroid belt is right. And it all has to
(44:07):
do with what's known as UH the titches Bode law.
This is a hypothesis of planetary sequence named for Johan
Daniel Titchus and Johan Alert Bode. The two Johan's Johan
and Johan and um. This was in the Yeah. This
was proposed by German astronomer Tifis in seventeen sixty six
(44:28):
and popularized by Bode in seventeen seventy two. And and
to explain what all this is about, let's consider the
sequence of planets again. This time you know what we
know mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn. Now considered this
sequence of numbers, Okay, zero, three, six, twelve, twenty four.
(44:49):
Each number after three is twice the previous number, So
zero and then three, and then we go to six,
then to twelve, and twenty four. Makes sense add four
to each of these numbers and then divide them by ten,
and the result is as follows. Zero point four, zero
(45:10):
point seven, one point zero, one point six, two point eight,
five point two, ten point zero. Six of these numbers
closely approximate the distances of our planets from the Sun
in astronomical units or a use to refresh, one AU
is the rough distance between the Earth and the Sun.
(45:33):
So point four a use mercury point seven, Venus one
Earth naturally one point six, Mars two point eight not
a planet. Bunch of question marks. Five point two is
Jupiter and ten is Saturn. So what's going on with
two point eight? You're saying? Otherwise, the distance of the
planets from the Sun pretty closely followed this sequence of numbers.
(45:58):
In an orderly way right of the than the planets
known to exist at the time, and and so um
boat especially he said, he there's a quote from me,
he says, can one believe that the founder of the
universe had left this space empty? Right? How why would
he mess with us like that? Right? I mean, but
then I mean without invoking the almighty though, coming back
(46:18):
to just the pure math, you can see where they
would say, well, look this, this, this mathematical sequence lines
up otherwise perfectly with the with the distances of the planet.
So what's going on here? Yeah, you would have to
think if there if there were never a planet there,
that's just a really odd coincidence that all the other
planets line up so well. Right. And the other important
(46:39):
fact here is that at this time, uh, the asteroid
belt was not known, So there was just a blank spot.
They weren't even saying, oh, whether there should be a
planet here, there's an asteroid belt. No, there just appeared
to be nothing. Now I do wonder if even though
they didn't know about the asteroid belt, would they know
about some of the largest of the asteroids. Well, in
eighteen o one, they they began too, because that's when
(47:01):
we discovered the asteroid series, and our understanding of the
asteroid Belt began, and at first Series alone seemed to
be the answer, like, surely this was the planet only.
Series is not a true planet. It's a minor planet
or dwarf planet, depending on how you want to classify it.
It's the thirty third largest known body in the Solar System,
and the asteroid Belt itself contains various smaller minor planets
(47:24):
and irregularly shaped bodies. The total mass of these rocks,
if you were to try a symbol of them all
into a planet, into a phaeton, if you will, would
be about four percent of the Earth's moon and uh
and so you know that's not quite a planet's worth.
And then the belt it's itself we when we we
know now that it was it formed in the Solar
(47:45):
nebula and would become, uh, that would become the Solar System.
But gravitational gravitational perturbations from Jupiter prevented the lumps from
a creating into a planet. There was just too much
orbital energy. But the the idea here that they had
was that, okay, we're discovering all these pieces, maybe they
are pieces of of of something else, something that was
(48:08):
there before. So Phaeton would have been that planet and uh,
and it would have at some point been destroyed, becoming
the asteroid belt. And we got to this point because
in eighteen o two, German astronomer Heinrich Villehelm math house
Overs proposed that these might be the remains of a planet,
and then linguist Johan goldleb rat Luff proposed the name Phaeton.
(48:31):
I mean, really he had the easy part. He just
came along and said, hey, call it Phaeton. Maybe he
was just a big fan of that painting. Yeah, maybe so.
And all of this was in line with what would
be known as disruption theory, which was the idea that
there was some former planet here that was destroyed by
Jupiter's gravity or a space collision, or some manner of
internal turmoil or the effects of some other hypothetical, hypothetical
(48:54):
local cosmic body. But we know now that no such
planet never existed, or at least the evidence is a
instant right, the evidence is against it. There was there,
there doesn't seem to have ever been something there to explode. Plus, uh,
the the Titches Bode law is now just considered a
mathematical curiosity and not only because phaeton didn't work out. Uh,
(49:16):
it is interesting that the sequence holds true for Uranus,
which was discovered later in seventeen eighty one. Waiter, you
are you abandoning ground on Urinus again? Um, well no,
I could just I mean, we're already talking about phaeton
Um porky picking, and so I guess we can. We
can use Uranus. The sequence holds true for Uranus as well, uh,
(49:38):
discovered in seventeen eighty one. Uh at nineteen eight years.
But here's the thing. Neptune and then Pluto break the sequence.
So the sequence, the law does not hold up to
the discovery of additional bodies in our solar system. Okay,
so our apologies to the two yo Han's. But again,
(49:58):
they were doing exactly what one should do. They were looking,
they were looking at the at the data they were
they were looking at the observations, and they were trying
to figure out what was going on. Why why is
the observable solar system not matching up with this mathematical
pattern that we have seen elsewhere. And then when they
begin to discover something in the exact place where something
(50:22):
should be to meet this sequence, I mean, that's compelling yeah, well,
I mean it's just a reminder that of course, uh,
you know, even when you're sort of when you're sort
of like doing science right, like you're not out there
just proposing ancient aliens because it feels good or something like.
You know, you've got a theory that has a track
record of of correctly uh predicting some things in the past,
(50:43):
so you're you're trying to extrapolate to the future. That
that's in a way how science usually works when it
works correctly, but it can still lead you astray, and
you've always gotta you've always just got to return to
the well of empirical observation and keep trying to figure
things out and refining, you know, And you don't want
to be too married to the idea that you're going
to discover a planet, because then that can skew your
(51:04):
your observations and and just the the the overall integrity
of what you're trying to do. There's nothing like the
rush of discovering a planet. You you can tell people
they were just like chomping for it. Like if if,
for instance, if you were seeking to discover a counter
Earth because you believe that to be hades you believed
it to be uh, the nether realm, and that discovering
(51:27):
it would then prove something some religious model that was
important to you. Um you know that that that would
be an example of of of over zealous exploration, like
you're clearly you're uh, you know the the the exploration
is out of whack at that point. That would make
for a pretty good sci fi story. Propose a principle
known as let's call it h Phaeton's razor, where it
(51:52):
is you do not needlessly multiply gores. Yes, if you're
if your model of the Solar System can work without
the inclusion of a phantom planet, uh, then then then
that's the direction you should go in. But however, is
we're going to discuss in a future episode of Stuff
to Blow Your Mind. Uh, that's not quite it. For
phantom planets in our own Solar system. There there still
(52:14):
remain uh uh you know, at least a one or
two that are still talked about. Oh, yes, shall we return,
Yes we should, but we'll leave those phantom planets for
next time. Okay, all right. Uh. In the meantime, if
you want to check out our homepage, it is Stuff
to Blow your Mind dot Com that's the mothership. That's
where we'll find all the episodes and also a number
(52:35):
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(52:57):
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which comes out every Monday. It's a continual exploration of
human techno history, one invention at a time. Big thanks,
as always to our excellent audio producers Alex Williams and
(53:19):
Tor Harrison. If you would like to get in touch
with us directly with feedback about this episode or any other,
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say hello, you can email us at blow the Mind
at how stuff works dot com For more on this
(53:42):
and thousands of other topics, does it, how stuff works?
Dot com bl bl bl bl bl bl bl bl
bl bl bl b three three three three boys roper
(54:04):
pastised as far back
Hey, you welcome to stuff to blow your mind. My
name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and it's Saturday.
Time to go into the vault. This time it's for
an episode that originally aired February nineteen. This was the
first of our two part series looking at what we
call the Lost Daughters of autun, the the planets once
believed to occupy our solar system that either weren't there
(00:27):
or at least haven't been confirmed yet. Yeah, and it's
a it's a two parter, so the the next of
old episode will be part two. But this was a
fun way to to get into basically like the history
of celestial mechanics to a certain extent, you know, by
looking at the errors that reveal the journey of understanding. Yeah,
I remember. This one was a lot of fun, so
(00:48):
we hope you enjoy it. Greetings traveler, take a seat,
strap yourself in pre order any of the various micro
gravity snacks and cocktails on our in flight menu. As
we leave Earth's atmosphere, we will engage the local Knot engine,
which will allow us to cross the boundaries between our
world in other worlds that could have been instead of
(01:10):
visiting the actual planets of our Solar system, we will
visit the various hypothetical Solar System objects that all seemed
possible at one point. Counting down five four, three two one.
(01:32):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stop
works dot Com. Hey, welcome, it's stuff to blow your mind.
My name is Robert lamp and I'm Joe McCormick, and
we're back to explore some of the furthest reaches of space,
about as far as you can go into space, the
(01:52):
part of space that never existed in the first place,
or is or in some cases, as we'll get into
in an upcome episode, things that have not been completely
substantiated in the dark outer regions of our Solar system. Right, So,
today Robert and I wanted to explore hypothetical Solar System objects,
objects believe to be out there in our local galactic neighborhood,
(02:16):
within the domain of influence of our home star, the Sun. Uh.
And there have been tons of objects like this over
the years that have been proposed to be out there,
some that we now know aren't actually there or were
never there. Others that maybe there's still an open question,
right and uh, you know, especially in the first one
we're going to discuss. You have something that is it
(02:36):
emerges as a model for the Solar System or a
model for the universe beyond Earth, based on a mix
of the best available information at the time, and then
also perhaps some some other concepts that maybe didn't need
to necessarily influence a scientific or pre even pre scientific
(02:59):
understanding of what the universe might consist of. Well, one
of the things that this episode will and uh will
cause us to have to consider is what are the
ideas that people bring to the table when they're when
they're trying to decide what exists out there in the
void of space. And it's not always as simple as
just well, we look up in the sky or we
(03:19):
look through a telescope and we see what we see,
and if we see something then then we think it's there.
A lot of times there are reasons people have for
concluding that objects must be up there in the Solar System,
and what those reasons are are about as interesting as
the models themselves, right, because you end up going from say,
just pure observational data to a working understanding of the
(03:43):
physical world, to mathematical models that are based on all
of these things. And you kind of expand outward from there. Uh.
And along the way there's there's room for you know,
expectations to build around things that end up to be
uh illusory. And so our first illusory destination is going
(04:04):
to be the planet and Tikathon and Tikathon. So this
includes I would say, a sort of a a little
bit of a hint of Cathulu. There's a cosmic horror
to behold. Uh. It's it stands for, of course, the
opposite Earth, the counter Earth. Yes. Uh, so please keep
(04:25):
all seatbelts fastened as our as we approach this hypothetical planet,
because we're gonna we're gonna be coming into into a
close proximity to some some very old, very alien cosmic
forces here, uh, namely a cosmos or a model for
the cosmos, in which everything, including our Sun, gravitates around
the Great Central Fire. The Great Central Fire is not
(04:49):
the Sun, right, this is something else. This is Dio's Philock,
the watch tower of Zeus, the prison of Zeus, the
heart altar of the universe, all these things, depending on
your translation. Well, I am on board for this journey. Robert,
tell me, where does the idea of the Antikathon come
from well. The Antikathon was first proposed by Greek philosopher
(05:10):
or Philolas, who lived from four seventy to three five BC.
He worked with a Pythagorean cosmological system. In his system,
you had a sphere of fixed stars, and you had
the five planets. You're the Sun, you have the Moon,
but you didn't only have Earth. You had a counter Earth,
the counter Earth, right, and all of this is moving
(05:31):
around the central fire, which again is not the Sun,
and the planet Antikathon. Uh, in this model remains unseen
to us. It's always hidden. Um, you know, it's it's
either below the horizon or or hidden by by by
some other factor of the movements of this uh. This model. Okay,
(05:53):
So I'm trying to picture this if the Sun is
not the central fire, but it's always but Antikathon, the
on Earth is always on the opposite side of the
central fire. I guess I'm having trouble picturing it, but
maybe you can lay it out for me. We'll lay
it lay it out more. But basically, some of these things,
like the central fire and and Tikeathon, they would be
eternally in our blind spot in this model. Okay. So
(06:16):
the model here explains the movement of observable and unobservable
bodies as being dictated by their distance from the central fire,
so that the distant spheres of fixed stars well that
that barely moves at all. The Moon takes a month
to complete its revolution, the Sun a year in each
planet in its own interval. The Earth is closest to
(06:39):
the central fire, and so it takes only twenty four hours.
And all of this accounts for the apparent movement of
the spheres and our cycles of night and day. So
a large part of the model is attempting to explain
why things are moving the way there they appear to
be moving. And this was something that was worth trying
to explain because even back in the ancient world in
the fourth or fifth century BC, we didn't have telescopes yet,
(07:01):
but there was plenty of naked eye astronomy. I mean,
the inner planets were known about back then by the
Babylonian astronomers. There's a lot you could learn and study
just by looking up at the sky at night with
the naked eye. But the big question is, obviously there
are things that are part of the solar system that
that these uh early astronomers could not see and had
(07:22):
no idea existed. And yet at the same time, why
would a model like this need to by necessity incorporate
things that are invisible? Right? Yeah, why would you invent
an antikathon if you don't have direct evidence that is there? Well,
Aristotle would later, And then this depends on who you're reading.
In some cases, people interpret this as a joke. Would
(07:44):
perhaps joke about this theory and say that that the
Pythagoreans and in particular field House made up the hidden
tent solar body in order to reach a perfect number
of tin Okay, because they are really into like numbers
and symmetry and all that, right, And and a lot
of what we understand about this theory does come from
(08:07):
from the writings of Aristotle, and or at least what
we can decipher his writings about it. Uh So you know,
whether he was whether this was he was truly joking
about this ten planet thing, I'm not sure. But we
we still have to give fuel else a great deal
of credit because no matter what he got wrong here,
in an attempt to understand the movement of the cosmos,
(08:29):
he at least used a system that didn't position the
Earth or even the Sun at the center of everything,
So he was ahead of the geocentrics and the heliocentrics
in that regard. He was also the first to create
a model that that actually lists all five planets known
to antiquity in the correct order, and in many respects
he simply built the best model possible based on existing theories,
(08:50):
current current data, and observations. Again with the with the
caveat here that he also threw into non existent bodies.
So first, let's talk about the whole center of this
whole thing, um, the central Fire, and why why it's
there instead of the Earth or the Sun, which is
further out from the center in this model, like Earth
(09:13):
is closest to the central fire and Sun is beyond,
and the Sun is beyond that, but the central fire
is always on the opposite side of the Earth. We
can't see right, We never get to see it. So
it's possible that it was because fire rather than Earth,
seemed a more fitting elemental center to things, and the
Sun in this model is apparently actually interpreted more as
(09:33):
a like a glass that reflects the inner fire to
our world. And then there's a there's a great deal
of disagreement about all the details in this model and
and interpretations vary, but something that the counter Earth is
there to balance out our Earth in some way, or
that it's there to account for eclipses, which is an
interesting theory that that that Aristotle backs up to some degree,
(09:56):
and it does remind me of similar contemplations in in
Indian astronomy that led to the creation of the eclipse
demon ra who which is also an astronomical body. Uh.
It was you know, determined this is a thing that
is causing eclipses. So ra who would be the demon
that would come out and eat the sun? Well, yes,
in the in the purely when we've discussed this on
(10:18):
an older episode of stuff to blow your mind. But
but ra who was at once this demon that would
come out and eat the sun? But also uh an
astronomical calculation as part of the model for how eclipses
were occurring. And as one of the curious facts of
all this is that as uh Indian astronomy advanced and
(10:40):
created a more accurate view of what was going on
with eclipses, instead of like keeping the religion the mythology untouched,
they also adjusted that to make up for these new
advancements and science. Interesting. Yeah, so go back and listen
to that episode. I'll make sure to link to it
on the landing page. For this episode of Stuff to
Blow Your Mind dot Com. So fuel Allows explains that
(11:03):
the Earth rotates so that it always faces away from
the central fire, so we never see it. We're tidally locked.
I guess they wouldn't have those terms back then, I suppose,
But yeah, yeah, that's an interesting idea that lots of
uh objects that orbit other objects are not rotating freely
as they orbit like we are. They're tidally locked, meaning
their rotation is synchronized to their orbit, so the same
(11:24):
side of the body always faces the inner object. Now,
of course there would be a number knowing what we
know now, there would be so many problems with this model.
Right if one side of the Earth where we're just
perpetually I guess in flames due to facing uh this
this weird cosmic non sun fire at the center of things,
that would be very bad. Yeah. But again, in this model,
(11:45):
the planets locked, it's never it never never sees that
we never see the fire from our side of the planet,
and likewise we never see the counter Earth, which moves
at the same speed as our planet. So I wonder
did he think that there were people on the other
side of the planet who could see the central fire.
I don't believe. So, I mean we have to we're again,
we're we're thinking with with our modern model of of
(12:08):
of what we know to be true about the world
and the Solar System, and we have to to realize
that this system was was partially constructed on just the
best materials they had at the time. Now, it's also
been suggested that the notion of a counter Earth was
introduced in this model, you know, not for any physical reasons,
not for any kind of counterbalancing reasons, etcetera, but for
(12:31):
the same reason that we find the concept fascinating today,
that the you know, the notion of another Earth is
mysterious and intriguing. It, you know, it's a mirror realm
just beyond our reach. In particular, ancient philosophy scholar Peter
Kingsley has proposed that aspects of the model attempt to
(12:51):
factor in Hades and Tartarus Um Hades and tartar Us
of course, um uh, you know, our our locations real
ms within Greek mythology, the realms of the dead. Right,
so Hades is like the sort of general realm of
the dead, and Tartarus is more like a hell yeah,
like if you were one of the Titans who rebelled
against the gods, then that is you're likely abode. So
(13:16):
Kingsley's argument is that both of these realms are considered
to be below the earth. Uh, Tartarus furthest of all
and that would make the counter earth Hades and the
central fire Tartarus. And this is where we get to
come back to the to Kingsley's interpretation of it is
not being like the Tower of Zeus, but the prison
of Zeus, the prison of the Titans. And this is
(13:39):
so is this an interpretation, to be clear, sometimes described
as provocative. So this is not necessarily like the UH
the agreed upon explanation for the system. But it's an
interesting tape take, and it does attempt to understand the
motivation for skewing the model so and introducing two invisible
realms into a model of celestial mechanics. But it would
(14:02):
mean that the counter Earth here is the realm of
the dead, a planet of the underworld. Now a Philolouse's
model of the heaven certainly doesn't hold up to later
much less modern astronomy. But you're probably wondering, what if
there was another Earth? Maybe he's onto something here, right, Well,
what if there there was another Earth orbiting at the
(14:23):
just the right speed so that the Sun is always
between us and our evil twin? What what if it
was always in our blind spot? Could that work? Would
we have seen it by now? If there was such
a planet, that's a good question. Yeah, if it was
on the opposite side of the Sun, we wouldn't really
be able to see it normally, would we. Well, on
surface level, this sounds possible, and I can that can easily.
(14:46):
You can easily see where the spirals into conspiracy theory,
thinking right right, Well, I mean, try to find this
object with your telescope and you will suffer a problem
with the eyes. Right, But here's the thing. It wouldn't
work because yes, we would have spotted it. Because here's
the thing, the movement of the planets around the Sun
are not quite this simple clockwork model that we sometimes
(15:06):
fix in our heads. It's not just planets going around
the Sun at at constant speeds. Now, the gravity of
other planets has a subtle influence on our orbit, absolutely
slowing us down or speeding us up. So if there
was another Earth on the other side of the Sun,
it would it would get a Jupiter pull or boost,
(15:27):
and it would inevitably give us a peek at the
hidden planet behind the Sun. So it wouldn't be able
to remain perfectly hidden forever. It would be one of
the one of the one of our Earth's would would
outpace the other just enough to get a peak of it,
and it would be revealed. But it wouldn't just be
the influence of say Jupiter and the other planets on it.
It would also be the influence of it on the
(15:47):
other planets we can see, right, Yeah, given the effect
that the mass of one planet has on the orbits
of other planets, we'd see it. In the math. If
there was a hidden body of planetary mass on the
other side to the Sun, we would we would see
it. It It would have disrupted the orbits of our satellites.
And this would hold true according to NASA scientists Michael Kaiser,
(16:08):
even if the counter Earth were only a hundred miles wide,
so it doesn't even have to be a full sized
counter earth. Uh, even if it were just relatively small,
we would be able to experience the effects detect the
effects of its presence. But let's say you're one of
those people who's like, I don't trust all that math
and detection stuff. I I I won't believe until I
(16:29):
can look for it and see it and it's not there. Well,
I mean, if if that's who you are, I probably
can't convince you. But in two thousand six, NASA's Solar
Terrestrial Relations Observatory or STEREO mission sent to satellites around
the Sun to study the solar surface, and they allowed
us a peek beyond the Sun and guess what, there's
(16:50):
no planet Hades there. So we have looked, we have
looked in the in the closet for the monster, and
Anti Kathon is nowhere to be fat. Yeah, we've looked
in all three ways that it would be revealed to us. Yes,
and it is not. It is not there. It's it's
not even I can't I can't stress it enough. It's
not just a matter of well we haven't seen it yet. No,
(17:11):
it's it is not there. Definitely not right. However, if
you do want to find a counter Earth, your best
place to experience it is in science fiction. Oh yeah,
I'm sure though. I bet there's some wonderful counter earth
conspiracy theories out there. Oh, I'm sure there are, but
I can't imagine they're as delightful. Well, I don't know
if all these are delightful. Uh, let's say, I'm not
(17:32):
sure that they could possibly be as interesting as some
of the counter Earth models that we've seen in science fiction. Though. Now,
isn't Gore a counter Earth? Yes? It is. John Norman's Gore.
These are a series, a long series of sci fi
fantasy novels in which the counter earth Gore is a
world of swords, techno priest King's sexual philosophy, and the
(17:56):
Solar system strategic reserves of misogyny. That's about right, because
I have not read any of these books, but I
have seen the film the MST. Three K treatment of
Outlaw of Gore. Yes, just Outlaw at Gore, I think, Yeah,
that's the title. Usually see uh with Jack Palance, Jack Palance,
(18:17):
that's all right? Yeah, with the guy who keeps yelling
the other character's name about five hundred times in the
movie Cab Cabin yea. And this was a sequel to
nine seven's Gore, which also had Palents in it as
well as Oliver read. I have not yet seen that
Filiver read it looks fabulous. I'm waiting for for one
of the riffing services, riff tracks or Mystery Sense Theater
(18:39):
to finally riff this film for me. Yeah, I just
remember about this movie. It's it's very it's like obviously
like super sexist, just woman hating off the chain and
like really silly fight scenes. Yeah. Well, my understanding of
the book series and I haven't and I haven't read them, presps.
We can hear from some listeners who have and have
some some feedback on them. Um. Apparently they start out
in the again thirty four book series here, so they
(19:01):
start out a little more based in just sort of
spaceship and sword and sorcery, you know, kind of a
John Carter vibe to them, and then they increasingly get
more into the author's quote unquote sexual philosophy. Oh boy. Um,
so I'm sure that's highly interesting. Now. Another great example
that also has some Mystery Sense Theater three thousand um
(19:24):
tie in is uh my favorite Gamera movie, Gamera Versus Guron,
which features a counter earth named Kara and it's home
to a humanoid species on the verge of extinction due
to NonStop Gaos attacks. Gaos being the sort of winged
shark creature that Gammera fights a lot with the sort
of radioactive bats that emit rays. Yeah, so this planet
(19:48):
has just been devastated by this because I guess they
don't have a Gamera. Uh, but they do have one
loan planetary Guardian, and it's the blade headed gearon which
if if you've ever seen a kaid you whose head
looks like just a giant blade and he's fighting Gamera,
that's him. Now, as with many of the verses things here,
(20:08):
is it actually in the end of the movie Gammera
versus Giron or do they team up? Oh? No, the
Guron is a total villain, So it's just said a
long dooey fight between the two. Yeah. Now, what's the
Godzilla movie where Aliens kidnapped Godzilla to bring him back
to their home planet to fight a monster that's attacking them. Who?
I don't remember that one. It sounds like it probably exists, though,
(20:32):
Is that Godzilla versus Monster Zero? Maybe? So I just
looked it up. Yes, I think that is it. I
don't think that took place on the counter Earth though,
I think it's just another planet. Okay, we'll see some
other quick examples of of counter earths and fiction. Uh.
Britton Marling's Another Earth as a film that apparently explores this.
(20:52):
I haven't seen it, but I love her work on
the o A, the Netflix sci fi series. I haven't
seen it, it's good. Uh. Lars von Trier's uh Melancolia
is another film, another one I have not seen, which
also features a counter earth in some fashion, but I
don't I don't really watch films by that director, so
I can't speak to it. And then, of course, counter
(21:14):
earths pop up in various other sci fi properties of note,
many many a good deal better than what we've mentioned here.
But but hey, this is where you come in, the listener.
If you have a favorite counter earth or counter earth
treatment from science fiction, let us know. I would love
to hear from it. I always enjoy hearing, especially from
those of you who have really steeped in like seventies
and eighties sci fi UH novels you know, and can
(21:36):
write in and uh and and you know and educate
us on what we're missing. All Right, we gotta take
a quick break, but we'll be right back with more
on lost planets. Alright, we're back. What's our next destination, Joe,
we gotta be turning in and turning down this. I
want to get on a hobby horse for a second. Okay, okay.
You know that old expression that in space there is
(21:58):
no up or down. It's very It's like in the
Wrath of Cohn, right, you know, it's like con is thinking,
is not thinking three D enough, He's not thinking about
space the right way. Uh. And so it's technically advantageous
to recognize when you're flying around in the space there's
no real top or bottom. You can orient in a
new direction. And in a sense that is true if
we go into orbit around the Antikathon, say, there's no
(22:21):
reason to assume that the north pole of Gore is up,
in the south pole of Gore is down, or vice versa. Right.
And then, as we've discussed before in the show, you
have more of an up and down feel in Star
Trek because it's basically a world of ships, a world
of seagoing vessels translated into a space scenario. And then
you have more recent models of especially visual science fiction,
(22:44):
such as the television series The Expanse, which which demonstrates
him more three dimensional realm of of a cosmic military engagement. Exactly. Yeah,
uh so, so it is true that out here in
space there's no ground down beneath our feet. But in
another sense, I think that's really under selling how far
(23:04):
down down goes, because down means toward a center of gravity.
That's how we use it to mean, you know, down
on Earth, and the Solar System actually does have a bottom,
and it's about fifteen million degrees celsius. It's the core
of the Sun, the star I whose gaze you cannot
hold without going blind. That's all the way down in
(23:24):
the Solar System. So you're talking about just being if
you were pulled down the gravity well, as it's called, Yes,
that's the bottom. Yeah, straight down into the pit, straight
into the open mouth of autun And so I like
thinking about it that way, thinking about that, as you
get closer to the Sun, you're actually going down into
the pit. You're almost in a way, going into the underworld.
(23:46):
And so for literally thousands of years we mentioned this
earlier in the episode, but since no later than the
Babylonian astronomers of the second millennium BC, humans have known
about the first six planets you can see them with
the naked eye. Mercury, Vus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn. They're
bright points of light passing and regressing across the night sky.
(24:07):
You don't need to telescope. Sometimes we've watched them, we've
charted their movement. And when Newton came along, there was
a revolution because we discovered the laws that govern the
way they move. And crucially, you know, Newton came up
with laws of motion that allowed us to see that
the same physical laws that controlled the movements of the
planets also controlled the movement of regular objects here on Earth,
(24:29):
whose things like gravity and momentum. But now that we're
out of the realm of saying the ancient Greeks who
are reasoning on the basis of maybe something like Pythagorean
symmetry or something like that, Now we've got real scientific
tools under our belt that actually help us learn what
things are out there, and they are good at producing
accurate results. Could we use those tools to see if
(24:52):
there's something else out there that we weren't seeing, And specifically,
could we peer deep down into the well, all the
way down down into the well of the Sun to
see if there's something in that direction we're not seeing,
so I wanna turn to my man urbane. You know
it's spelled urbane. That is not the French way. I
think is their bond or bond. Jean Joseph Laverier a
(25:16):
French astronomer who lived eighteen eleven to eighteen seventy seven,
and in eighteen thirty seven Laverier was appointed to a
position at the Polytechnic School in Paris, where he began
a long study of the planet Mercury, which is of
course the innermost planet in the Solar System that we
know about now. It's the closest to the Sun. And
he was doing things like creating tables of observation of
(25:38):
the planet's orbit. And if that sounds like boring work,
you should know that there's a wrinkle here. There's actually
a mystery involved in Mercury's orbit. See, Mercury's orbit is
not what it should have been, given the planet's momentum
and the gravitational influences on it that we knew about.
There's this phenomenon known as the precession of the parahelion
(26:00):
of Mercury. Real quick point, a parahelion is the point
of least distance from the Sun during an object's orbit, right, Yes,
it's the point when it comes closest. So essentially, the
precession of the parahelion of Mercury means that every year
on Mercury, every time Mercury goes around the Sun, its
orbits sort of shifts forward. So if you imagine getting
(26:24):
up on the north pole of the Sun and of
Mercury and looking down at the solar plane, um you're
looking down at Mercury's path with a time lapse tracing
its movement across the years. It would not repeat the
same path every year, but instead it would sort of
shift forward a bit with every trip around the Sun,
drawing more kind of a daisy pedal or spirograph type pattern.
(26:46):
And the question is what caused this? So fortunately the
astronomers of the nineteenth century were armed with that great
investigative tool in the history of science, the physics of
Isaac Newton, and the physics of Isaac Newton was extremely
good at predicting the movements of a planet by knowing
it's inertia, the uniform motion of the planet through space,
(27:07):
and by knowing gravity the mutual attraction to other centers
of mass that we're out there, and generally, Newton's laws
had proved really accurate, astonishingly good actually at predicting planetary motion.
And if you took into account all the relevant influences,
the physical influences we knew about, you could just predict
where the planets would go, except Mercury. And so Newton's
(27:27):
laws accounted for almost all of the observed procession of
the orbit of Mercury, but not quite all. There's still
just a bit of steady change in the planet's orbit
that stubbornly remained unexplained, making the orbit of Mercury this
stubborn and mysterious problem in Laverier's time. But in eighteen
forty five, Laverier he's working on a different problem. He
(27:49):
changes his focus briefly to focus on the curious case
of another planet in the Solar System. See I mentioned
earlier that we've known about the first six planets in
the Solar System since ancient times, but in the nineteenth
century astronomers were still dealing with a relatively recent edition.
And think about how weird this is, like too at
a time, for the first time in thousands of years,
(28:10):
that we knew about another planet, and that planet was
how do we say this planet's name on the podcast
Robert Do we just say Uranus? Well, Uranus is fun.
Is is more fun, It's more humorous. Um. I often
often say urin us, though that almost sounds like a uranist.
Like uranist, it's a professional urinator in many respects. It's
(28:31):
an unfortunately named planet. Yeah, it maybe could have been worse.
I don't know if this would be worse or not.
So it was discovered in seventeen eighty one Uranus. That
was Uranus. Sorry, that was the first time it was
seen by a human and it was by the German
born British astronomer William Herschel, who found the planet during
a survey of the stars, and he wanted to call
(28:51):
it not Uranus or Uranus, but George m Stas or
the Star of George, after King George the third of England. Uh.
And I'm glad that name got scrapped in in favor
of a much more dignified mythological anus reference. Yeah, even
even with the the anus right in there, it it
has more of a ring to it than than this Georgia.
(29:12):
UM citizen business. Well, I mean, oh, how horrible that
would be the name of planet after just like a
human king. Kings suck, Yes, absolutely, I mean kings, they
have all these other things. Let's at least leave their
names off of the planet. Yeah, stick to mythical references please.
But anyway, like Mercury, Uranus was this kind of like
(29:33):
sphear mysterious right. Uranus also wobbled in its orbit. Its
path around the Sun was different from what we would
predict given the gravitational influences that we knew about. So
Laverier took this mystery and he turned it into one
of the great success stories in the history of any
scientific theory. He conjured a planet out of the void,
(29:54):
and his assumptions were really simple. So he took the
known laws of physics. He took Newton's laws, and he
you know, given these laws, what could make Uranus orbit
as irregular as we observe? And the answer he came
up with was, well, another planet could do it. He
calculated how big that other planet would have to be
and where exactly would have to be in relation to Uranus,
(30:17):
and then he put that prediction to the test. He
wrote down his predictions in a letter to a German
astronomer named Johann Ji Gala and asked him to look
for this eighth planet with his instruments and using Laverier's predictions.
Gala found the planet Neptune after only about an hour
of looking for it, within one degree of exactly where
(30:38):
Laverier had predicted. And I should also just note that
an English astronomer named John c Adams also calculated the
position of the planet that would come to be known
as Neptune independently around the same time. But in both
cases they're essentially using the math to determine where this
this unknown planet would be. And then it is confirmed
that there is of course a planet there, and yeah,
(30:59):
and this is like the classic case of like when
when a scientific theory works best, right, when a scientific
theory tells you how things work in a way that
allows you to extrapolate from what you know to what
you predict you should find in the future, and then
you go out and look and you find exactly Yeah,
you find exactly what you predicted. So this is like
(31:20):
a great win for Newton's theories. Right then, the prediction
was a huge success. It led to Laverier being given
all kinds of medals and honorary appointments and he was
eventually made the head of the Astronomical Observatory in Paris.
He had he had plucked Neptune out of space, armed
with nothing but the power of Newton's laws. And so
then after this, Laverier decides to go back to his
(31:41):
old subject. He turns his attention back to Mercury and
the problem of Mercuries. Or I think everybody can see
where we're going here, right, Yeah, so you can guess
what the temptation might be. Laverier had just achieved awesome
fame by predicting a previously undiscovered planet. What if there
was another? So he came up with a prediction for
(32:02):
something with mass very close to the Sun inside the
orbit of Mercury, maybe another asteroid belt or another planet.
It would be something with mass that that could cause
Mercury's orbit to wobble in the way he had measured
so precisely when making his tables. And then here's the
real kicker. Just like Neptune, this InterPlaNet was also discovered.
(32:26):
So here I want to rely on the work of
a of an author named Thomas Levinson from a book
called The Hunt for Vulcan from Random House in and
in an interview with nat Gio. Levinson describes the first
sighting of the planet at the bottom of the pit,
which was by an amateur French astronomer named Edmund Modesta
(32:47):
Lescarbot on March nine. So you've got that he's this
country doctor. Uh he was a country doctor by trade,
and he's got an observatory in a stone barn in
his backyard. Yeah, this is this is often the case
when we're talking about astronomy from this area. We're getting
into the realm of the gentleman scientist. Yes, yeah, he's
sort of like he dabbles. Maybe. So one day in
(33:09):
eighteen fifty nine, less Garbo took a break in between
seeing patients and he went out to his telescope to
observe the Sun. And uh uh, and Levinson says quote,
as he trains his telescope on the Sun, he sees
a round object on the face of the Sun. He
times it as it moves steadily across the Sun, records
the data. Then another patient arrives, so he checks out
(33:32):
that patient, then comes back to the barn. This round
dot is still crossing the Sun. He tracks it continuously,
taking notes on its path until it finally goes over
the other edge of the Sun. And so after making
this observation, Lescarbo he reads about Laverier's prediction and he
gets all excited and he writes a letter to Laverier
(33:52):
describing what he saw crossing the disc of the Sun.
So Laverier had predicted this planet would be in there,
and then let's go bow saw it. And apparent Laverier
was at a New Year's Eve party when he got
the letter, and he just left and he's like, oh boy,
and he went out to Lescarbo's house, which was a
trip that Levinson said involved a train ride in a
(34:12):
twelve mile walk. So he was obviously excited. I mean,
you find one planet, you kind of get hooked on it, right,
We've got to find another. Um So lavery A confirmed
the observation, and this InterPlaNet got a name. It came
to be known as Vulcan. That's a good name because
Vulcan in in in the mythological senses, is close to
the forge. Yes, he's the forge, got exactly. He's the
(34:35):
Hifastus type figure. He's down there with the fires beating
the steel. And this triggered a period of what Levinson
called vulcan Mania. So Suddenly astronomers all over the world
are trying to find Vulcan, and quite a few reported
finding it, like during an eclipse in eighteen seventy eight.
Levinson tells the story that Thomas Edison happened to be
(34:55):
in the path of totality for a for a solar
eclipse in Wyoming, and he is there to try out
an infrared radiation since or he had created, which actually
did not work in the end, But so he's out
there for the eclipse and he ends up coming across
a pair of Vulcan hunters who were using the eclipse
to try to spot the planet, because obviously, if you
think about this, it's hard to see a planet that's
(35:15):
close to the Sun under normal circumstances. But if you
wait for a solar eclipse and the Moon blocks out
the light of the Sun, suddenly you can look up
there and say, okay, is there anything there. The two
Vulcan hunters here in the story where Simon Newcomb and
James Craig Watson, and the report goes that Newcomb could
not find the planet he looked for Vulcan during the eclipse.
(35:35):
He didn't see anything, but Watson said he saw it
he said a star was near the Sun which had
never been documented before. It was not on any of
his charts, and it had to be the planet Vulcan.
In an article for Nautilus, Levinson writes about Watson, citing
quote Watson saw, very close to the limb of the Sun,
a ruddy star, just where Vulcan ought to have been.
(35:57):
So the discovery of Vulcan was reported in the New
Times in papers around the world. It was huge and
exciting news, and there were even cases were like doubters
and skeptics about Vulcan were sort of pooh pooed and
made fun of. But if you know your solar system now,
you might be wondering. Okay, so what happened? We didn't
memorize that one in school, right, So yeah, what happened
(36:18):
to Vulcan and vulcan Mania. Well, of course many others
simply failed to find the planet. Other people look for
it and never saw what the people who found it
said they saw. But what really killed it was a
change in the theoretical framework that had predicted it. That
change was what was brought about with Einstein in the
theory of general relativity. So when Einstein devised his theory.
(36:39):
One of the key elements is that space and time
may have their geometry altered by large amounts of mass
and energy, and that an object traveling close to a
massive object like a star would be effective by these
deformations of space time. And what Einstein found here was
that his theory, when he did the math, almost perfectly
predict did the precession of the parahelion of Mercury without
(37:03):
invoking any elusive hidden planets. Reportedly, you know, when Einstein
made these calculations and discovered that his theory had finally
explained the leftover bits of Mercury's wobble, he was so
excited that he felt heart palpitations and couldn't work for
days because here's this lingering mystery and astronomy. It had
led people to hypothesize phantom planets that weren't actually there.
(37:25):
And finally, just by re envisioning exactly how gravity worked
and what the shape of space time was, he had
explained it. Now with this new theory, it matched all
of the observations from the past. Like this is like
a Scooby Doo mystery, like the ghost is no longer
required because because he has pulled the mask off of
the villain and exposed it. Yeah, Einstein, he made a
(37:47):
name for himself by killing a planet. Vulcan was dead.
But I like to think about and Levinson points out
some stuff about this too, the interesting fact that in
a way Laverier was sort of doing everything right right,
you know, he was like as a scientist, he was like, Okay, well,
I've got a theory that I think works right. You know,
you've got Newtonian mechanics. They they have made correct predictions before,
(38:10):
so I'll use them to make a prediction again, and
in much the manner of predictions that have worked out
in the past. And then you go to the tests
and say, okay, does anybody empirically confirm what I predicted?
And people did, Yeah, I mean this is I mean,
getting it wrong too is part of the process here. Uh.
You form the best hypothesis based on the materials you
(38:31):
have to work with, and then eventually you know it's
going to be proven disproven or or or somewhere in between,
tweaked to account for new information about the world. I mean,
I wonder what was going on in the case of
the people who said that they saw Vulcan, Like, were
they I mean, was it just the case that these
(38:53):
were instances where people did see something and they were
just confused about what it was, or were they cases
where people were so excited to you know, want to
see what they were expecting to see, that that it.
You know, maybe they wouldn't have seen something otherwise, but
they just had their their biases going. Oh. I think
I think it was all of those. I mean, we've
talked about on the show before, the enthusiasm around spying
(39:19):
the canals of Mars, you know, um, and and certainly
that similar excitement involved there. But in this case we're
dealing with something that is perhaps even less obvious to
untrained eyes, perhaps just a little easier to fool yourself
on if you have just just the right amount of enthusiasm,
(39:39):
if you're gazing up at at an eclipse like which
which even with appropriate gear, is an overwhelming situation, it's
emotionally arousing. Yeah, you might say, just a generally extreme proposition. Yes,
And and I'll advise it just in case we're not
clear here, do not listen to the show and go
out and stare at the sun looking for phantom planets,
(40:00):
right though, I would advise you do visit a solar observatory. Absolutely, yes.
Should we take a break and then explore one last
lost daughter of Aten? Let's do it. Alright, we're back.
So we've cast vulcan aside, vulcan Vulcans out, so dead.
So let's go through the planets. We have Wait a minute,
what about Antikathon always dead too? Was dead too? Matrol
Fire also gone. So we have Mercury, okay, Venus, Earth, Mars,
(40:27):
and then of course, oh okay, we'll see did you
say Phaeton? I said Phaeton? What is Phaeton? All right, yep,
this is the this is our next destination in the podcast,
named for the son of Helios and Greek myth, and
this was the This was for a brief period, a
hypothetical planet between Mars and Jupiter. Now I know that
(40:50):
there is something between Mars and Jupiter. Well yeah, so
we have the rubble of an asteroid belt between Mars
and the gas giant. So the hypothesis here, just to
get it out of the way right from the start,
is that the asteroid belt used to be a planet,
which we are going to call Phaeton. Okay, So it's
like in Star Wars. After the planet al durand gets
(41:12):
blown up by the Death's exactly. And they arrive in
the millennium falcon and what's there a bunch of like
rocks floating around in space that's sort of like the
asteroid belt after the planet Phaeton has been destroyed. Right,
So the basic idea here is Phaeton. The planet is
gone and all we have is is rubble. Now why
name it Phaeton? This is pretty fun too. That's because
(41:35):
in mythology, um Phaeton borrows his dad's sun chariot, he
borrows the chariot of Helios, and I just guess guests
just goes on a wild ride on this thing and
just totally wipes out. So there are a number of
different paintings of him falling off the chariot of the Sun,
crashing the chariot of the Sun. Um. There's there's one
(41:57):
particular fresco eight fresco Um, this was done eight. This
is not an Internet humor thing, no, no, but it's
like it's like a fresco and you're looking up and
there is a Phaeton driving the chariot and he is,
as you said, you might say, straight porky, pigging it.
He's just he's wearing robes and all at least on
(42:20):
his torso, and it's just naked button genitals hanging out.
This is absolutely the most prominent scrowdom I have ever
seen in a Renaissance painting. So I don't know, Maybe
he wrecked the chariot because he was wearing no pants.
I don't know. Maybe, uh, maybe this is part of
the accident, like he's he's wiping out so bad that
his pants are just immediately vapor us. Well, no, I
(42:44):
think what we need to what we must accept, is
that actually this painting by Dominico Riccio, I don't know
if you said the name that I that's the painter here.
This painting here is anatomically correct. This is what a
chariot wreck would look like for god wearing robes. We
just normally are coddled by painters who must represent the
(43:04):
gods in a tasteful pose. This is like the cinema
verity of Renaissance painting of of classical gods. So I
highly recommend looking it up if you get a chance. Um,
and maybe I'll include a link on the landing page
that though it will almost certainly not be the main
art for the episode. So so anyway, I know what
everyone's thinking or sorry, okay, I've got it. There's this
(43:25):
idea that what's the asteroid belt doing there? Okay, maybe
it used to be a planet. But the way we
actually get to the formation of this Phaeton hypothesis is
a lot more interesting than that. And it comes down
again to UH, to the math, to a mathematical model,
and then and then someone saying, well, what what should
(43:46):
go here? What would what would make this model work?
What would fill in the missing blank or a planet?
Of course, so you're saying there's a mathematical UH prediction
or mathematical theory that otherwise holds true, that the predicted
other things accurately and would have predicted a planet where
the asteroid belt is right. And it all has to
(44:07):
do with what's known as UH the titches Bode law.
This is a hypothesis of planetary sequence named for Johan
Daniel Titchus and Johan Alert Bode. The two Johan's Johan
and Johan and um. This was in the Yeah. This
was proposed by German astronomer Tifis in seventeen sixty six
(44:28):
and popularized by Bode in seventeen seventy two. And and
to explain what all this is about, let's consider the
sequence of planets again. This time you know what we
know mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn. Now considered this
sequence of numbers, Okay, zero, three, six, twelve, twenty four.
(44:49):
Each number after three is twice the previous number, So
zero and then three, and then we go to six,
then to twelve, and twenty four. Makes sense add four
to each of these numbers and then divide them by ten,
and the result is as follows. Zero point four, zero
(45:10):
point seven, one point zero, one point six, two point eight,
five point two, ten point zero. Six of these numbers
closely approximate the distances of our planets from the Sun
in astronomical units or a use to refresh, one AU
is the rough distance between the Earth and the Sun.
(45:33):
So point four a use mercury point seven, Venus one
Earth naturally one point six, Mars two point eight not
a planet. Bunch of question marks. Five point two is
Jupiter and ten is Saturn. So what's going on with
two point eight? You're saying? Otherwise, the distance of the
planets from the Sun pretty closely followed this sequence of numbers.
(45:58):
In an orderly way right of the than the planets
known to exist at the time, and and so um
boat especially he said, he there's a quote from me,
he says, can one believe that the founder of the
universe had left this space empty? Right? How why would
he mess with us like that? Right? I mean, but
then I mean without invoking the almighty though, coming back
(46:18):
to just the pure math, you can see where they
would say, well, look this, this, this mathematical sequence lines
up otherwise perfectly with the with the distances of the planet.
So what's going on here? Yeah, you would have to
think if there if there were never a planet there,
that's just a really odd coincidence that all the other
planets line up so well. Right. And the other important
(46:39):
fact here is that at this time, uh, the asteroid
belt was not known, So there was just a blank spot.
They weren't even saying, oh, whether there should be a
planet here, there's an asteroid belt. No, there just appeared
to be nothing. Now I do wonder if even though
they didn't know about the asteroid belt, would they know
about some of the largest of the asteroids. Well, in
eighteen o one, they they began too, because that's when
(47:01):
we discovered the asteroid series, and our understanding of the
asteroid Belt began, and at first Series alone seemed to
be the answer, like, surely this was the planet only.
Series is not a true planet. It's a minor planet
or dwarf planet, depending on how you want to classify it.
It's the thirty third largest known body in the Solar System,
and the asteroid Belt itself contains various smaller minor planets
(47:24):
and irregularly shaped bodies. The total mass of these rocks,
if you were to try a symbol of them all
into a planet, into a phaeton, if you will, would
be about four percent of the Earth's moon and uh
and so you know that's not quite a planet's worth.
And then the belt it's itself we when we we
know now that it was it formed in the Solar
(47:45):
nebula and would become, uh, that would become the Solar System.
But gravitational gravitational perturbations from Jupiter prevented the lumps from
a creating into a planet. There was just too much
orbital energy. But the the idea here that they had
was that, okay, we're discovering all these pieces, maybe they
are pieces of of of something else, something that was
(48:08):
there before. So Phaeton would have been that planet and uh,
and it would have at some point been destroyed, becoming
the asteroid belt. And we got to this point because
in eighteen o two, German astronomer Heinrich Villehelm math house
Overs proposed that these might be the remains of a planet,
and then linguist Johan goldleb rat Luff proposed the name Phaeton.
(48:31):
I mean, really he had the easy part. He just
came along and said, hey, call it Phaeton. Maybe he
was just a big fan of that painting. Yeah, maybe so.
And all of this was in line with what would
be known as disruption theory, which was the idea that
there was some former planet here that was destroyed by
Jupiter's gravity or a space collision, or some manner of
internal turmoil or the effects of some other hypothetical, hypothetical
(48:54):
local cosmic body. But we know now that no such
planet never existed, or at least the evidence is a
instant right, the evidence is against it. There was there,
there doesn't seem to have ever been something there to explode. Plus, uh,
the the Titches Bode law is now just considered a
mathematical curiosity and not only because phaeton didn't work out. Uh,
(49:16):
it is interesting that the sequence holds true for Uranus,
which was discovered later in seventeen eighty one. Waiter, you
are you abandoning ground on Urinus again? Um, well no,
I could just I mean, we're already talking about phaeton
Um porky picking, and so I guess we can. We
can use Uranus. The sequence holds true for Uranus as well, uh,
(49:38):
discovered in seventeen eighty one. Uh at nineteen eight years.
But here's the thing. Neptune and then Pluto break the sequence.
So the sequence, the law does not hold up to
the discovery of additional bodies in our solar system. Okay,
so our apologies to the two yo Han's. But again,
(49:58):
they were doing exactly what one should do. They were looking,
they were looking at the at the data they were
they were looking at the observations, and they were trying
to figure out what was going on. Why why is
the observable solar system not matching up with this mathematical
pattern that we have seen elsewhere. And then when they
begin to discover something in the exact place where something
(50:22):
should be to meet this sequence, I mean, that's compelling yeah, well,
I mean it's just a reminder that of course, uh,
you know, even when you're sort of when you're sort
of like doing science right, like you're not out there
just proposing ancient aliens because it feels good or something like.
You know, you've got a theory that has a track
record of of correctly uh predicting some things in the past,
(50:43):
so you're you're trying to extrapolate to the future. That
that's in a way how science usually works when it
works correctly, but it can still lead you astray, and
you've always gotta you've always just got to return to
the well of empirical observation and keep trying to figure
things out and refining, you know, And you don't want
to be too married to the idea that you're going
to discover a planet, because then that can skew your
(51:04):
your observations and and just the the the overall integrity
of what you're trying to do. There's nothing like the
rush of discovering a planet. You you can tell people
they were just like chomping for it. Like if if,
for instance, if you were seeking to discover a counter
Earth because you believe that to be hades you believed
it to be uh, the nether realm, and that discovering
(51:27):
it would then prove something some religious model that was
important to you. Um you know that that that would
be an example of of of over zealous exploration, like
you're clearly you're uh, you know the the the exploration
is out of whack at that point. That would make
for a pretty good sci fi story. Propose a principle
known as let's call it h Phaeton's razor, where it
(51:52):
is you do not needlessly multiply gores. Yes, if you're
if your model of the Solar System can work without
the inclusion of a phantom planet, uh, then then then
that's the direction you should go in. But however, is
we're going to discuss in a future episode of Stuff
to Blow Your Mind. Uh, that's not quite it. For
phantom planets in our own Solar system. There there still
(52:14):
remain uh uh you know, at least a one or
two that are still talked about. Oh, yes, shall we return,
Yes we should, but we'll leave those phantom planets for
next time. Okay, all right. Uh. In the meantime, if
you want to check out our homepage, it is Stuff
to Blow your Mind dot Com that's the mothership. That's
where we'll find all the episodes and also a number
(52:35):
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(53:19):
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