Read Online Mirror Earth by Michael D. Lemonick - Free Book Online
Authors: Michael D. Lemonick
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prematurely,
Nature
wouldnât publish it after allâand
Nature
was prestigious enough that Mayor didnât want to flout the rules. There were reporters at the Florence conference who begged him for interviews. He politely refused, so they went ahead and announced the discovery without quoting the man who had made it.
In California, meanwhile, Geoff Marcy and Paul Butler began hearing about Mayorâs find, first from colleagues who had been at the meeting, and then from reporters who were desperate to find an expert they could talk to. It seemed obvious to Marcy that Mayor had made a mistake. The sort of planet he was describing couldnât possibly exist. The theorists said so. Besides, Marcy couldnât possibly be scooped: He and Butler had been working tirelessly to find planets for six years now. How could someone else just stumble onto the discovery?
Still, he wasnât going to say Mayor was wrong without being absolutely sure. Astonishing things often turn out to be falseâbut not always. In 1989, for example, two chemists from the University of Utah claimed theyâd discovered âcold fusion,â an inexpensive source of potentially limitless clean energy. I called Rob Goldston, the director of the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory, who was struggling to create fusion in a multibillion-dollar installation owned by the Department of Energy. âI donât know the details of the experiment,â he told me, âso I canât make any definitive statement.â âBut,â he continued, making it clear as diplomatically as possible how he really felt about the claim, âif itâs true, it means that everything weâve learned about nuclear physics over the past fifty years is false.â In other words, Goldston was almost certain the chemists were wrong, but knew that an absolute statement might come back to bite him.
Marcy and Butler were convinced Mayor must be wrong. But maybe everything they knew about planets was false. Either way, they were all set up to find out for themselves. If Mayorâs instruments could see this âplanet,â theirs could too. To find a planet in a four-day orbit, you have to look at least once a day; Marcy and Butler had never bothered to look at any star more often than once every few months, because the wobbles they were looking for would play out over years. So they went up to Lick Observatory, where theyâd already been approved for four nights on the 120-inch reflecting telescope. As the data streamed in from 51 Pegasi, they would immediately funnel it into their computers for processing, taking more data all the while.
After a couple of days, they knew Mayor was right. Theyâd been scooped by someone with a less sensitive instrument. Arguably, theyâd been scooped by Dave Latham back in 1989 as well, but Lathamâs discovery had never been accepted as a planet, even by Latham himself. Ultimately, all the strikes against Lathamâs object would be eliminated as astronomers began to understand how strange planets really could be. In hindsight, Geoff Marcy now gives Dave Latham credit for the very first planet orbiting a Sun-like star.
Michel Mayor couldnât talk to reporters, but Marcy and Butler were under no such obligation, since they didnât have a paper about to come out. Reporters couldnât talk to Mayor, so they descended on the Californians. And while Mayor had made the discovery, Marcy and Butler
could
have made it. If luck had been on their side, they inevitably would have. So it was a sort of poetic justice that Marcy and Butler were the ones who ended up being lavished with public recognition. Geoff Marcy also realized that if theyâd known how comparatively easy the universe would make it to find planets, they might not have worked so hard to make the Hamilton Spectrograph so precise. Their ignorance had put them behind, but it had given them an edge on future
Nature
wouldnât publish it after allâand
Nature
was prestigious enough that Mayor didnât want to flout the rules. There were reporters at the Florence conference who begged him for interviews. He politely refused, so they went ahead and announced the discovery without quoting the man who had made it.
In California, meanwhile, Geoff Marcy and Paul Butler began hearing about Mayorâs find, first from colleagues who had been at the meeting, and then from reporters who were desperate to find an expert they could talk to. It seemed obvious to Marcy that Mayor had made a mistake. The sort of planet he was describing couldnât possibly exist. The theorists said so. Besides, Marcy couldnât possibly be scooped: He and Butler had been working tirelessly to find planets for six years now. How could someone else just stumble onto the discovery?
Still, he wasnât going to say Mayor was wrong without being absolutely sure. Astonishing things often turn out to be falseâbut not always. In 1989, for example, two chemists from the University of Utah claimed theyâd discovered âcold fusion,â an inexpensive source of potentially limitless clean energy. I called Rob Goldston, the director of the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory, who was struggling to create fusion in a multibillion-dollar installation owned by the Department of Energy. âI donât know the details of the experiment,â he told me, âso I canât make any definitive statement.â âBut,â he continued, making it clear as diplomatically as possible how he really felt about the claim, âif itâs true, it means that everything weâve learned about nuclear physics over the past fifty years is false.â In other words, Goldston was almost certain the chemists were wrong, but knew that an absolute statement might come back to bite him.
Marcy and Butler were convinced Mayor must be wrong. But maybe everything they knew about planets was false. Either way, they were all set up to find out for themselves. If Mayorâs instruments could see this âplanet,â theirs could too. To find a planet in a four-day orbit, you have to look at least once a day; Marcy and Butler had never bothered to look at any star more often than once every few months, because the wobbles they were looking for would play out over years. So they went up to Lick Observatory, where theyâd already been approved for four nights on the 120-inch reflecting telescope. As the data streamed in from 51 Pegasi, they would immediately funnel it into their computers for processing, taking more data all the while.
After a couple of days, they knew Mayor was right. Theyâd been scooped by someone with a less sensitive instrument. Arguably, theyâd been scooped by Dave Latham back in 1989 as well, but Lathamâs discovery had never been accepted as a planet, even by Latham himself. Ultimately, all the strikes against Lathamâs object would be eliminated as astronomers began to understand how strange planets really could be. In hindsight, Geoff Marcy now gives Dave Latham credit for the very first planet orbiting a Sun-like star.
Michel Mayor couldnât talk to reporters, but Marcy and Butler were under no such obligation, since they didnât have a paper about to come out. Reporters couldnât talk to Mayor, so they descended on the Californians. And while Mayor had made the discovery, Marcy and Butler
could
have made it. If luck had been on their side, they inevitably would have. So it was a sort of poetic justice that Marcy and Butler were the ones who ended up being lavished with public recognition. Geoff Marcy also realized that if theyâd known how comparatively easy the universe would make it to find planets, they might not have worked so hard to make the Hamilton Spectrograph so precise. Their ignorance had put them behind, but it had given them an edge on future
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