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Space/Science » in reply to Bye bye Pluto!

re: Bye bye Pluto!
ER — (archived)

Mon Ami Raoul,

Surely your comments are colored just a little bit by Eurocentrism, eh?

I am not familiar with any attempt here to preserve Pluto's planetary status simply because it was discovered by an American. Tombaugh, the discoverer was only an observing assistant, and Lowell, who had spearheaded the effort, was always considered by his colleagues to be a bit of an eccentric. As for the failure of Americans to continue planetary searches, perhaps it was because they, with the Hooker and other large reflectors, were pioneering the new fields of astrophysics and observational cosmology. As I recall, the European astronomers were still recovering from the disastrous French project of the Carte du Ciel, which to this day, has not been completed, and which set back European astronomy for decades by consuming vast human and observational resources while producing little of lasting value. America, with numerous spectroscopic studies with their big reflectors, were establishing the foundations of stellar structure and evolution and galactic structure while Hubble and Shapley and Curtis were pushing back the boundaries of the known universe. If the Americans were not searching for asteroids and trans-Neptunians, perhaps its because they had better things to do.

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