Math Rules the Stars too!

Week 5 successful prediction.

Math Rules the Stars too!

Successful Predictions Part 2: A real success story.

The discovery of the planet Neptune was the first planet discovered purely by mathematical prediction rather than standard observation and telescopes.

Discovered on September 23, 1846 Neptune was the first planet discovered by mathematical prediction rather than regular observation. Perturbations in the orbit of Uranus led astronomers to deduce Neptune's existence.

Although not receiving credit for the official finding of Neptune, Galileo Galilei (Galileo) created drawings show that he first observed Neptune on December 28, 1612, and again on January 27, 1613. These findings come some 230 years prior to the “official” discovery!

Sadly, on both occasions, Galileo mistook Neptune for a fixed star when it appeared very close (in conjunction) to Jupiter in the night sky. Believing it to be a fixed star, he is not credited with its discovery. Unfortunately for Galileo, at the time of his first observation in December 1612, it was stationary in the sky because it had just turned retrograde that very day; and since it was only beginning its yearly retrograde cycle, Neptune's motion was far too slight to be detected with Galileo's small telescope and technology of his day.

In 1821, Alexis Bouvard published astronomical tables of the orbit of Uranus.

Subsequent observations revealed substantial deviations from the tables, leading Bouvard to hypothesize some perturbing body. In 1843, John Couch Adams

calculated the orbit of an eighth planet that would account for Uranus' motion. He sent his calculations to Sir George Airy, the Astronomer Royal, who asked Adams for a clarification. Adams reportedly began to draft a reply but never sent it.

In 1846, Urbain Le Verrier, independently of Adams, produced his own calculations but also experienced difficulties in encouraging any enthusiasm in his compatriots. However, in the same year, John Herschel started to champion the mathematical approach and persuaded James Challis

to search for the planet and assit his quest for proof.

After much procrastination, Challis began his search in July 1846. However, in the meantime, Le Verrier had convinced Johann Gottfried Galle to search for the planet also to confirm his findings.

The most overlooked factor that led to the discovery was actually made by a student at the Berlin Observatory; Heinrich d'Arrest suggested that a recently drawn chart of the sky, in the region of Le Verrier's predicted location, could be compared with the current sky to seek the displacement characteristic of a planet, as opposed to a fixed star.

Neptune was discovered that very night, September 23, 1846, within 1° of where Le Verrier had predicted it to be, and about 10° from Adams' prediction. Challis later realized that he had observed the planet twice in August, failing to identify it owing to his uninterested approach to the work.

In the wake of the discovery, there was allegedly much nationalistic rivalry between the French and the British over who had priority and deserved credit for the discovery. Eventually an international consensus emerged that both Le Verrier and Adams jointly deserved credit.

However, the issue is now being re-evaluated by historians with the rediscovery in 1998 of the so-called "Neptune papers" (historical documents from the Royal Greenwich Observatory), which had apparently been “misappropriated” by astronomer Olin Eggen for nearly three decades and were only rediscovered immediately after his death in 1998.

(Librarians at the RGO discovered that the Neptune papers were missing in the late 1960s, and there has been no sign of them since. One American astronomer has even alleged that the disappearance of the papers was part of a deliberate cover-up to protect the reputation of Adams, who never published his predictions, unlike Urbain Leverrier.)

HINT: For those of us tasked to (or feel compelled to) forecast our predictions--Get them down on paper or online for posterity asap!

After reviewing the documents, some historians now suggest that Adams does not deserve equal credit with Le Verrier. This strikes me as odd since Adams predicted the discovery some three years before Le Verrier, however his calculations were about 9° apart from the actual location…

Shortly after its discovery, Neptune was referred to simply as "the planet exterior to Uranus" or as "Le Verrier's planet". The first suggestion for a name came from Galle. He proposed the name Janus. In England, Challis put forth the name Oceanus. In France, François Jean Dominique Arago suggested that the new planet be called Leverrier, a suggestion which was met with stiff resistance (expectedly) outside French borders. Interestingly, French almanacs promptly and prematurely reintroduced the name Herschel for Uranus and Leverrier for the new planet.

Meanwhile, on separate dates, Adams suggested altering the name Georgian to Uranus,

while Leverrier (through the Board of Longitude) suggested Neptune for the new planet. Struve came out in favor of that name on December 29, 1846, to the Saint Petersburg Academy of Sciences. Soon Neptune became the internationally accepted nomenclature. In Roman mythology, Neptune was the god of the sea,

identified with the Greek Poseidon. The demand for a mythological name seemed to be in keeping with the nomenclature of the other planets, all of which, except for Uranus, were named in antiquity.

Congratulations to Msrs. LeVerrier, Adams, and more prominently Galileo(in my opinion)!

But I’m still not a math fanatic although I do know for certain that mathematics are the key to most technology—Kids take note! Take more math classes!!