books

There are several misconceptions in this article. First, it turns out Eris is not bigger than Pluto at all; this was determined only during Eris' occultation of a star in November 2010. Second, what Brown did is far from selfless; in fact, it is the opposite. Brown's ego is heavily invested in the idea that he somehow "killed" Pluto, to the point that he is making money off of selling books with that title. What he also does not tell is that he did NOT win his case. The IAU demotion was done by only four percent of its members, most of whom are not planetary scientists. It was opposed by hundreds of planetary scientists in a formal petition led by Dr. Alan Stern, Principal Investigator of NASA's New Horizons mission to Pluto. Even Dr. Neil de Grasse Tyson admits the debate is ongoing. I encourage people to learn both sides of the issue. Some good pro-Pluto as a planet books are "Is Pluto A Planet?" by Dr. David Weintraub, "The Case for Pluto" by Alan Boyle, and my own book, hopefully out in 2011, "The Little Planet that Would Not Die: Pluto's Story."

Yes, Pluto is now thought to be larger than Eris, and the final Andean calculations of the recent stellar occultation of Eris observed in the Chilean Andes will soon be published in a scientific paper by Bruno Sicardy of the Paris Observatory. Kenneth Chang of the New York Times recently wrote an article confirming this. It would have been nice had the writer of this article done some research instead of just taking Mike Brown's word as that of some intergalactic deity. For the record, Eris was discovered by 3 people, and Brown was merely one of them, unlike Pluto which was discovered by the great Clyde Tombaugh in painstaking fashion. The discovery of Eris was basically done using a computer using Clyde Tombaugh's method. Also, when Brown first discovered Eris, he called it a planet, so he is rewriting history now. Just sayin'....

Pooklont: Your comments are quite strange. Brown is not rewriting history, he is writing it. If you read the book you would even know that. His book talks about and gives credit to everyone involved in the project. (And, of course, your claim that Clyde Tombaugh did everything single handedly is absurd, but we don't need to get into that here!) Laurel: Seems like the ego investment here is mostly yours. If Brown were as ego driven as you say don't you think he would want to be called a planet discoverer? I suspect you are worried that no one will buy a book with an outdated theme of Pluto being a planet anymore, so you are attacking Brown whenever possible. Not pretty.