How I Killed Pluto and Why It Had It Coming
By Mike Brown
You can view this book's Amazon detail page here.
I was a little wary about this book when I picked it up. Was it going to be one of those dry, boring books hiding behind a cool title? Was I going to have to pound through it to glean a modicum of information from a mound of data? Could a Cal Tech professor write something informative AND enjoyable? As it turns out, my fears were all unfounded. This book was terrific. Well written, informative, fun and almost always interesting.
Mike Brown, a Cal Tech astronomer and professor, is the only guy alive to have discovered multiple celestial bodies. At least two of them candidates to be planets. Yet, he steadfastly believed that not only were the bodies he found not planets, but Pluto also didn’t qualify (basically, because it’s more similar to other Kuiper Belt bodies than it is to the remaining planets). In the book, Brown tells the story of how he and his team discovered the would be planets, how they overcame difficulties, dealt with the politics of astronomical societies, how he met his wife and how their daughter became a much bigger binding force in his life than his discoveries. This last part gets a little sappy and boring, but his analogies and stories are fun for most of the book.
One great thing about the book is that within the first few pages, I totally understood why Pluto was no longer a planet. He exposed that information and still made the rest of the book an interesting read. Nice job. You don’t need to be a scientist or technical to enjoy this book, it’s totally written for anyone. What little technical information is in the book is thoroughly explained, most often in a humble, non-threatening way to even the biggest Luddite around. Highly recommended.
- Started reading:
- 28th January 2011
- Finished reading:
- 13th February 2011