Several questions about the Planet X and Vulcan controversy?

Question

What was so controversial about these discoveries?

Why were they so controversial in (1. the scientific community and (2. to the general public?

How was the controversy ultimately resolved?

Finally, how did the scientific community advance/benefit from this controversy?

Answer 1

Neither was discovered. Both were hypothesised as existing. There were years of searching for them but no evidence that they did exist was ever found. The credibility of the hypotheses therefore vanished, and searches for them were abandoned. once better explanations of the orbital discrepancies they were hypothesised to explain became available.

The two tales show some remarkable similarities between them. Urbain Le Verrier (who calculated that there must be a hypothetical planet, which was found in 1846 and called Neptune) is involved in both stories. At least Neptune had a happy ending. The other search stories did not.

VULCAN

Not Mr Spock's home planet in Star Trek, of course! Which is not real but a creation of Gene Rodberry's imagination.

Vulcan was the name given to a small planet proposed to exist in an orbit between Mercury and the Sun in a 19th-century hypothesis. This hypothesis has now been rendered obsolete by Albert Einstein's theory of general relativity.

Vulcan was proposed to explain a small perturbation in Mercury's orbit from the path predicted by classical mechanics, technically called perihelion precession.

During Mercury's orbit, its perihelion advances by a small amount each orbit. The phenomenon is predicted by classical mechanics, but the observed value differed from the predicted value by the small amount of 43 arcseconds per century.

This idea and the name "Vulcan" was postulated by the French mathematician Urbain Le Verrier in 1859, closely following his spectacular success in "discovering" the planet Neptune in the same way — using only calculus. Various persons and astronomers around the world attempted to prove the existence of the said planet. Alleged transits of an unknown body across the face of the Sun were reported to Le Verrier.

In 1877 Le Verrier died, still convinced of having discovered another planet. With the loss of its principal proponent, the search for Vulcan cooled down. After many years of searching, astronomers were seriously doubting the planet's existence.

The final act came in 1915, when Einstein's theory of relativity explained the perturbations of Mercury as a mere byproduct of the Sun's gravitational field. His equations predicted slightly different results than classical mechanics, and exactly in the right amount to explain Mercury's actual orbit.

PLANET X

This is not the mystics' Nibiru or the Christians' Wormwood, both of which are asserted to be real by the faithful, but nobody has actually ever seen them (!)

Planet X is a large hypothetical planet with an orbit beyond that of Neptune. The scientific basis of the Planet X hypothesis was broadly discounted in the early 1990s and today no significant portion of the scientific community believes it to exist.

The "X" mentioned in the name represents an unknown as in algebraic equations and is pronounced as the letter, as opposed to the Roman numeral for ten. At the time of its conception there were eight known planets in the solar system; its existence, first as a ninth planet, and then from 1930 until its demise as a tenth, was postulated on the basis of apparent discrepancies in the orbits of the gas giants, especially those of Uranus and Neptune. Those discrepancies have largely been resolved by modern measurement, removing the basis for Planet X.

Although Pluto was discovered as a result of the search for Planet X, it is not considered Planet X. Neither is Eris, even though it was at one point considered for reclassification as a planet under a proposal outlined by the International Astronomical Union.

At the beginning of the 20th century, many astronomers speculated about the existence of a planet beyond Neptune to explain discrepancies between the calculated and observed orbits of Neptune, Uranus, Saturn and Jupiter.

Percival Lowell, who is most well known for his claims of having observed canals on Mars, called this hypothetical planet "Planet X". He performed two searches for it without success, the first ending in 1909, and after revising his prediction for where it should be found, the second from 1913 to 1915.

Lowell died in 1916, but in 1928 the Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona, began another search, which ended with the discovery of Pluto by Clyde Tombaugh in 1930.

Upon its discovery, Pluto was originally thought to be Planet X, but its mass was not sufficient to explain Neptune's orbit, so the search continued.

In the 1980s and 1990s, astronomer Robert G. Harrington of the US Naval Observatory, who had first calculated that Pluto was too small to have perturbed the orbits of Uranus and Neptune, led a search to determine the real cause of the planets' apparently irregular orbits.

He calculated that any Planet X would be roughly three times Neptune's orbit, highly elliptical (the planet's orbit would be at roughly a 90-degree angle from the orbit plane of the other known planets), and far below the ecliptic. This hypothesis was met with a mixed reception.

Noted Planet X skeptic Brian Marsden of Harvard University's Minor Planet Center, has pointed out that these discrepancies are a hundred times smaller than those noticed by Adams and Le Verrier, and could easily be due to observational error. Harrington died in 1993, having never found Planet X.

The Pioneer 10, Pioneer 11, Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 space probes helped disprove the existence of a Planet X as hypothesized by Lowell.

First, as the probes passed the outer planets, the acceleration caused by the planets' gravitational pull was used to more precisely determine their masses, which were shown to be lower than originally estimated by as much as 1%. When the correct masses were used to determine the orbits of the outer planets, the remaining discrepancies vanished.

Second, there are no discrepancies in the trajectories of the space probes that can be attributed to the gravitational pull of a large undiscovered object in the outer solar system.

Many astronomers consider this the end of Lowell's Planet X hypothesis.

SUMMARY:

In both cases, the existence of a hypothetical planet was proposed to explain perturbations and discrepancies in orbits, for which there seemed to be no other possible explanation.

However other explanations then became available. Einstein's Theory of Relativity explained away why no Vulcan was ever found: it didn't exist and wasn't needed. And more precise measurements of the mass of gas giants from flybys caused the perceived discrepancies in the outer planets' orbits to disappear and the hypothesis of a Planet X to be no longer needed either.

En route, three men, Le Verrier, Lowell and Harrington wasted a lot of time looking for planets that were merely fictions of their imaginations and the wrong interpretation of data.

Good question. I hadn't made the connection between these two fruitless searches for hypothetical planets, until you asked it.

Answer 2

This controversy triggered the”Is Pluto a planet?” debate.

At first Planet X was going to be named a planet, but other objects of the same size were found, a lot of them. If they were going to be all named planets then we would have dozens and dozens of them. So then came the debate on "What is a Planet?" When the astronomers finished they decided that Pluto didn't clear its orbital path and it was too similar to the many similar objects in orbit farther out in the solar system; so all these objects were given the classification of dwarf planet.

When the public heard this a lot of older people were offended, after all they spent all that brain power on memorizing the 9 planets, now there were only 8. Others objected due to tradition. Some astronomers objected because Pluto was considered a planet for so long. Other people didn't think it really mattered.

When the New York City Planetarium was created, several years ago, the director Neil Tyson refused to put up a model of Pluto, he said it wasn't a planet, and was later proved right officially.

The official decision was made behind closed doors by an association of astronomers. This was also unpopular with the public. Many people thought that amateur astronomers should have input, or that the public in general should have a chance to be involved in the decision. They were not given that chance.

Did it change science or advance astronomy, not really. Did it change public opinion, yes. The astronomers took a while to make the decision and it was an unpopular decision so the public had a poorer opinion of astronomers.

The final result is Pluto is a dwarf planet. Traditionally it has been called the 9th planet, but officially it is no longer a planet and there are only 8 planets in our solar system.

Answer 3

planet x is proven, because there are some icy masses, including a thingy called xena, outside of pluto that are bigger than pluto

vulcan was never discovered myth

since xena in bigger than pluto, both are now defined as dwarf-planets

because they did