Friday, July 10, 2009

Seeing Stars

It turns out that Galileo may have discovered the planet Neptune over 200 years before it was "officially" found.

My question is: If Galileo could see Neptune and possibly figure out it was a planet at the very dawn of telescope astronomy, then what were all those other astronomers doing for the 200+ years after him? He could find it with a cruddy, primitive telescope but they never figured it out for 2 1/2 centuries with vastly better equipment? And even then they had to be dragged kicking and screaming into looking for it.

This is yet another example of people not seeing something because they don't expect to see it. In the 1840's, when mathmatical calculations showed that a huge planet should be there, all at once everybody could see it.

At any rate, I just want it noted for posterity that I, J A 'Galileo' Carter, was the first to add this new information to Wikipedia's articles on "Neptune" and "The Discovery of Neptune." Wouldn't want history getting all fouled up again.

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