Space Heist! (Or, How to Steal a Planet)

Endless Thread

WBUR

Reddit, Technology

4.2 • 2.7K Ratings

🗓️ 18 February 2022

⏱️ 42 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

On December 28, 2004, CalTech astronomer Mike Brown and his colleagues found an unnamed dwarf planet drifting through the far reaches of the solar system. But before they could go public with their finding — as they were dotting their scientific i’s — a little-known team of Spanish astronomers beat them to the punch. José Luis Ortiz Moreno and Pablo Santo-Sanz announced the discovery of what turned out to be the same dwarf planet. Something seemed off, though. Users of an online astronomical message board started to ask: How could two teams on opposite sides of the world simultaneously find the same tiny rock? What they found sparked a philosophical debate that questioned the way science is done and may — or may not — have revealed one of the greatest robberies in modern-day astronomy.

Transcript

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1:00.4	WBUR Podcast Boston.
1:09.6	A couple of weeks ago, Amarine I and our friend Dean went on a field trip.
1:15.1	To a place that, to me, was pretty familiar.
1:18.6	Good morning, everyone, and welcome to the Charles Hayden Planetarium for our, what time is it, 11 o'clock?
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1:29.6	The Planetarium at Boston's Museum of Science, where, fun fact, I used to work running many a show on said undiscovered worlds.
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