The Hunt for Vulcan: ...And How Albert Einstein Destroyed a Planet, Discovered Relativity, and Deciphered the Universe in Science and Inquiry

Jan 12, 2018 Susanna - Censored by GoodReads rated it liked it

Actual rating 3.5 stars.

The extraordinary thing is how many observers in the 19th century convinced themselves that they saw Vulcan. (And some of them were professional scientists and trained astronomical observers.) I was struck by reading this how the Harvard method of photographic astronomy could have settled this question. (And indeed Dr. Draper, whose widow funded Harvard's efforts, was one of the hunters for Vulcan. Neither he nor his camera saw it, and he said so.) ...more

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Jul 07, 2019 Rusty rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: science, history, prose, non-fiction

I鈥檓 trying to wrap up all my affairs in this part of the world before I depart for friendlier shores.

I lost my job a few months ago and me and the missus decided to just move to another country. She鈥檚 there now, I鈥檓 still in the states goobering around and trying to take care of all the muck associated with leaving (keeping our house, but renting it out) changing insurance stuff, mail stuff, storing personal items, packing stuff, dealing with the cars, the family, the headaches, etc.

But the clo I鈥檓 trying to wrap up all my affairs in this part of the world before I depart for friendlier shores.

I lost my job a few months ago and me and the missus decided to just move to another country. She鈥檚 there now, I鈥檓 still in the states goobering around and trying to take care of all the muck associated with leaving (keeping our house, but renting it out) changing insurance stuff, mail stuff, storing personal items, packing stuff, dealing with the cars, the family, the headaches, etc.

But the clock on my departure time is now being measured in days, not weeks, or months. Not sure when I鈥檒l be back.

Anyway, I thought I鈥檇 have a ton of time to read and write and be cool, turns out, not so much. I鈥檝e been marking things as 鈥榗urrently reading鈥� for the past month or so after I finish them just so I won鈥檛 forget to review them later. I was looking over some of the stuff I had listed and was kinda sorta starting to forget what the books were like.

Hence, my taking a few moments to write something down about this book (and maybe a few others before I leave, I dunno).

I really liked this one, a lot. It鈥檚 predominately a tale of how Newtonian physics was ushered into the collective consciousness of the educated world when it was used to discover Neptune. The amount known about the the orbit and mass of it based solely on the subtle influence it placed on Uranus was incredible. It made believers out of everyone.

When Mercury showed similar hiccups in its orbit of the sun, well, it was obvious the cause was another planetary body between it and the sun - and so the hunt was on.

I was riveted by this story. The work that went into calculating Vulcan鈥檚 position between the Sun and Mercury was exhaustive. Astronomers and mathematicians alike worked nonstop on the problem.

And to cut to the spoilery end, in case you were unaware, there is no planet orbiting between Mercury and the Sun. It鈥檚 a quirk of the universe that Newtonian physics breaks down in the presence of a great deal of mass, in this case, the mass of the sun, that mass distorts the orbit of Mercury in a way that鈥檚 unpredictable using Newton鈥檚 picture of the cosmos.

All that is well known, but it鈥檚 this story of just how clear it all seemed to the intelligentsia at the time - and how fundamentally they misunderstood the universe - that I loved so much.

I鈥檇 like to spend more time going over what all this means, to me, and why I found this book so unputdownable, but I have some time constraints (I have some more packing to do).

It鈥檚 a perfect blend of pop-science and narrative history that I absolutely adored. ...more

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May 21, 2025 taylor rated it really liked it

This engaging book by the same author as my last review explores a topic I knew a bit about, which might explain why I didn鈥檛 give it the full five stars it likely deserves. The planet Mercury鈥檚 orbit defies the predictions of Newtonian physics, suggesting either a flaw in Newton鈥檚 theory of gravity or the existence of an undiscovered planet between the Sun and Mercury, causing a slight wobble in its path. Since Newton鈥檚 laws had successfully predicted the discovery of outer planets, astronomers ...more

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Dec 01, 2015 Charlene rated it liked it

Shelves: physics

Very short book that looked at how Newtonian physics works when applied to the very large but breaks down when it comes to the very small. This book attempts to tell this well told tale by using the hunt for Vulcan as the backdrop. While this is definitely a novel angle for me, the rest of the material has been told often and told better. So, the backstory of trying to find Neptune just didn't grab me. Though, 467 other people seem to have liked it quite a bit. This makes me think that maybe it' ...more

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Dec 30, 2015 Daphne rated it really liked it

Shelves: own-audio, quest

Rather interesting history. Much has already been covered by other pop-sci astronomy and History of Science books, but there was more than enough new stuff and interesting takes to make this a splendid little read.

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