Vulcan | The Planet That Didn't Exist
3,014,307
Published 2021-10-25
LINKS:
Twitter: twitter.com/ZepherusYT
Subreddit: www.reddit.com/r/zepherus/
Discord: discord.gg/86w3kd4eMs
SOURCES:
Books cited / recommended to learn more:
The Hunt for Vulcan by Ben Levenson
In Search of Planet Vulcan by Richard Baum and William Sheehan
The Ascent of Gravity by Marcus Chown
Le Verrier — Magnificent and Detestable Astronomer by James Lequeux
Eclipses, Transits, and Comets of the Nineteenth Century by Stella Cottam and Wayne Orchiston
Other non-book sources (limited selection):
Transferring scientific discovery to the public: The intramercurial planet Vulcan in 1860 by Hsiang-Fu Huang
When Lack of Evidence Is Evidence of Lack by Neil Pickering
Einstein's perihelion formula and its generalization by Maurizio M. D'Eliseo
mathshistory.st-andrews.ac.uk/Biographies/Laplace/
mathshistory.st-andrews.ac.uk/Biographies/Le_Verri…
www.space.com/6941-theory-galileo-discovered-neptu…
www.fetedelascience.fr/qui-est-le-docteur-lescarba…
plus.maths.org/content/changing-picture-gravity
www.iau.org/news/pressreleases/detail/iau1303/
www.iau.org/public/videos/detail/iau2006closing/
www.space.com/2791-pluto-demoted-longer-planet-hig…
www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/vulcan-…
as well as various records from CRAS and newspaper archives.
PHOTO CREDITS:
Algol Visualisation: • History and Future of the Solar System
Eiffel Tower photo by Cristian Bortes, CC BY 2.0,
Image of Francois Arago by Charles-Jérémie Fuhr, CC BY 2.0,
(creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0, via Wikimedia Commons)
Video of 2017 Total Eclipse by Steve Sheridan, CC BY 3.0,
Statue of Le Verrier photographed by Mbzt, CC BY 3.0,
Sunset timelapsed by dejko611611, CC BY 3.0,
Paris Observatory photographed by Stéphane Touraine, CC BY-SA 3.0, (creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0, via Wikimedia Commons)
Sunset image taken by Dibyendutwipzbiswas, CC BY 4.0,
Photo of J. R. Hind provided by Wellcomeimages.org, CC BY 4.0,
Images of Laplace, Pascal and Hôtel des Invalides provided by Wellcomeimages.org, CC BY 4.0,
Video of 2015 Partial Eclipse by David Bucher, CC BY-SA 4.0,
(creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0, via Wikimedia Commons)
Blackboard texture created by benzoix - www.freepik.com
Pluto Protest image by Darren Phillips / Associated Press
...what are you doing down here? Nobody reads the description! :D
All Comments (21)
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It's been 84 years...
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All of the "demoted planets" turned out to reveal something that was actually more interesting than just a new planet: for Ceres there's the Asteroid Belt, for Pluto there's the Kuyper Belt, for Vulcan . . . Relativity!
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And then he left to never return, leaving me to watch the back catalog every few months wishing I could discover something more. You were the one who sparked my interest in history, science and architecture in general, and a lot of great things came out of that. You were doing something really great here, wish more people knew.
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This reminds me of "Planet X", which was something I read about back in elementary school. Even after Neptune and Pluto were discovered, there were certain discrepancies in Uranus's orbit that couldn't be resolved. So obviously there was another planet! Turns out we got Neptune's mass wrong. Once that was corrected, Uranus's orbital predictions were immediately fixed.
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The thing I find most impressive about all of this is the fact that the predicted drift of Mercury was spot on, they just lacked the knowledge necessary to explain it properly.
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Did Spock ever finally admit he was just flipping the planet's invisibility cloak on and off to mess with us?
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I'm really curious about the "mysterious circumstances" under which Le Verriers rival drowned. Sounds really interesting
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I like to imagine Vulcan used to exist, but collapsed into the sun before anyone could see it
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Pluto: Why am I not a planet anymore? :( Vulcan: Heh. Imagine not existing.
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"I spend 40 minutes talking about literally nothing." is the most British description ever. Commenting to help with the algorithm, and also say thanks. This is one of the best youtube videos I've watched in a while.
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I remember watching this to help me fall asleep as a bg noise but I ended up watching the whole thing wide awake. The narration is easy to understand and the story is easy to follow. This video in particular is definitely up there with Lemmino as my top favorite space videos.
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I remember when I was young, there was an entire episode of Arthur C Clarke's mysterious world devoted to Vulcan. His final conclusion was that 'Vulcan may have existed, but if it did, it almost certainly doesn't any more. Nowadays, I think it's pretty absolute that it never existed, but it was interesting how long the existence of this planet fascinated Mankind for... Edit: Found it! /watch?v=1-GQuOtu4S8&ab_channel=GoodOl%27Stuff
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Naming a moon of Pluto, surface temp -229 Celsius, after the Roman fire god would have been pretty silly tbh.
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"You will see sir, that I demostrate it is impossible to satisfy the conditions of Uranus" 🤔
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“He was vain, often arrogant, rude and was by most accounts a pretty difficult person to work with” Sounds like literally every university lecturer/professor I’ve ever known
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My guy just left us again, never to be seen again.
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9:04 "It is impossible to satisfy the conditions of uranus" i died in this part
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I didn't know you existed. But if this is what your fans waited 3 years for, it was three years well compensated for. Thanks for a stupendous video!
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0:14 That protest board with "Size doesn't Matter" made me chuckle.
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This was outstanding. The timing, visuals, humor, etc. were such a perfect blend. I really enjoyed this topic because you made it fun to learn about. Really, really well done. I'm looking forward to looking into your archive as well as future content. Instant subscription.
