Review: How I Killed Pluto and Why it Had it Coming: Mike Brown

How I Killed Pluto and Why It Had It Coming by Mike Brown
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I had not really given much thought to this astronomer called Mike Brown, despite reading about the demotion of Pluto as a planet a few years ago. So the title of this book was intriguing and I was curious to know who this person was, who wanted to take the blame for messing with a perfectly happy 9-planet solar-system.
My first impression of the book was that the author was clearly not a writer. I don't really care as long as the story told is interesting enough and in this case, the book did seem to be written from the heart. I appreciate Brown's attempt to intertwine the events that led to Pluto's downgrading, with anecdotes from his personal life, but frankly after a while, they completely took away the focus from Pluto's story. This made it more of a memoir than a book of the science/non-fiction genre. The events in the story are also haphazard and I had to retrace my steps, every few pages to try and remember what was going on before the author's deviation into his family life.
The book begins on the day IAU met to decide Pluto's fate and then goes back in time to when the author made a bet with a fellow astronomer that he would find a planet in five years. In the five years that ensued, a bunch of objects(I'll refer to them as objects henceforth because I am left confused by the definition of planet as everyone is) were found with a multitude of telescopes. But none of them are deemed to be a "planet" by the author. So far so good. In all fairness, it really wasn't the author who found these objects. As with any university professor, it was the hard-working graduate students who slogged night after night to find those bright specks in the sky. At one point, Brown even admits to this, and this was something I really appreciated.
I also empathized deeply with his team of astronomers, when someone else tried to steal his discovery as their own. But then, in other cases, Brown acts extremely naive and reveals his discoveries to his peers, even before he has understood for sure what they are. Did it not cross his mind, that any astronomer with a telescope could point to the location, find it for himself and take the credit? Maybe it only served him right when the Spanish guy stole one of the discoveries.
I also have a bone to pick with him for blurring the lines between astronomy and astrology in a lot of cases. It seemed a little weird to hear an astronomer talk about planets ruling his fate (I mean, seriously?!!).
In the end, I think the title of the book is extremely misleading because Brown was not entirely responsible for 'killing Pluto'. The decision was taken by a bunch of astronomers from IAU, of which Brown isn't even a member, because in his own words he's too lazy to fill out the application.
Science is constantly evolving with new discoveries being made everyday, and it is clear that Pluto is not really a 'planet' based on the fact that there are several Pluto-like objects revolving around the Sun. The decision, as everyone knows, was to give it an ambiguous name, a "dwarf planet". Well, planet or not, Pluto will obviously remain a part of the current version of solar system. (I don't understand why textbooks will have to remove it from the solar system. After all they show us the asteroids!).
But for now, this is probably the best we can do with this meager understanding of the macrocosm, that is the Universe.


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