The hunt for Vulcan by Thomas Levenson

Physics, Book Review

Easily one of the best books I read recently, The hunt for vulcan by Thomas Levenson depicts an amazing story in the history of science. The book is about a hypothetical planet named vulcan that is probably one of the best examples of confirmation bias.

The story starts with Newton’s gravitational theory, that took the world by surprise, explaining everything from an apple’s trajectory to the orbit of mars around the sun. The theory kept mathematicians and astronomers busy for a couple of centuries to predict and verify the trajectories of various bodies visible both in day & night sky.

A french mathematician Le verrier came under spotlight when, using the gravitational theory and a pen, figured out the existence & precise position of Neptune - arguably the farthest planet in the solar system. He came up with that in an attempt to explain the behavior of the-then farthest planet Uranus. In an attempt to have a complete explanation of solar system, his focus turned to Mercury - the-then closest planet to the sun in the solar system.

In a similar attempt to explain mercury’s observed trajectory, Le verrier proposed the existence of a new planet vulcan between sun & mercury. For a little under a century, astronomers ventured to utilize the short windows of total solar eclipses with the single aim to see the phantom planet. Some very famous astronomers even took the thought, that they saw vulcan, to their graves.

Then comes along a young clerk in a patent office using his exceptional imagination abilities. His theories changed the world. But in the context of the book, he destroyed vulcan. His theory of general relativity provided a convincing explanation of why mercury acted that way.

Gravitational well around the sun

In summary, the book is a fascinating tale of how Le verrier created the farthest planet in the solar system using the pen and Einstein destroyed the supposedly-closest one to the sun using a pen too!