Paranormal Studies 313: The Lost Planet Vulcan

After glancing up at the clock, Professor Grimes picked up the student roster, looked around the room, and drew a checkmark beside six names. As he set the roster back down on his desk a voice called out from the back of the room. “Hey there! What just happened?”

The professor looked up. “Well, Henry, I just took attendance, as I do before every class – which is something you would know if you had attended any of my past lectures. I find that–”

Henry interrupted him. “Attendance! Since when do you take attendance?”

“As I just said, I have always taken attendance. I started the practice on my very first day of teaching, and it has served me well. But you needn’t act so surprised about it. The fact that I take attendance is duly noted in your syllabus. You should seriously consider reading it. I assure you that I did not create it out of a mad desire to destroy as many trees as possible. It contains very valuable information.”

“But that’s totally not fair! This is the first time I’ve been here. You’re not going to penalize me, are you? And what about all those other people who weren’t able to make it – are you going to ding them too? This whole attendance tracking thing can really mess up a person’s GPA!”

Professor Grimes looked at him coldly. “The syllabus clearly states that attendance counts for 20% of your grade. On top of that, the mere act of missing classes will have a very negative effect on your ability to pass my exams – such as the exam that I handed out in our last class, which you missed entirely and therefore failed. At this point, Henry, if you want to have even a chance at passing this course you will have to have perfect attendance and ace every single assignment. Your prospects are quite bleak.”

“That is so unfair,” Henry grumbled.

“I am afraid I have very little sympathy for you. The rules are clearly spelled out in the syllabus, and you agreed to them when you signed up for this course. It is not my problem if you have failed to pay attention to what is going on. In fact, the ability to pay attention in life is absolutely critical. Even when you pay very close attention it is possible to miss things that are not there – or to lose track of something that you were certain once existed. That, in fact, is what our class today is about.”

Lora spoke up. “Are you, like, serious? You’re going to talk about people who forgot to come to class?”

The professor smiled. “No, young lady, I am not. Instead, I am going to talk about the fact that the scientific community managed to lose an entire planet. Did you know that in the latter part of the 19th century it was common knowledge that there was a planet between the Sun and Mercury?”

Max spoke up. “Yeah, I heard that, but that was all bogus. Scientists were upset about some anomaly of some kind with Mercury’s orbit, so they made up a planet that wasn’t there. Then Einstein came along and showed that relativity solved the problem, so the planet wasn’t needed anymore. They just didn’t understand physics. It was a math error, basically.”

Professor Grimes shook his head. “That may be the way the story is told today, but it is entirely incorrect. It is true that scientists of that era realized that there were certain characteristics of Mercury’s orbit that they could not explain. However, the reason they postulated the existence of an intramercurial planet was because they actually found one.”

“Huh?” Ashley asked. “But Mercury’s the planet closest to the sun, right? There’s not a closer one. How could they find something that isn’t there?”

“That is what we are going to explore today,” the professor replied. “You might call it the mystery of the missing planet. A world that was once known to exist is now gone. Scientists spotted it, calculated its orbit and size, and tracked it across the sky – but today no one can find it. It’s a fascinating story that has been all-but-forgotten.

“The first mention I came across of this now-forgotten planet comes from an 1878 issue of Popular Science. The magazine records that the planet’s existence was verified on June 29, 1878, during a total eclipse of the sun. Its discovery was heralded because it solved a scientific riddle. Astronomers of that day simply could not figure out why perihelion of Mercury’s orbit processed around the sun at an excess of 43 arcseconds per century.”

Ashley spoke up. “What on earth does that even mean?”

“It’s actually quite simple,” the professor said. “All planets have a point in their orbit where they are the closest to the sun. That point is called the perihelion. The perihelion moves over time, and the way it moves can be explained by Newtonian physics – that is, for all planets except for Mercury. That one planet had a procession that was off just a little bit – not a lot, but enough to be a problem. It was a sign that there was something wrong. Einstein later explained the problem using his General Theory of Relativity, but at the time it was a genuine scientific mystery.

“Since Einstein did not publish his theory until 1916, scientists in 1878 were looking for other solutions. One possibility was that there was an intramercurial planet that was responsible for the anomaly. That’s why they were so excited to spot the planet during that total eclipse.

“Now, keep in mind that this was not the first time the planet had been spotted; instead, this was when the sighting was publicly verified and proven beyond doubt. The first recorded sighing actually happened on March 26, 1859, when an amateur astronomer named Dr. Lescarbault watched a dark circular spot cross the sun’s disk. He suspected it was an intramercurial planet and decided to contact Leverrier – a famous French mathematician who specialized in celestial mechanics and who played a role in discovering the planet Neptune back in 1846. In fact, Leverrier was actually person who discovered the anomaly in Mercury’s orbit.”

“So the math guy wasn’t a crank, is what you’re saying,” Ashley said.

The professor nodded. “Leverrier was indeed a highly respected man. Dr. Lescarbault contacted him hoping that he would either confirm or rebut his discovery. As it turned out, Leverrier confirmed his findings and publicly announced the newly-discovered planet. The new world orbited the sun every 19 days 17 hours, had a mean distance from the sun of 13 million miles, and had an orbital inclination of 12 degrees 10 minutes. The newly-discovered planet was tentatively named Vulcan.”

“You mean like Star Trek?” Lora asked. “Isn’t that where Spock is from?”

“This was many, many years before Star Trek,” Professor Grimes replied testily. “I assure you it was not named in his honor. The word comes from Roman mythology. Vulcan, as you may or may not know, was the Roman god of fire and metalworking. It made perfect sense to name a planet so close to the sun after the mythological god of fire. Any intramercurial planets would be scorching hot – hotter than Mercury.”

Max spoke up. “Hold on! This is all crazy talk. There is no such planet. It doesn’t exist!”

“One step at a time,” the professor replied. “What I am saying is that an amateur astronomer found an intramercurial object of significant size, and the discovery was confirmed by one of the co-discoverers of the planet Neptune. This newly-found world was given a name and announced to the rest of the scientific community. Leverrier was hoping that when other astronomers heard the news they would check it out for themselves, and either find the planet or come back and say that his readings were mistaken. What do you think happened?”

“It vanished,” Ashley said.

The professor shook his head. “Nope. In fact, quite the opposite happened! Other people began reporting sightings as well. On March 20, 1862 a Mr. Lummis from Manchester, England observed the planet Vulcan. The planet was also seen on July 29, 1878 by Professor James C. Watson, director of the Ann Arbor Observatory – a man who discovered more than twenty asteroids. Nor were these the only sightings. According to the 1864 Astronomical Register, the planet Vulcan was also seen years earlier by a host of different people. Gruithuisen saw it on June 26, 1819. Pastorff saw it once in 1922, twice in 1823, six times in 1834, twice in 1836, and once in 1837. The issue of Nature that was published on October 5, 1876 states that observers saw the planet on January 29, 1860, and the November 25, 1876 issue of Scientific American also records a sighting that same year.”

Max spoke up. “But that doesn’t make any sense! How could all those people have seen something that doesn’t exist? There isn’t really a planet Vulcan, is there?”

“But what about all the sightings?” Ashley replied. “It’s not like it was seen by just one crazy person!”

Professor Grimes nodded. “That is exactly my point. Whenever people talk about the planet Vulcan they act as if the 19th century scientific community was populated exclusively by morons. Nearly every modern retelling of the story states that when people noticed a problem with Mercury’s orbit they invented an entire planet out of nowhere, gave it a name, and assumed it was real. That is not at all what happened! The reality is that people gave it a name because they actually saw it, and they saw it repeatedly over the course of decades. They were not naming a mythical world that didn’t actually exist – they were naming something that many knowledgeable and reputable people saw through their telescopes. Vulcan was seen by people in different countries, on different dates, and across a period of decades. From the 19th century point of view there was a great deal of evidence to support this planet’s existence – and that evidence did not rest solely on eccentricities in Mercury’s orbit.”

“But there is no planet Vulcan!” Max repeated. “There are, like, thousands and thousands of people out there with telescopes. If there was a planet closer to the sun than Mercury then people would know all about it. It’s not like you can hide a planet! I mean, for crying out loud, the government can’t even hide its own spy satellites – amateurs see them all the time. Are you trying to tell me that there’s some kind of giant planet-hiding conspiracy going on? Is Vulcan home to space aliens with advanced cloaking technology or something?”

Professor Grimes smiled. “Now we are getting to the heart of the matter. In the 19th century many scientists – very reputable people who were experts in their field – observed the planet Vulcan and claimed that it existed. However, as you so eloquently pointed out, the planet does not exist. It is simply not possible to hide a planet in the 21st century – especially one that is supposed to be a mere 80 million miles away. Therefore, we are left with a couple choices. One option is that it really is home to advanced space aliens who realized that we had spotted their world and decided to hide it. However, given the total absence of evidence to support this theory, I think we can safely discount it.

“Another theory is that every single last sighting was completely mistaken. The amateurs, the experts, the mathematician who discovered Neptune – they were all entirely wrong. However, given the sheer number of people who actually reported seeing something, along with the detailed nature of those sightings, it seems rather unlikely that all of them were lying or that all of them were grossly incompetent. Some of these people actually ran observatories for a living. They were not morons.”

“But what else is there?” Ashley asked. “Did the planet used to exist and then disappear? Did it, like, fall into the sun or something?”

“Not exactly,” Professor Grimes replied. “Let’s suppose that a number of the sightings were mistaken, and were simply sightings of stars or other known planets or something of that nature. That still leaves some that were genuine. Is it not possible that those who really did see something simply did not understand what they were seeing? What if, instead of a planet, they were instead looking at transient intramercurial asteroids? Perhaps they were simply space rocks. After all, not a single person was able to track the planet over the course of years and make daily readings. In each case they saw something one day and then lost sight of it for months or even years. It is quite possible that people were simply seeing entirely different objects.

“We know that there are a great many asteroids between Mars and Jupiter. However, the Solar System has countless other rocks as well, in various bizarre orbits. Some of these get quite close to Earth, while others are quite far away and are almost impossible to see. I don’t think it’s unreasonable to assume that some of these asteroids occasionally get close to the Sun.

“People back then were looking for an intramercurial planet because they thought Newtonian physics guaranteed that there really was one. If they had seen a space rock drifting by the sun – or had seen a space rock near Earth and mistakenly assumed it was close to the sun – it would have been quite natural for them to assume that it was their looked-for planet. This doesn’t mean they saw a mirage; it only means that their biases distorted their view of what they were looking at. Since they were looking for a planet, and they thought the math proved that there had to be a planet there, they interpreted their sightings as being a planet. It wasn’t until Einstein came along with a different theory that they could take a step back and see things for what they really were.”

“So there is no intramercurial planet,” Max commented. “I was totally right.”

“Perhaps,” Professor Grimes said. “That being said, I would not be surprised to learn that there were intramercurial asteroids, or perhaps even asteroids whose orbit occasionally takes them close to the sun. But there is no planet Vulcan.”

“Well that’s disappointing,” Ashley said. “I was hoping that there was a big conspiracy or something.”

Professor Grimes smiled. “I am afraid that is not the case. There is a lesson to be learned here, however. Our personal beliefs and assumptions can easily taint the way we process evidence. In this case, the widespread belief that there had to be an intramercurial planet led the scientific community to erroneously interpret their data. The data they collected was quite real, but their biases led them to the wrong conclusion. The same thing happens today all the time. Evidence does not speak for itself; it must be interpreted. If your assumptions are wrong then the chances are high you will end up misinterpreting the evidence and arriving at a erroneous conclusion. Just because you have evidence does not mean that you are correct! Leverrier had copious evidence that Vulcan was real, and yet it was not real at all. You must be exceedingly careful.

“For that matter, just because the scientific community agrees on something does not make it true either. It was quite well-established in the 19th century that the planet Vulcan was real – but we know today that there is no such world. It is quite possible – and, in fact, quite easy – for the entire scientific community to be blinded by their own errors. Consensus does not determine the truth. Everyone may agree, but as we have seen here, that does not mean they are right.”

“I so called this one,” Max commented.

The professor ignored him. “Be sure to read chapter 8 in your book before our next lecture. Also, I have finished grading your exams, and you may pick them up on my desk as you leave the room. Class dismissed!”