One of my favorite turned-out-to-be-not-true moments of all astronomical history: the Titius-Bode Law.
Makes me want to go join the Celestial Police.
Also, because you can almost not see it, my shirt says ‘Pluto/1930-2006/Revolve in Peace’. 😀
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The Nerd Next Door 
Hi nice readding your blog
If you’re very lucky, you may live long enough to see your pet theory crushed. Ah, it’s so true.
Hi
I retrieved an interesting article the Titius/Bode rule–it is a fairly recent publication that is available on the: http://arxiv.org/abs/1304.3341
The authors are C. Lineweaver and T. Bovaird—Dr. Lineweaver is well known. I had been saving it for one of my own posts–but things (occasionally) tend to “pile up.” The link to the e-Print server for the article Is above—
Nice post—
Thank you. That’s a very interesting article. It’ll be interesting to see how many solar systems adhere to their two-parameter TB relation better than our own solar system. If they can predict exosolar planets using the modified law, that would be really cool!
One has to wonder what the odds of the Planets and Asteroid Belt fitting into such a scheme as the Titius-Bode Law predicts when in fact they don’t. Something astronomical I would think. Too bad Titius and Bode aren’t around anymore, I would have liked to have them buy me some lottery tickets
I would argue that with a small enough number of anything (in this case 5 out of 8 objects) some pattern of some kind would be observable. I can’t know for sure, but I think the odds would actually go the other way, it would be surprising to me that with a fairly small number, no pattern of any kind would be observed. But fitting into one specific pattern, like the TB-Law, I agree with you – that’s probably astronomically high. 🙂
🙂 I’m just curious: What do you do? Are you in college or out of?
I’m currently in a master’s of public administration program. I do work at a small observatory and I’m going to try to get an astronomy degree if I can swing it after I’m done with my MPA. I love astronomy, but in the past I felt like it might be hard to make a career out of so… I went with a less awesome degree/position. I see now that was somewhat foolish. 🙂
So, the obvious question after watching this video is: Why are the government hiding Phaeton from us, and how did they convince all of the astronomers to keep their secret???
The second (more serious) question is: So, did you win that hand of poker? Because it sounds like you inadvertently bluffed your way to victory!
1) They have all those NASA people on their side! 😉
2) Actually yes. Yes I did. I won everything. Everyone else was pretty mad at themselves. 😀
Sounds like you’re a bona fide hustler… “I’ve only played poker once before, and I don’t really remember the hands!” Yeah, yeah… I see what you’re up to! 😉
Honestly I don’t know if I’d be a better poker player if I learned the game or not. I’m almost afraid to just in case I ever need to play again…
😀