🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <15rvspINNedo@agate.berkeley.edu>, ted@physics1 (Emory F Bunn) writes:
>I would like to point out something in the interest of completeness, however.
>There have been several times when discrepancies in the orbits of planets
>led astronomers to postulate "dark matter" (new planets).  In the case of
>Mercury they were wrong, as you said.  However, exactly the same kind of 
>reasoning led to the correct discoveries of Neptune and Pluto.

Although, as is now well-known, the discovery of Pluto did not solve the
problems that inspired looking for it in the first place.

>So it looks to me like the score is

>Dark matter: 2
>Modification of theories of gravity: 1

I'd call it

Dark matter: 1
Modification of theories of gravity: 1
Serendipity: 1

That is, even if the dark matter theory is all wrong, trying to verify
it may lead to some unexpected things anyway.
-- 
-Matthew P Wiener (weemba@sagi.wistar.upenn.edu)