The Hunt for Planet X

Added: 2026-05-19

[00:00:00]So, the hunt for Planet X, a planet hunt like none other. Percival Lowell of the New England Lowells loved astronomy, was not formally trained, but he he had money, built an observatory, the best one in the world. He was the first to figure out who the telescope on the mountaintop above the low cloud layers where it rains and and put it in the desert. He found a mountain in Arizona.

[00:00:19]He starts a systematic survey in the plane of the solar system, a photographic survey. Now, how do you discover a planet? It has to be a dot of light in one photo, then in another photo it has moved different spot. 1930 is the announcement, Planet X discovered. Over the decades, we find out it's not as big and not as massive.

[00:00:36]We We found a moon, its mass was like 1/5 the mass of our moon.

[00:00:40]>> And along comes an astrophysicist named Neil deGrasse Tyson.

[00:00:43]>> put it with the other dirty ice balls he had discovered in the outer solar system, where it belongs. [music] >> You make it sound so derogatory.

[00:00:48]>> You dirty ice ball. It's happier there.

[00:00:50]>> Right.

[00:00:51]>> It's now the king of the comets, rather than the puniest [music] planet.

[00:00:53]>> You have my understanding, but I also understand you killed Pluto.