Astronomy Lecture: How I Killed Pluto and Why It Had it Coming!

Astronomy Lecture: How I Killed Pluto and Why It Had it Coming!

Jan. 19

As part of the 12th annual Silicon Valley Astronomy Lecture Series, astronomer Michael Brown, Ph.D., from the California Institute of Technology, will present How I Killed Pluto and Why It Had it Coming!, Wednesday, Nov. 19, at 7 p.m., in the Smithwick Theatre at Foothill College in Los Altos Hills. Admission is free and the public is invited. Seating is on a first-come, first-served basis. Arrive early to locate parking.

The controversial "demotion" of Pluto was mainly the result of discoveries by a team of astronomers led by Michael Brown. In this talk, Dr. Brown will share the inside story of how he discovered "other Pluto's" out there beyond Neptune, including Eris, larger than Pluto, which he later named for the goddess of discord. Because, as he'll describe with his characteristic humor, its discovery resulted in a private and public controversy which led to the redefinition of what a planet is.

Brown has written a popular-level memoir, How I Killed Pluto and Why It Had It Coming, and he will be signing books after the lecture. He is a professor of planetary astronomy at the California Institute of Technology and specializes in the discovery and study of bodies at the edge of the solar system. He recently received the Richard P. Feynman Award for Outstanding Teaching at Caltech and was elected a Fellow of the California Academy of Sciences. He was also named one of Wired.com's Top Ten Sexiest Geeks in 2006–the mention of which never ceases to make his wife laugh.

The free lecture series is sponsored by the Foothill College Astronomy Program, NASA Ames Research Center, SETI Institute and Astronomical Society of the Pacific. Past lectures from the series are available online in MP3-format.