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Santa Discovery Stolen By Spaniards
Dr. Michael Brown of Caltech had discovered something new. It was a bright object out beyond the orbit of Neptune. Did he report it? Of course not. It's long been the practice of many astronomers to sit on important discoveries until they can gather as much information as possible, and then announce it all at once.
This would have been a fine plan if it wasn't for sneaky Spaniards, let by Dr. Jose-Luis Ortiz, of the Sierra Nevada Observatory in Spain, who beat Dr. Brown and announced that he, in fact had made the discovery of the trans-Neptunian object.
The object, which Brown had named "Santa" but is now labeled "2003 EL61" was a significant discovery. At the time it was the brightest and largest object - next to Pluto - yet found in the Kuiper belt, a ring of debris that stretches out beyond Neptune.
Brown attributed the bad break to luck. He even sent the leader of the group a congratulatory email.
Soon after, however, things went for a nasty turn. While reviewing the server logs, it became apparent that the Spanish team had accessed Brown's viewing logs over the internet in the days before they made their announcement.
On his web site, Brown says, "It is not clear from the timeline precisely what Ortiz and Santos-Sanz knew and how they used the records that they accessed. They were required by the standards of science, however, to acknowledge their use of our Web-based records."
For their part, the Spanish team has a long story about seeing pictures several years prior, then doing some searches. It is interesting that it took several years for the pictures to be analyzed enough for the discovery to be made.
So of course the nice scientists will engage in some arbitration procedure, right?
Nope. There is no arbitration procedure. Dr. Marsden o the I.A.U. admitted to the New York Times that they had no protocol for adjudicating such a dispute. Dr. Robert Kirshner, a Harvard astronomer and the president of the American Astronomical Association, said, "I don't think we have a method - other than public tantrums - to resolve these problems."
And so the question remains -- who really discovered Santa? How do you say Santa in Spanish? Is Dr. Ortiz related to the Mexican food people?
As for Brown, he can't be that upset: he is now the discoverer of the tenth planet in the solar system -- one which I hope is named: Santa.
For the rest of us, let's hope the IAU gets its arbitration act in gear before somebody discovers Rudolph.
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