The Fifth Planet: The Asteroid Belt and a War Erased from the Solar System
Between Mars and Jupiter lies a gap that eighteenth-century astronomers refused to treat as an accident. In 1766, Johann Daniel Titius recorded a number sequence that roughly matched the planets’ distances from the Sun. The sequence left a position at 2.8 astronomical units, exactly where another planet should have been. When Giuseppe Piazzi found Ceres at that distance in 1801, astronomers thought they had found the missing world.
Between Mars and Jupiter lies a gap that eighteenth-century astronomers refused to treat as an accident. In 1766, Johann Daniel Titius recorded a number sequence that roughly matched the planets’ distances from the Sun. The sequence left a position at 2.8 astronomical units, exactly where another planet should have been. When Giuseppe Piazzi found Ceres at that distance in 1801, astronomers thought they had found the missing world.
Between Mars and Jupiter lies a gap that eighteenth-century astronomers refused to treat as an accident. In 1766, Johann Daniel Titius recorded a number sequence that roughly matched the planets’ distances from the Sun. The sequence left a position at 2.8 astronomical units, exactly where another planet should have been. When Giuseppe Piazzi found Ceres at that distance in 1801, astronomers thought they had found the missing world.
Between Mars and Jupiter lies a gap that eighteenth-century astronomers refused to treat as an accident. In 1766, Johann Daniel Titius recorded a number sequence that roughly matched the planets’ distances from the Sun. The sequence left a position at 2.8 astronomical units, exactly where another planet should have been. When Giuseppe Piazzi found Ceres at that distance in 1801, astronomers thought they had found the missing world.
Between Mars and Jupiter lies a gap that eighteenth-century astronomers refused to treat as an accident. In 1766, Johann Daniel Titius recorded a number sequence that roughly matched the planets’ distances from the Sun. The sequence left a position at 2.8 astronomical units, exactly where another planet should have been. When Giuseppe Piazzi found Ceres at that distance in 1801, astronomers thought they had found the missing world.
Between Mars and Jupiter lies a gap that eighteenth-century astronomers refused to treat as an accident. In 1766, Johann Daniel Titius recorded a number sequence that roughly matched the planets’ distances from the Sun. The sequence left a position at 2.8 astronomical units, exactly where another planet should have been. When Giuseppe Piazzi found Ceres at that distance in 1801, astronomers thought they had found the missing world.