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The discovery of the planet Neptune was a triumph of mathematics. While studying the orbit of the planet Uranus, Urbain Leverrier realized that its perturbations suggested the presence of an unknown planet in an orbit beyond that of Uranus. Leverrier promptly calculated where the planet should be found. On September 23, 1846, the astronomer Johann Galle (in Berlin) looked at the indicated spot - and discovered Neptune in less than an hour.
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To command the professors of astronomy to confute their own observations is to enjoin an impossibility, for it is to command them to not see what they do see, and not to understand what they do understand, and to find what they do not discover.
Galileo Galile |
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