A Mormon’s Musings on Some of the Things in Life that Matter Most
The year is 1906 and B.H. Roberts, a senior official in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day saints,[1] is not a happy camper. To be precise, he is appalled at the lack of critical thinking on the part of the members of the church and some of his colleagues. And he has just said so publicly. What set him off?
This is a story about a planet called Vulcan. No, not the place where S’chn T’gai Spock—better known as “Mr. Spock”—was raised by his Vulcan father and human mother. This is about a planet in our Solar System by that very same name. It differs, however, from all the rest in one important respect: no one has ever been able to find it.
To understand the mystery of Vulcan and how it was eventually solved, we must first turn our attention to a different—and quite real—planetary body: Uranus. While Uranus was discovered towards the end of the 18thcentury, during the early 1800s astronomers were beginning to wonder whether it might actually be a star. Those doubts had arisen because the planet was not adhering to Newton’s theory of gravity.
