Math-Driven Discovery Of Planet Neptune

In 1846, astronomers noticed that Uranus kept drifting off its predicted orbit, suggesting that something massive was tugging on it from the outer solar system. Mathematicians like Urbain Le Verrier and John Couch Adams used Newton's laws of gravitation to predict where an unseen planet should be to cause that wobble. On September 23, 1846, Johann Galle at the Berlin Observatory pointed a telescope to the predicted spot and found Neptune almost exactly where the math said it would be.

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