Mike Brown is a Professor of Planetary Astronomy at Caltech who, in 2006, was named one of Time magazine’s 100 People Who Shape Our World as well as one of Los Angeles magazine’s Most Influential People in L.A.

In 2005, Brown shook the world of astronomy by discovering the existence of a tenth planet, slightly bigger than Pluto. But rather than resulting in one more planet being added to our solar system, Brown’s find ignited a firestorm of controversy that culminated in the demotion of Pluto from real planet to the newly coined category of “dwarf” planet. In his 2005 book, How I Killed Pluto and Why It Had It Coming, Brown takes the reader through the most tumultuous year in modern astronomy with both humor and drama. Caltech comedian Sandra Tsing Loh said of the book, “Mike Brown is the funniest, smartest, and most surprisingly poetic Caltech astronomer who ever made my daughters cry. Certainly their happy nine-planet childhoods were worth sacrificing for this truly fascinating and engaging read.”

Mike Brown will use his book as a starting point to reveal the most recent discoveries in space that point to the existence of an unseen giant planet well beyond Neptune. He’ll provide an update on scientists’ progress in the search for this Planet Nine, including new discoveries which continues to strengthen the hypothesis, new analysis which refines where to look, and new observations that will — sometime soon — reveal this hidden giant.

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