Astronomical Leaps.

In astronomy the greatest advance of the 1930s involved the discovery of the planet Pluto, the ninth and last in the solar system. The planet's existence was confirmed, almost by chance, on 18 February 1930 at the Lowell Observatory by Clyde William Tombaugh. Eight years later Seth Barnes Nicholson discovered the tenth and eleventh satellites of Jupiter. Solar research also advanced as astronomers learned, thanks to the advent of long-distance radio, the effects of solar activity on the earth's ionosphere. Such influence often caused static and blackout in communications. In 1932 an international network of solar observatories was created to ensure that the sun's activities could be observed around the clock. That same year the field of planetary physics also progressed when Walter Sydney Adams and Theodore Dunham Jr., both at the Mount Wilson Observatory, identified a thick layer of carbon dioxide as causing the absorption...