Philosophy
You may find this hard to believe, but we've known about the true size of the universe for only about 100 years. When Copernicus proposed his revolutionary heliocentric model, for instance, he still believed in the existence of a perfect celestial sphere where all the stars revolved around the sun in a perfect circle. That belief would be slowly chipped away with the observation of a Super-Nova explosion in 1572.
It wasn't until the 1920's when Edwin Hubble, thanks to a brilliant idea proposed by Henrietta Swan Leavitt, was able to measure the distance to a Cepheid variable in what was suspected to be either a weird part of the Milky Way, or an altogether different galaxy. The measurements made it clear that the universe was orders of magnitude larger than we had suspected.
Could it, in fact, be infinite? Does space go on forever? Or does it have to have an edge? If it has an edge, what's on the other side? More universe? And if it's infinite, and there are an infinite number of stars, why isn't the night sky as bright as it is during the day?
In the following documentary, Professor Jim Al-Khalili traces the history and the science behind these and other similarly fascinating questions that scientists, especially with the help of brilliant minds like Gauss, Reimann and Einstein, are just beginning to solve.
I would have thought that a finite amount of stars would solve the problem much more easily, but maybe Professor Al-Khalili hasn't heard of Ockham's Razor? :)
- Brian Cox - Mars Loops The Loop
Thanks mainly to Aristotle's teleological metaphysics and the ancient idea that the heavens are a realm of perfection, it was believed for millennia that the celestial bodies moved along a perfect sphere around the Earth. Then some odd observations...
- An Infinite Universe?
If the universe is infinite now it has always been infinite. This is the opinion of many astronomers today as can be concluded from the following series of interviews, but the opinions differ much more than I had expected. Many astronomers do not have...
- New Book By David A. Weintraub..."how Old Is The Universe?"
How Old Is the Universe? by David A. Weintraub [David A. Weintraub is professor of astronomy at Vanderbilt University. He is the author of Is Pluto a Planet?: A Historical Journey through the Solar System.] ISBN-10: 0691147310 ISBN-13: 978-0691147314...
- More Stars
I suppose that this news will make one feel better...three times the chance of alien encounter[s]. Regardless, it is humbling. "How Many Stars? Three Times as Many as We Thought, Report Says" by Kenneth Chang December 1st, 2010 The New York Times It...
- Nicholas Of Kues..."ahead Of His Time In The Field Of Science"
Nicholas of Kues 1401 to August 11th, 1464 Cardinal Nicholas of Cusa was a "German theologian, influential philosopher, mathematician, and scientist. His scientific ideas, shrouded in theological language, were his personal speculations. Before Copernicus...
Philosophy
Everything and Nothing - Everything
You may find this hard to believe, but we've known about the true size of the universe for only about 100 years. When Copernicus proposed his revolutionary heliocentric model, for instance, he still believed in the existence of a perfect celestial sphere where all the stars revolved around the sun in a perfect circle. That belief would be slowly chipped away with the observation of a Super-Nova explosion in 1572.It wasn't until the 1920's when Edwin Hubble, thanks to a brilliant idea proposed by Henrietta Swan Leavitt, was able to measure the distance to a Cepheid variable in what was suspected to be either a weird part of the Milky Way, or an altogether different galaxy. The measurements made it clear that the universe was orders of magnitude larger than we had suspected.
Could it, in fact, be infinite? Does space go on forever? Or does it have to have an edge? If it has an edge, what's on the other side? More universe? And if it's infinite, and there are an infinite number of stars, why isn't the night sky as bright as it is during the day?In the following documentary, Professor Jim Al-Khalili traces the history and the science behind these and other similarly fascinating questions that scientists, especially with the help of brilliant minds like Gauss, Reimann and Einstein, are just beginning to solve.
I would have thought that a finite amount of stars would solve the problem much more easily, but maybe Professor Al-Khalili hasn't heard of Ockham's Razor? :)
- Brian Cox - Mars Loops The Loop
Thanks mainly to Aristotle's teleological metaphysics and the ancient idea that the heavens are a realm of perfection, it was believed for millennia that the celestial bodies moved along a perfect sphere around the Earth. Then some odd observations...
- An Infinite Universe?
If the universe is infinite now it has always been infinite. This is the opinion of many astronomers today as can be concluded from the following series of interviews, but the opinions differ much more than I had expected. Many astronomers do not have...
- New Book By David A. Weintraub..."how Old Is The Universe?"
How Old Is the Universe? by David A. Weintraub [David A. Weintraub is professor of astronomy at Vanderbilt University. He is the author of Is Pluto a Planet?: A Historical Journey through the Solar System.] ISBN-10: 0691147310 ISBN-13: 978-0691147314...
- More Stars
I suppose that this news will make one feel better...three times the chance of alien encounter[s]. Regardless, it is humbling. "How Many Stars? Three Times as Many as We Thought, Report Says" by Kenneth Chang December 1st, 2010 The New York Times It...
- Nicholas Of Kues..."ahead Of His Time In The Field Of Science"
Nicholas of Kues 1401 to August 11th, 1464 Cardinal Nicholas of Cusa was a "German theologian, influential philosopher, mathematician, and scientist. His scientific ideas, shrouded in theological language, were his personal speculations. Before Copernicus...