Tourists of the Universe (continued)
be noted here that I am neither a historian nor a scientist but that connection that I want in this topic are inspired by great scientific minds such as Galileo, Newton, Einstein, Trinh Xuan Thuan, George Smoot, Hubert Reeves and many other (which does not exclude some derailments on my part). Let us continue this odyssey of man in his quest for understanding of the universe.
Notes (1) , (2) , etc.. always refer to you end of the text.
Chapter 2. From Galileo to Hubble
In chapter 1 we saw primitive man living in an animistic universe where all beings and all things were equipped with a spirit as well as himself. Then, there are about 10 000 years, man replaced his animistic universe in a universe where mythological gods multiple governing everything in this universe. Then they followed the one God of the Middle Ages (inherited from Judaism and Islam) which would have dictated the Holy Scriptures containing the explanation of all the mysteries of the universe. There conceived when God had man perched atop a ladder planted on Earth, itself the center of the universe. And voila, everything was said. It remained only to read the Bible and to worship the God Almighty, which governed the whole universe.
From a scientific standpoint, from antiquity until the Middle Ages, saw the sky as a sphere above the earth on which were grafted and the stars and planets. These stars were all on the same plane and revolved around the earth motionless at the center of the outer sphere.
The thing is understandable because the hen even today, we contemplate the sky, it was really the illusion of being motionless in the middle of a large carousel.
When Copernicus and G alilée dared to claim that the Earth was not the center of the universe, they contradicted not only the scriptures but also conceptions of the Universe prevailing at the time.
Expansion of thought s CIENTIFIC
Do not believe the advances of Copernicus and Galileo were isolated movements. The cultural and artistic movement of the Renaissance ance, which spread around the fourteenth century to the early seventeenth century, had already begun to rediscover the ancient philosophers and challenge rigid conceptions of the Middle age. The evolution of thought extended to the scientific world and so that the sixteenth th century Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe establishes that the stars move and the heavens were not immutable, contrary to what Aristotle. It also establishes that the great comet of 1577 had an elliptical orbit and non-circular, thereby undermining one another "dogma" of Aristotle to the supposed perfection of heaven wishing that all movements of the planets are circular. Then the German astronomer Johannes Kepler that Tycho Brahe had hired as an assistant, formulated laws governing the movement of planets and NASA which is still used today to combine the appointment of its probe s Space with the moon and planets. But what that held the planets in the heavens? Mystery for now.
is the Englishman Isaac Newton, circa 1666, found answer to this mystery stating the law of universal gravitation and finding solution to the puzzle of the planets that were pending in the heavens without pivots r on crystalline spheres imagined by Eudoxus and Aristotle and without being forced by the angels of Thomas Aquinas. Basically, saying that the law of gravitation is that all the s bodies attract each other according to their masses and their distances. Plus they are m assif and reconciled, the more they attract. Unless they are massive and close together, the less they attract. A kind of balancing act that, at the stars, makes them without crashing the neighborly s on each other, at least generally. But why is this so? Is Einstein, who three centuries later, will answer this question. We will return.
Prevalence of reason
All these discoveries about the workings of the universe were the result we began to believe that human reason could, ultimately explain everything, without it having to resort to the deities.
the eighteenth century e, and we entered the era of rationalism who as defined in the dictionary is "a mindset that values only reason" . So rejection of any divine intervention, and especially the Holy Scriptures, to explain the workings of the universe. The science was regarded as almost infallible, as capable of overcoming all diseases and miseries that beset mankind has always been as capable of meeting all questions and philosophical issues in particular: Where are we? Where we come from? Where are we going? Why are we here on Earth? (C. Marchal). (1) "More needs God to run the machine. It was enough that God gives the flick start and everything was working alone. " (2)
And at the same time, coming into the scene determinism: a principle which, in sum, can predict with certainty the outcome of a situation if one knows the advance all the "ingredients" the problem. We thought so, for example, if a stone was tossed it enough to know its initial position and velocity to predict at what time, where and how fast it was going to fall .
So the XVIII th century saw and the triumph of reason. (3)
The explanation of the universe through reason
This openness on reason and science course stretched more and more to the vision of the universe.
the eighteenth century, Sir William Herschel that the sun sets and our entire solar system are part of an imm ense flock of stars, a galaxy (since then called "V Milky goose"). Well, well, well, the Sun and its herd of comets they then remain at the center of the herd (assuming this is really the Sun revolves around the Earth as argued by Copernicus, Galileo, and their successors)? But yes, replied in chorus the builders of the scale had man perched at the highest level of this scale, because nothing prevents leaving the man at the center of the universe.
But in 1918, Harlow Shapley destroyed this new illusion dislodging the sun of this central place to install it in the suburbs of the Milky Way. Our fellows do not like the idea : they tumble down several rungs on their ladder already baby will be.
At this point, we imagine that the Milky Way is the whole universe: the galaxy becomes a blob of stars amid a sea of empty and it is still reassuring to say that man is built into the blob that is the whole universe. But
behold, in 1924 ...
Using the Mount Wilson telescope in California, Edwin Hubble established that there are other galaxies outside the Milky Way. Therefore, our supposedly huge galaxy becomes to turn a drop from a multitude of other drops, each containing an infinity of stars. For our valiant defenders of the supremacy of Man in the Universe, is the plummeting : they end up the ass on the first and only operation of their scale almost entirely demolished.
How they will fare? is what we see in the next chapter.
(1) not forget this ultimate philosophical question posed by Woody Allen: "What shall we eat for dinner tonight? "
(2) Trinh Xuan Thuan" The secret melody "Ed. Gallimard 1991
(3) And now our little piece of ass is a new scale for world domination.
But remember that this new scale was in turn severely shaken by quantum mechanics you will find the reference in "Physics for Dummies" ( physical Capsule No. 3 ) of 4 November 2010 .
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