Cosmology and the Origin of Life

Cardinal Nicholas of Cusa (15th Century) through a lot about cosmology and came up with the following;

• Every direction is relative
• The Universe has its center everywhere
  The above two means there can be no UNIQUE place in the Universe
• The Earth may not be stationary
• Wherever one stood in the Universe, the same pattern of stars would be strewn out before them (homogeneity)

Thus for the first time we see the ideas of relativity, homogeneity and non-uniqueness expressed.

Copernicus embraces the non-uniqueness idea and then asks why should the earth be at the center - lets put the SUN there

This is the First Heliocentric Cosmology

Evolving Models of the Solar System and The Scientific Method:

Galileo sees a mini solar system around Jupiter

Tycho searches for stellar parallax sees none Aarogant rejection of Copernicun Model

Tycho publishes data Kepler makes Geometrical Model

• Summary of Kepler's Laws

• Animated summary of Kepler's Laws

Kepler's laws are only empirical they have no dynamical basis. Therefore, they would appear to be magic as they have no physical explanation (yet). (see page 16 in the book).

Newton invents gravity, calculus but forgets about the speed of light

Einstein invents causality and gravity as curved spacetime

And Now for three relevant questions from History and Professor John Nicols:

• Why did the Greeks love their geocentric model so much?

• Why did it take so long (1500 years) before the transition to the "Copernicun" way of thinking occurred?

• Was copernicus really that original or did he just build on earlier stuff.?

Previous Lecture Next Lecture Course Page