Kepler’s second law states that planets sweep out equal areas, using the Sun as one focus, in equal times, regardless of other parameters. It was a brilliant idea, and the first attempt to argue - from pure mathematics alone - how the Universe ought to be. It failed to even be as good as the ancient Ptolemaic model with its epicycles, equants and deferents. It was a brilliant, beautiful mathematical model, and arguably the first attempt at constructing what we might call “an elegant Universe” today.īut observationally, it failed. By drawing a sphere inside and outside each one, he could “nest” them in a way that fit the planetary orbits extremely well: better than anything Copernicus had done. He also noticed that mathematically, there were only five Platonic solids: five mathematical objects whose faces are all equal-sided polygons. He noticed that there were six planets total, if you included Earth but not Earth’s Moon. As beautiful as this is, it couldn’t describe the Solar System as well as ellipses could, or even as well as Ptolemy’s model could. Kepler’s original model of the Solar System, the Mysterium Cosmographicum, consisted of the 5 Platonic solids defining the relative radii of 6 spheres, with the planets orbiting around the circumferences of those spheres.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |