Posted on 12/03/2008 1:10:39 PM PST by BGHater
More than 400 years after Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe challenged established wisdom about the heavens by analyzing a strange new light in the sky, scientists say they've finally nailed down just what he saw.
It's no big surprise. Scientists have known the light came from a supernova, a huge star explosion. But what kind of supernova?
A new study confirms that, as expected, it was the common kind that involves the thermonuclear explosion of a white dwarf star with a nearby companion.
The research, which analyzed a "light echo" from the long-ago event, is presented in Thursday's issue of the journal Nature by scientists in Germany, Japan and the Netherlands.
The story of what's commonly called Tycho's supernova began on Nov. 11, 1572, when Brahe was astonished to see what he thought was a brilliant new star in the constellation Cassiopeia. The light eventually became as bright as Venus and could be seen for two weeks in broad daylight. After 16 months, it disappeared.
Working before telescopes were invented, Brahe documented with precision that unlike the moon and the planets, the light's position didn't move in relation to the stars. That meant it lay far beyond the moon. That was a shock to the contemporary view that the distant heavens were perfect and unchanging.
The event inspired Brahe to commit himself further to studying the stars, launching a career of meticulous observations that helped lay the foundations of early modern astronomy, said Michael Shank, a professor of the history of science at the University of Wisconsin, Madison.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
Cool!!!!!!!!!!!
Ping!
“That was a shock to the contemporary view that the distant heavens were perfect and unchanging.”
It’s a wonder we still inhabit this world. DUH!
Was this before of after Tycho wore a gold nose?
Thanks!
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The Cycle of Cosmic Catastrophes:
Flood, Fire, and Famine
in the History of Civilization
by Richard Firestone,
Allen West, and
Simon Warwick-Smith
The interesting thing about this is how Tycho was still a skeptic of heliocentrism.
Interesting, but not all that unsual. Einstein, who got the Nobel prize not for his work on "relativity", but for work on the photoelectric effect, which lead others to develop quantum mechinics, never really believed that God plays dice with the Universe. (actually he wrote "I, at any rate, am convinced that He does not throw dice". (Not only does He, He sometimes throws them were they can't be seen).
Tycho’s meticulous observations were the foundation of modern astronomy to come.
I read Einstein to say that chaos does not rule the universe. That there is an underlying principle(s).
And in this I think he is yet to be proven wrong.
A matter of interpretaton. Quantum "randomness" is not chaos, it's just a matter of not being able to predict "individual" events at the quantum level. In macro sized numbers (on the order of 10^21 and more particles, things are quite predictable. Sort of like ideal gases. Individual particles are doing the old random walk, but the mass obeys certain laws.
Yes. That we cannot predict the individual is of little consequence in the overall situation that the result, the macro is predictable, “seeable” by science.
And the fact that there is a Quantum Theory also illustrates that there is a principle(s) governing chaos or pure randomness.
No scientist, I believe, would say the universe is completely random. (Else “we” wouldn’t exist.)
So, I disagree that it is a matter of interpretation that chaos does not rule the universe. It is de facto ruled by some organizing principle(s). That we have not formulated it precisely does not alter this.
Also, we have the competing relativity and quantum theories and the search for unification.
All of this, I believe, proves Einstein’s basic point (though he may have disbelieved it’s literalness on the quantum level).
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