Johannes Kepler was an amazing scientist. He wrote the first published defense of Nicolaus Copernicus theory that the Earth revolved around the Sun. He was an assistant to famed astronomer Tycho Brahe and he corresponded with Galileo Galilei about the telescope - even making improvements to the design of the telescope. Kepler's work inspired Isaac Newton in his gravitational theories, too.
Modern scientists may laugh at Kepler's date saying that it is nearly 13.7 billion years off. Do any of the people who come up with that larger number have the courage to set a specific year, month and day for the Big Bang? Another thing that has always bothered me is that cosmologists and astronomers talk about how we are looking back in time when we look at distant objects in the universe. They say we are all speeding away from each other and, since the speed of light is a constant, when we look at a star that is a million light years away (in distance), we are seeing that star as it was a million years ago. From what I understand of the Big Bang Theory, stars started forming about 100 million years after the Big Bang itself. That's a very short time compared with the age of the universe. Did we "out-run" the light of those early stars as we rushed away from them? Or did time itself not really kick in until a certain point in the expansion? Is it possible that what seems like 13.7 billion years is not really that long because the "clock" wasn't running all that time?
I've not studied this stuff and people who are smarter than me have come up with these theories. It sure makes me curious and I'd like to read more about it. Some day, as I find out more about these things, I'd like to write more about them. Till then, let's sing Happy Birthday to the universe, have some cake and play a game of pin the tail on the comet.
1 comment:
It's too bad Evan interested in studying this end of it.
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