Light

Light

Light, to me, will always carry a sort of mystical quality, regardless of how great our understanding of it grows to someday be. It travels across the cosmos carrying tantalizing hints at what lies beyond our short grasp. It is the information super highway of the Universe, bringing information and description of what else exists across time and space so that we may know just how much there is left to learn in regards to heavenly bodies. I suppose much of it can be chalked up to human ingenuity; the analyzing of spectra to determine chemical composition is not intuitively suggested by light, and the amount of work and creativity put into telescopic and imaging technology should never be taken for granted. This being said, these observations and advancements (among most other things)  would be near inconceivable without the presence of light. In the past century, with Einstein’s theory of relativity and its implications, light has become even more essential to our understanding of the fundamental nature of the Universe. Light is the building block of everything else; life, the creation of mass, the formation of the Universe. Understanding and applying our knowledge of light seems to me to be the most promising and interesting scientific task. How could it not?

Historical Astronomers in Context

Isaac Newton

25 December 1642 – 20 March 1726 Pic Source

Isaac Newton invented calculus and formulated the theory of universal gravity. His work in the fields of mathematics and physics revolutionized science and allowed astronomers to understand the motions of heavenly bodies and the forces that interact between them.

CONTEMPORARY EVENTS

The Great Plague of London occurred in 1665 while Newton was attending Cambridge. It was the last major epidemic of the bubonic plague to occur in the Kingdom of England.

The Acts of Union in 1707 united England and Scotland into one kingdom. Parliaments of both nations passed separate acts. The Acts joined England and Scotland into one nation, named “Great Britain”.

CONTEMPORARY PERSON

Gottfried Wilhem Leibniz was a German mathematician who shares with Newton the credit for the development of integrated differential calculus. The two developed different methods of integration independently, however, after some dispute Leibniz’s notation was adopted.

REVIEW

Learning of the context that surrounded Newton’s life and work really helped me to better understand how quickly events occur and how interrelated they all are. This is especially true with the work of Brahe, Galileo and Kepler. These three each made progress that would aid the other two and be used together to further the scientific community as a whole as well as set the stage for the work of Newton.  Without every event occurring as it did, including the Great Plague, who knows what our world would be like today?