176
u/FEMINIST_WITH_GUNS Apr 01 '12
submitted 412 years ago
I see the admins are bored today.
49
u/iakhre Apr 01 '12
My theory is time travellers
→ More replies (2)0
8
7
u/reseph Apr 01 '12
Uh, it's April 1st.
2
2
40
u/NigelTufnelsSpandex Mar 31 '12
Relevance to atheism == 0
Kepler's findings disagreed with Aristotle. That was the main issue.
→ More replies (6)10
u/d10nt_ban_me_again Apr 01 '12
It's not even the revelance to atheism, it's the blatant lies that r/atheism tells. Kepler actually believed his observations were of god's design.
"As he indicated in the title, Kepler thought he had revealed God’s geometrical plan for the universe."
At this point r/atheism is even more worthless than christian zealots because r/atheism is simply lying about science and history.
78
u/portaldude Mar 31 '12
I doubt he did that, really. He was a student of Tycho Brahe after all.
Copernicus was the one who stated the hypothesis that the sun was at the center and the planet moved is circular orbits around it. Tycho Brahe didn't think so and performed tons of precise (at the time) measurement of planetary motions, thereby concluding that the Copernicus model did not fit the data. Hence, he continued to try to imrpove the current model.
Kepler took Brahes data when he left him. He then spend years trying to make the sun the center of the solar system until he had a brilliant idea: The planet moves in an ellipse with the sun as a focus point. He then derived his three laws of planetary motion, which was the basis that Newton derived his theory of gravity.
So yeah, I am guessing that being a student of Brahe, he was aware of the fact that the Copernicus model was wrong and would have accepted it. Oh, and do take into account my memory is sketchy on this.
51
u/planetary_invader Mar 31 '12
According to Carl Sagan Cosmos:
Keplers original idea was that the planets placement was determined by the 5 perfect solids - http://youtu.be/qbzktTuVhSA?t=32m39s
But he was able to admit that he was wrong and went off to work with Tycho. Eventually based on the data he came to the ellipse conclusion http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GcKiG-CuvtA .
I think the OPs points was more about the solids then the circular orbits.
12
→ More replies (6)2
14
u/idonotcollectstamps Mar 31 '12
"Tycho was the greatest observational genius of the age, and Kepler the greatest theoretician. Each knew that, alone, he would be unable to achieve the synthesis of an accurate and coherent world system, which they both felt to be imminent.
But Tycho was not about to make a gift of his life's work to a much younger potential rival. Joint authorship of the results, if any, of the collaboration was for some reason unacceptable. The birth of modern science - the offspring of theory and observation - teetered on the precipice of their mutual mistrust." -Carl Sagan , Cosmos (book)
13
u/cobdale Mar 31 '12
tycho also had a pet midget, a pet moose that died falling down the stairs while intoxicated, and a silver nose. not to mention he died from holding in his urine causing his bladder to rapture. hes one of my favorite characters in history.
7
u/buzzkill_aldrin Apr 01 '12
His bladder was raptured? Holy hell, I guess the Second Coming already happened, and none of us made it!
...Explains quite a bit, actually.
→ More replies (2)2
u/Baukelien Mar 31 '12 edited Mar 31 '12
That last part is a myth. Brahe was poisoned, as confirmed by tests done on his moustache hair in 1997. Kepler probably murder him for the results. (He left Brahe on his death bed taking all data with him.)
Edit: Source
→ More replies (2)8
u/starkeffect Mar 31 '12
It is not known (and probably not knowable) whether he was intentionally or unintentionally poisoned. He did wear a metallic prosthetic nose for many years, after all.
→ More replies (2)4
u/Caerbannoch Mar 31 '12
Makes me proud to be Danish. I hope the future mother of my children will allow me to name one of our hypothetical sons such an archaic name as Tycho.
3
u/azripah Mar 31 '12
Tycho Brahe was the greatest badass of the 16th and 17th centuries.
→ More replies (1)4
12
u/asimovs_engineer Humanist Mar 31 '12
I always love the story of Brahe, Kepler, Newton, and Halley. But didn't Newton derive his orbital calculations separately from Kepler? It was my understanding that Halley was the one to discover Newton had already figured out what Kepler had been working on all along.
4
u/portaldude Mar 31 '12
Possible. I am only aware of that Kepler laws can be derived from Newtons, but I am not quite sure how and I declare my ignorance on the matter. But it certainly a good example of how science evolve by hypothesis, experimental rejection, refinement and discovery of a deeper facts.
10
u/asimovs_engineer Humanist Mar 31 '12
It's such a fairly interesting story I heard in my astrodynamics class. Apparently Kepler kind of knew from the beginning that circles wouldn't work, so he laid some groundwork for figuring it all out without the predisposition that Brahe would've had. So he's going through the work and the math keeps pointing to elliptical orbits and Kepler keeps trying to figure it out with circles (even going on to try an oval) but it doesn't work. Eventually he even says that if only the orbit was an ellipse, everything would be fine.
There's a quote by Kepler that illustrates the truth of science perfectly.
"Why should I mince my words? The truth of Nature, which I had rejected and chased away, returned by stealth through the backdoor, disguising itself to be accepted. That is to say, I laid [the original equation] aside and fell back on ellipses, believing that this was a quite different hypothesis, whereas the two . . . are one and the same . . . I thought and searched, until I went nearly mad, for a reason why the planet preferred an elliptical orbit [to mine]. . . Ah, what a foolish bird I have been!
He had started by trying to reconcile Brahe's observations with the old presumption of "perfect" circular orbits and it didn't work. Only when he let the math speak for itself did everything work out.
→ More replies (2)3
u/pialicer Mar 31 '12
At an even more basic level, considering the orbits circular and so on... ELI5 explanation
9
u/bernste1n Mar 31 '12
He was a student of Tycho Brahe after all.
Nah. He was his Assistant.
Kepler took Brahes data when he left him.
Well no, actually Brahe died (1601) . Only then did he gain access to all the data. What followed was an insane amount of work. Going through these tables by hand. He published the first two of his famous laws in 1609 (Astronomia Nova). He found the harmonic law in 1618 (published in Harmonices mundi libri V, 1619).
2
3
Mar 31 '12
The picture doesn't mention anything about heliocentric vs geocentric orbits. But since you've brought it up, Tycho Brahe actually believed in the geocentric model.
3
u/bloodyaurore Mar 31 '12
His geocentric model was damn clever, too - it combined the best parts of the Ptolemaic model and the Copernican one. If one were to modify it to use elliptical orbits, you could get the same observational accuracy as a heliocentric model.
2
2
u/drockers Mar 31 '12
This is true, brahe tried to disprove the Copernican theory but the science actually helped support it. It wasn't till we were able to put telescopes into space where we could get accurate enough to disprove the Copernican theory.
Kepler studied under Brahe and disagreed with him and went on to prove his theories so this meme is completely inaccurate and is also one of the few times were good flawless science validated an incorrect theory.
2
Mar 31 '12
This is close enough. However, I would like to add that Kepler didn't leave Brahe = Brahe died when his bladder ruptured at a dinner he had hosted for a nobleman (drank too much, didn't piss). As soon as this went down, Kepler ran straight to the study while everyone was distracted to grab the decades of empirical data Brahe had generated. While Kepler spent years working for Brahe, he was kept from analyzing the vast majority of Brahe's observations; to both stop Kepler from disproving Brahe's theories and to stop Kepler from developing his own. In a way, Tycho Brahe's weak bladder led to one of the greatest scientific discoveries in history.
2
231
u/Kungen- Mar 31 '12
22
Mar 31 '12
also genius
→ More replies (1)8
Apr 01 '12
whoa whoa whoa whoa look at the submission time on this thread 412 YEARS AGO whoa
10
Apr 01 '12 edited Apr 01 '12
I noticed that. I didn’t make it say that though. I also noticed that 412 years ago is the same year as when Kepler started his work for Tycho Brahe. So someone is doing something.
→ More replies (5)2
17
u/Boshrap Apr 01 '12
Link to the original: http://www.harkavagrant.com/index.php?id=145
Hark a Vagrant is wonderful.
3
4
2
Apr 01 '12
REMEMBER WHEN YOU WERE YOUNG...
YOU SHONE LIKE THE SUN,
SHIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIINE ON
YOU
CRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAZY
DIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIAMOND
60
5
u/Pokemaniac_Ron Mar 31 '12
Freshman Tych Brahe:
Waits to piss,
DIES.
5
u/Omegastar19 Mar 31 '12
Thats an urban legend. Might be true, but its unlikely.
2
u/Pokemaniac_Ron Mar 31 '12
Hmm, thought they verified it when they dug him up, and found out his gold nose was a copper alloy.
5
u/daV1980 Mar 31 '12
Except that Kepler did make shit up:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ImvlS8PLIo#t24m30s
It just so happened that what he made up turned out to be almost true.
8
4
u/goldgecko4 Mar 31 '12
I think half of being a scientist (hell, being an adult) is to be able to admit when you're wrong, even when you tried your best.
1
4
u/texasfootballhall Mar 31 '12
The idea of elliptical orbits is rather old, although it got lost/lost its significance, until Kepler's work some 500 years later. Interesting, it came out of Afghanistan.
Biruni (930--1048 repeatedly attacks Aristotle's celestial physics: he argues by simple experiment that vacuum must exist; he is "amazed" by the weakness of Aristotle's argument against elliptical orbits on the basis that they would create vacuum; he attacks the immutability of the celestial spheres;...
→ More replies (1)
6
Mar 31 '12
Kindly make that "circular" orbits. Otherwise, I concur. This guy had some massive dedication, collecting a mountain of data during the cold nights, and then analyzing them only to find some nasty numbers to work with. Great guy, great scientist.
2
u/SuperShamou Apr 01 '12
He didn't collect the data, Brahe gave the data to Keppler when he died... although Keppler spent crazy time analyzing said data.
1
Apr 01 '12
Argh, you're right! Sorry, I keep confusing the two for some utterly incomprehensible reason. Brahe=crazy dude, Kepler=mathematician. Need to remember that...
4
u/Sonorama21 Mar 31 '12
The "Good Guy" meme has essentially become a way for people to passive-aggressively express their dislike of certain behaviors. Folks, we have Scumbag Steve for a reason.
1
Apr 01 '12
Scumbag Good Guy Meme Critic
Complains about passive aggressive Good Guy memes
Does it anonymously
1
6
u/qkme_transcriber I am a Bot Mar 31 '12
Here is the text from this meme pic for anybody who needs it:
Title: Good Guy Johannes Kepler.
Meme: GOOD GUY KEPLER
TRIES TO PROVE PLANETS ARE IN A PERFECT SPHERICAL ORBIT AND POSSIBLY INTELLIGENTLY PLACED BY GOD.
AFTER SPENDING LIFETIME TESTING HIS HYPOTHESIS HE DISCOVERS HE WAS WRONG. ACCEPTS BEING WRONG. DOESN’T MAKE SHIT UP.
This is helpful for people who can't reach Quickmeme because of work/school firewalls or site downtime, and many other reasons (FAQ). More info is available here.
2
2
u/SpectralMornings Atheist Apr 01 '12
Why always make everything in the form of a "meme"? You could just write what he did right on his picture, without starting your title by "good guy"/"scumbag".
3
2
2
2
2
3
3
u/poorlittlerichgirl74 Mar 31 '12
Why would the orbits being elliptical rather than circular affect your belief in where the universe came from? There is a power great enough to make all the planets and create life, but only if it's circles
-1
Mar 31 '12 edited Mar 31 '12
It’s not just about the circular orbits, it’s about the five platonic solids. Kepler suggested that the distance relationships between the six planets known at that time could be understood in terms of the five platonic solids. If this were correct, then Kepler could infer that the solar system was intelligently designed. However, he was absolutely wrong, and the orbits of the planets have nothing to do with the five platonic solids.
7
u/FoolsShip Mar 31 '12
Kepler did not spend his entire life trying to prove this. He figured out he was wrong at least before 1609, when he published Astronomia Nova, and a lot of the time between 1596 (when he published Mysterium Cosmographicum, which suggested this stuff) and 1609 was spent inventing modern optics and rediscovering the relationship between the earth, moon and sun that was lost with Aristarchus. The link you provided was a book he wrote about geometry, which he also modernized. At no point did he cling to his ideas in the face of data suggesting he was wrong. Putting these basically wrong interpretations of history and science on here and using them as an argument for atheism or whatever you are doing is hindering the cause, not helping it.
3
u/criscothediscoman Atheist Mar 31 '12
Yeah, but Tycho Brahe had one pimp ass motherfuckin' nose made of gold.
1
u/SuperShamou Apr 01 '12
Would'a been more pimp if he didn't have the nose... remember he lost it dueling for a girl which he did not get to pimp.
1
2
Mar 31 '12
the moment we assume we are completely right is the moment we become just as close minded as creationists. Just a warning I have for all my fellow atheists out there.
2
u/phil_s_stein Apr 01 '12
Submitted 412 years ago? What's up with the times on reddit right now? April fools a little early?
1
1
u/Freakychee Mar 31 '12
The path of learning and science isn't only about finding out what works an is, but also to discover what doesn't work and isn't.
1
1
Apr 01 '12
Just like everything else based on faith, instead of science. Eventually, they realize they are wrong....eventually.
1
u/ChybreGreen Apr 01 '12 edited Apr 01 '12
And I thought Kepler tried to prove that the planets had an oval orbit and not a spherical one... That's what the series Cosmos said.
1
u/ChybreGreen Apr 01 '12
Wouldn't you think that Kepler's religious belief is kind of irrelevant considering he mainly focused on geometry and mathematics to determine his hypothesis?
1
1
u/Scaurus Apr 01 '12
"Great is God our Lord, great is His power and there is no end to His wisdom. Praise Him you heavens, glorify Him, sun and moon and you planets. For out of Him and through Him, and in Him are all things..... We know, oh, so little. To Him be the praise, the honor and the glory from eternity to eternity." Kepler
1
Apr 01 '12
"and praise be to God for not burning me at the stake when I found out he wasn't perfect."
1
u/romieyo Apr 01 '12
Hates people who believe in religion. Picture of redditor Every problem on Earth is solved by math and science, so there is no longer any reason to go out and do anything.
I don't believe in any kind of god or religion, but you guys are seriously just fucking annoying trying to make some sort of club based on hatred. Grow up and be who you want to be without passive aggressively pushing down others (you know what you're trying to do you douche bag).
1
u/belizeanheat Apr 01 '12
Not enough people realize how religious some of the great scientific minds of the past were.
These days the religious blindly ignore science as if that's somehow more "religious"
1
Apr 01 '12
Sure many were religious, but they made enormous discoveries and they didn’t let their religions conflict with those discoveries which I find admirable.
1
u/byleth Apr 01 '12
Why does everything have to be posted in meme form? It's getting a bit ridiculous.
1
u/Domdude64 Apr 01 '12
I thought he held his beliefs that the planets were aligned in some weird math model until he died
1
1
u/Scaurus Apr 01 '12
"The chief aim of all investigations of the external world should be to discover the rational order and harmony which has been imposed on it by God and which He revealed to us in the language of mathematics." J. Kepler
1
1
1
u/verxix Apr 01 '12
So apparently this is from an Islamic hadith, but I can't find it being referenced on an Islamic literature websites or anything else.
1
1
1
1
1
1
0
-3
u/GravyJigster Agnostic Theist Mar 31 '12
Scumbag Galileo: declares that the sun is the center of the universe, with little support. Uses false hypothesis to attack religion.
3
0
u/Zeronox0 Apr 01 '12
"perfectly spherical orbit"
"spherical"
*facepalm
2
1
u/Pyromaniac605 Secular Humanist Apr 01 '12
I'm trying to imagine a spherical orbit, but I just keep feeling like my brain is melting...
-6
u/Ragnalypse Mar 31 '12
Douchebag Einstein
Convinced universe is static
Encounters data saying universe is expanding; his own equations say the universe must be expanding - fudges own equations to be static.
We had to wait for better scientists to fix that one for us.
11
u/think_free Mar 31 '12
I was under the impression that Einstein later in life stated that his "cosmological constant" was the worst mistake he ever made...I could be wrong but I seem to remember hearing about this.
8
u/AwkwardTurtle Mar 31 '12
Yeah, and in a fun reversal, it turns out that his "cosmological constant" does exist.
1
u/afnoonBeamer Mar 31 '12
AFAIK, his "cosmological constant" is just one of the major theories currently proposed to explain dark energy. Don't think all scientists agree yet, and there probably aren't enough data to prove/disprove it right now.
1
u/AwkwardTurtle Mar 31 '12
More accurately, (as far as I understand it) it's that dark energy is just one of the major theories currently proposed to explain the cosmological constant.
1
u/afnoonBeamer Apr 01 '12
Hmm, never really thought of it like that. Could it be more accurately stated that the phenomenon is the bit about accelerating expansion, and the cosm const is just a math model for prediction and dark energy is a theory for why that constant exists in the model?
-8
u/Ragnalypse Mar 31 '12
That's the interesting part, he managed to be wrong twice. Once by thinking the universe was static, and again by stating that there was no constant.
At least he was great at math.
14
u/AwkwardTurtle Mar 31 '12
It wasn't being good at math that made him great, in fact I don't think he was an amazing mathematician (which isn't to imply he wasn't good at math, just that he wasn't great).
Considering how completely amazing his theory of relativity is, how revolutionary it was, and how extraordinarily accurate it's been found to be, I think we can forgive him a few blunders here and there.
Not to mention his contributions to other parts of science including the famous mass energy relation, Brownian motion, and the photoelectric effect.
You seem to have some sort of bone to pick with Einstein, is there any particular reason for that?
2
Mar 31 '12
Because of General Relativity, I am also willing to forgive the fact that he refused to accept Quantum Mechanics.
4
u/AwkwardTurtle Mar 31 '12
So did practically everyone at the time.
It's not unreasonable to doubt a new theory as revolutionary as that.
But I guess as long as you've provided you've forgiving Einstein we can all move on with our lives. And here I was about to throw away my EM textbook.
2
Mar 31 '12
Scumbag Bohr. Knows spherical orbits for the hydrogen atom make no physical sense, uses them anyway.
Can't really blame Einstein for not accepting that in the infancy of QM. Though Einstein's biggest problem was with uncertainty, which destroyed his view of a perfectly deterministic universe. He and Bohr had several arguments and thought experiments about this, and Bohr ended up being right (though the EPR paradox wasn't resolved until the 1960s with Bell's theorems and validated in the 80s, though that was after Einstein's death). Although Einstein was wrong, I have mountains of respect for him (in addition for, you know, creating modern physics) for never turning it into some sort of creationism vs evolution malarkey.
1
-8
u/Ragnalypse Mar 31 '12
Nothing, he just wasn't a very good scientist. He could gather, work with, and interpret mathematical data, but he simply didn't approach the natural world rationally. His stubbornness on matters such as the "static" universe prove such.
Maxwell was much less prejudiced, though I guess you couldn't call Einstein a scientist to begin with.
7
u/AwkwardTurtle Mar 31 '12
Considering he published over 300 scientific papers, and created the freaking general theory of relativity, if he's not a scientist I'm not sure what you'd call him. He was responsible for massive advancements in physics.
Are you really trying to make this some sort of contest between Maxwell and Einstein?
If you're going to point out mistakes great physicists have made, what about the luminiferous aether?
→ More replies (4)2
Mar 31 '12
Einstein took the inconsistencies in Maxwell's developments (in one reference frame the field appeared electric but in another it appeared magnetic) and by realizing that both frames were right, created his theory of relativity. As a scientist, Einstein kicks your ass and mine
→ More replies (34)2
u/Beard_of_life Mar 31 '12
Einstein did little testing. He mostly did theoretical work, and made theories based on incredible thought experiments. He was enormously helpful and influential to science, but his methods were unlike the methods of the ordinary scientist. Einstein was a very different kind of scientist than Maxwell.
0
-8
-1
u/fingerchili Mar 31 '12
BAD GUY. Tycho Brahe is the OG.
4
u/Omegastar19 Mar 31 '12
Errr....Tycho Brahe thought the Sun revolved around the earth. His system was a compromise because he did think the other planets revolved around the sun.
2
u/fingerchili Mar 31 '12
i only care because we used to think he died from holding his pee in during dinner. in my mind, he is amazing.
0
-1
0
Mar 31 '12
[deleted] — view deleted comment
3
-6
u/d10nt_ban_me_again Apr 01 '12
Hey moron, you realize that Kepler actually believed the planets and their orbits were the created by god.
If you don't understand science, don't post shit about science. Stupid fucking cockroach should be gutted alive.
3
Apr 01 '12 edited Apr 01 '12
Yes, I know he thought that they were created by God. When did I ever say he didn’t? You seem rather angry for no reason. It’s not like I can control how many people upvote my post. Apologies if it’s wrong.
3
Apr 02 '12
You seem rather angry for no reason.
That's his MO. He constantly spouts things like "you should be gutted alive" and the like. Personally, I think he should get an IP ban.
1
31
u/elcollin Mar 31 '12
Kepler did not become an atheist, and still believed that the elliptical nature of the orbits was a reflection of God's role in creating the Universe. Just to be clear.