So I'm almost done with my dark matter class and we're learning about quintessence which hurts even my creative head. Then Dr. Carroll told a story about the first dark matter discovery.
Back in 1618 Johannes Kepler came up with the third law of planetary motion (has to do with how planets orbit the sun and calculating their orbits). His calculations worked really well until he got to Uranus. Something was off with the orbit. So he surmised that there was another planet that couldn't be seen (i.e. dark matter - that's all dark matter is, something we know is there but can't see) with the telescope technology of the time that was fucking up Uranus' orbit. Not only was he right, he even was able to precisely (well, as precise as space can be) predict where it was.
Cool story and interesting when thinking about dark matter!
BTW, astronomy and astrology were not separate disciplines at that time so Kepler was called on to provide astrological advice to the emperor of Prague. And Kepler's mother, Katarina, was accused of being a witch after a dispute with Kepler's brother and some stupid cunt over money (cunt said Katarina made her sick with a witch's brew). Katarina was imprisoned for 14 months even though there was no evidence against her. During that time Kepler was working on his "harmonic theory", which explains the harmonic shape of things in our universe in terms of music. He thought the uniformity in nature was caused by musical tones of objects in space as they interacted with human souls. But that's how he discovered the third law of planetary motion, so maybe creative people aren't so insane.
Kepler died in 1630. He wrote his own epitaph:
- Mensus eram coelos, nunc terrae metior umbras
- Mens coelestis erat, corporis umbra iacet.
- I measured the skies, now the shadows I measure
- Skybound was the mind, earthbound the body rests
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