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KF5JRV > TODAY 27.04.19 12:22l 48 Lines 2504 Bytes #999 (0) @ WW
BID : 35303_KF5JRV
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Subj: Today in History - Apr 27
Path: IW8PGT<IR2UBX<F1OYP<ON0AR<VE2PKT<N3HYM<KF5JRV
Sent: 190427/1115Z 35303@KF5JRV.#NWAR.AR.USA.NA BPQ6.0.18
On this day in 4977 B.C., the universe is created, according to German
mathematician and astronomer Johannes Kepler, considered a founder of
modern science. Kepler is best known for his theories explaining the
motion of planets.
Kepler was born on December 27, 1571, in Weil der Stadt, Germany. As a
university student, he studied the Polish astronomer Nicolaus
Copernicus’ theories of planetary ordering. Copernicus (1473-1543)
believed that the sun, not the earth, was the center of the solar
system, a theory that contradicted the prevailing view of the era that
the sun revolved around the earth.
In 1600, Kepler went to Prague to work for Danish astronomer Tycho
Brahe, the imperial mathematician to Rudolf II, emperor of the Holy
Roman Empire. Kepler’s main project was to investigate the orbit of
Mars. When Brahe died the following year, Kepler took over his job and
inherited Brahe’s extensive collection of astronomy data, which had been
painstakingly observed by the naked eye. Over the next decade, Kepler
learned about the work of Italian physicist and astronomer Galileo
Galilei (1564-1642), who had invented a telescope with which he
discovered lunar mountains and craters, the largest four satellites of
Jupiter and the phases of Venus, among other things. Kepler corresponded
with Galileo and eventually obtained a telescope of his own and improved
upon the design. In 1609, Kepler published the first two of his three
laws of planetary motion, which held that planets move around the sun in
ellipses, not circles (as had been widely believed up to that time), and
that planets speed up as they approach the sun and slow down as they
move away. In 1619, he produced his third law, which used mathematic
principles to relate the time a planet takes to orbit the sun to the
average distance of the planet from the sun.
Kepler’s research was slow to gain widespread traction during his
lifetime, but it later served as a key influence on the English
mathematician Sir Isaac Newton (1643-1727) and his law of gravitational
force. Additionally, Kepler did important work in the fields of optics,
including demonstrating how the human eye works, and math. He died on
November 15, 1630, in Regensberg, Germany. As for Kepler’s calculation
about the universe’s birthday, scientists in the 20th century developed
the Big Bang theory, which showed that his calculations were off by
about 13.7 billion years.
73 de Scott KF5JRV
Pmail: KF5JRV@KF5JRV.#NWAR.AR.USA.NA
email: KF5JRV@GMAIL.COM
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