How 5 Minutes Overthrew Newton's Reality
Rational Thinker
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Support me on Patreon: patreon.com/RationalThinker
For over two centuries, Newton’s law of gravity accurately predicted the motions of all the planets in the solar system. But that all changed in 1859, when French astronomer Urbain Le Verrier discovered a strange anomaly regarding mercury’s orbit. This led to a problem in Newton's reality that didn't have an answer until Albert Einstein proposed General Relativity in 1915. Einstein accurately modeled Mercury's orbit with GR, but it wasn't enough for his theory to be accepted as fact. He needed to predict a testable anomaly that had been previously unobserved, and one of his predictions was light bending around the Sun. In 1919, that prediction was put to the test, and what was found would make Einstein a worldwide celebrity practically overnight.
Keywords: Scientific Discovery, History of Physics, Experimental Bias
20 Comments
Yet another well researched and presented video. As always, you have presented things with a new perspective and told me things that I didn't know.
Experimental bias is difficult to erase, even if people want to do so. Complex phenomena usually can't be described in one fell swoop, but more in little steps in the right direction. For example, Niels Bohr's model worked well for describing the energy levels in hydrogen, but not a lot else. Usually assumptions have to be made to allow progress. To some extent it is down to self belief that any assumptions made do not introduce any biases that would prove to negate an hypothesis, in the end.
As far as I'm aware, Ptolemy never said that his earth-centric system was THE answer, but it was AN answer. That answer was good enough for everybody else for centuries, so progress effectively halted.
To think that their measurements were so precise back then that this wasn't chalked up to a margin of error is crazy to me.
How 5 Minutes Overthrew Newton's Reality
Rational Thinker
27,744 views
Support me on Patreon: patreon.com/RationalThinker
For over two centuries, Newton’s law of gravity accurately predicted the motions of all the planets in the solar system. But that all changed in 1859, when French astronomer Urbain Le Verrier discovered a strange anomaly regarding mercury’s orbit. This led to a problem in Newton's reality that didn't have an answer until Albert Einstein proposed General Relativity in 1915. Einstein accurately modeled Mercury's orbit with GR, but it wasn't enough for his theory to be accepted as fact. He needed to predict a testable anomaly that had been previously unobserved, and one of his predictions was light bending around the Sun. In 1919, that prediction was put to the test, and what was found would make Einstein a worldwide celebrity practically overnight.
Keywords: Scientific Discovery, History of Physics, Experimental Bias