Personal...: August 2009

No.10 - Round Earth
This is an idea that is fully accepted by most people, but it was not always held with such certainty. While it is a misconception to think that most people believed in a flat earth well into the early modern period, it was certainly a commonly held belief in early Chinese thought, and it was not until the great Greek mathematicians that Europeans started to accept the spherical earth theory. Pythagoras is the man most commonly associated with the idea, but it was really only in the Renaissance, and the beginning of voyages that circumnavigated the earth, that his ideas became proved beyond all doubt.

No.9 - Perturbation theory and the existence of Neptune
Sir Isaac Newton’s laws on gravity allowed him to calculate the orbital paths of the planets of our solar system. We won’t try to explain the math; it's way over our heads, but when Newton’s theory was tested, the orbit for Uranus was inaccurate. It was proposed in 1843 that an invisible planet was causing this disturbance -- or perturbation -- of Uranus’s orbit. Only in 1846 was Neptune finally recognized, within one degree of the mathematical predictions for its location. To suggest an extra planet which no one had ever noticed before may have seemed far-fetched, but turned out to be remarkably precise.

No.8 - Comets being a celestial phenomenon
For centuries, comets were seen as dire predictions of things to come. Halley’s Comet appeared before the Battle of Hastings in 1066. But what they actually were was again the work of Aristotle, who suggested that they were spontaneous combustions of gas in the upper atmosphere. While this view was popular among many, the Roman writer Seneca the Younger was the first to challenge this view, suggesting that they were a celestial phenomenon. It was Tycho Brahe, the preeminent observational astronomer, who proved that they must in fact exist way beyond the moon, in space.

No.7 - The expanding universe
The size of the universe is one question that, as of yet, has no answer. It was suggested by no less a figure than Albert Einstein that the universe was of fixed dimensions, and became known as the Cosmological Constant. In 1929, a man named Edwin Hubble (you may have heard of him) observed that the universe was expanding, due to the fact that objects moving away from earth appeared in the red part of the electromagnetic spectrum. Hubble’s Law, as it became known, transformed the perception of the universe as being static, and blew the question of its size wide open.

No.6 - Atoms
The word atom derives from a Greek term meaning something that cannot be divided, and therefore reckoned to be the smallest particle possible. It was undoubtedly strange, going against the widely accepted notion that all things were made up of the four elements -- earth, wind, water, and fire. The likes of Leucippus and Democritus held that all things had the same building blocks, which were simply rearranged to form different objects. While it took centuries for the scientific community to prove the idea, it is now a cornerstone of scientific thought.

No.5 - Quarks
If the idea of an atom seemed crazy -- being so minute it was undetectable for centuries -- imagine how it would seem to then talk about an even smaller, subatomic particle. Described as an “elementary particle,” quarks are believed to be constituent parts of atomic particles (i.e., protons, neutrons and electrons). When the idea was introduced in the 1960s, it was seen by some as merely an abstract concept to help explain things we didn’t understand. Over the following decade, further research and mounting evidence supported the quark model, finally convincing people of its validity.

No.4 - Tycho Brahe and the "stella nova"
Since antiquity, men believed that the universe beyond the moon was fixed and unchangeable (a theory known as celestial immutability). In 1572, a very bright star suddenly appeared in the sky. Because of this notion of celestial immutability, it was believed by many observers to be something happening in the atmosphere, or somewhere between the earth and the moon. Tycho Brahe went against the accepted wisdom of his age, believing it to be a new star. We now know that what he witnessed was a supernova, and his assertion that the universe was in fact mutable is now beyond doubt.

No.3 - Black holes
Imagine being the first person to hear the idea that in space there were these objects that were so dense and had such a strong gravitational pull, that nothing could escape from them, not even light. The idea was first proposed in 1783, by a geologist no less, which made it seem even less plausible. Over the years, the mathematics gradually reached a point where the idea of black holes is widely accepted. Astronomical observation has also added weight to the argument, with phenomena such as gravitational lensing and gamma ray bursts seeming to indicate their presence.

No.2 - Heloicentric solar system
Narrowly missing out on the top spot, the idea that the earth revolved around the sun, rather than vice versa, was one of the most controversial astronomical theories ever. First espoused by Nicolas Copernicus, who knew how controversial the idea was, it was echoed by Galileo Galilei, who spent 10 years under house arrest because of his beliefs. Seen as heretical and “contrary to scripture” the heliocentric solar system went against the geocentric view that held sway at the time. Only in the 18th century were texts in support of heliocentricism finally removed from the church list of banned books.

No.1 - The Big Bang
Appropriately, the biggest question of all, the birth of the universe, claims the top spot. No one knows for certain how the universe started, but this theory built upon the expanding universe idea, which suggested that at some point everything was much closer together. It is now supported by the majority of scientists, and there is a huge body of evidence to support it.

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