Nine Rebel Astronomy Theories That Went Dark
T he history of astronomy has hinged on radical ideas that transformed our understanding of the cosmos and our place in it. The most obvious of these may be the discovery in the 16th century that the Earth and other planets orbit the sun. An unpopular idea when it was first proposed, today it is so fundamental to basic astronomy it is practically taken for granted. But our most brilliant scientists have also floated some wild ideas that were not only unpopular at the time—they also turned out to be incredibly wrong. Some of these wrong ideas led to other important discoveries, however, that were very right. Here are a few of astronomy’s fallen angels for your enjoyment.
The pioneering 16th-century German astronomer Johannes Kepler proposed in his book Mysterium Cosmographicum, published in 1596, that the gaps between the planets could be explained in terms of the five “Platonic” solids: These were “regular” polyhedrons with four, six, eight, 12, and 20 faces that Plato hypothesized could describe the shapes of all of the elements on Earth. According to Kepler’s theory, the planets’ orbits were dictated by these five different shapes: The orbit of Venus, for example, fit within a 20-sided icosahedron, the orbit of the Earth fit within a 12-faced dodecahedron, the orbit of Mars within a 4-faced tetrahedron, and so on. This scheme produced six layers, each nested inside the other, which Kepler claimed corresponded to the orbits of the six known planets at the time.
Later observations showed his proposal was entirely wrong, but the idea brought Kepler to the attention of the Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe. Tycho was then working in Prague for the Holy Roman Emperor and invited Kepler to become his assistant. When Tycho died about 18 months later, Kepler became his successor as Imperial Mathematician. The appointment gave Kepler access to Tycho’s observations, which he eventually used to formulate his laws of planetary motion.
