Lecture 13: The Harmony of the Spheres - Gree...

In 1543, Nicolaus Copernicus revived Aristarchus' Heliocentric System in an attempt to rid Ptolemy's geocentric system of the un-Aristotelian idea of the Equant. He desired to create a model of the planets that would please the mind as well as preserving appearances. Rather than ...  Show more

Because my voice recorder malfunctioned 15 minutes into my Lecture on Copernicus on 2007 October 9, I've added this recording of my Copernicus lecture from Autumn Quarter 2006. It is the same basic material, but since I generally improvise on a basic outline, there will be some d ...  Show more

There was a time when science and religion worked in harmony, as two parts of a celestial design. Astrologer and philosopher Johannes Kepler oversaw this marriage of theory and belief when he proposed the revolutionary laws of planetary motion in the early 17th century. Amidst pe ...  Show more

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the flow of particles from the outer region of the Sun which we observe in the Northern and Southern Lights, interacting with Earth's magnetosphere, and in comet tails that stream away from the Sun regardless of their own direction. One way of defi ...  Show more

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the pioneering Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe (1546 – 1601) whose charts offered an unprecedented level of accuracy.In 1572 Brahe's observations of a new star challenged the idea, inherited from Aristotle, that the heavens were unchanging. He went o ...  Show more

The sun is out, the weather is warm, and summer school is in session! Neil deGrasse Tyson, co-host Matt Kirshen, and astrophysicist Charles Liu answer fan-submitted questions on mathematics, the Big Bang, the laws of physics, neutrinos, relativity, Pluto, the smell of the Milk ...