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Re: [Phys-l] Galileo was wrong



Longair doesn't mention whether the Vatican was supposed to get it, but he states that Tycho charged Kepler with the task of completing the Rudolphine Tables (named after Rudolph II) which would replace the Prutenic navigational tables, which Kepler did in 1627. The idea that Kepler "ran off with" the data seems speculative to me since he actually completed the task.

Tycho's original intent seemed to be to reduce the uncertainties in the astronomical data by eliminating (as much as technologically possible) the systematic error. He corrected for atmospheric refraction and for gravitational "sag" in horizontal instruments. He documented uncertainties to get a grasp of random error, and his data ended up with error bars of around 2 arc-minutes, about 1/10 of previous data. He also developed his own cosmology, a hybrid of Ptolemy and Copernicus, and he wanted Kepler to analyze the Mars data in support of his "Tychonic" model. Kepler was thoroughly Copernican when he started his work on Tycho's data. Tycho's cosmology would have failed miserably in view of Newtonian gravity. It also failed to explain the high precision data that Tycho had acquired; his own data was the downfall of his model.

-----Original Message-----
From: phys-l-bounces@carnot.physics.buffalo.edu [mailto:phys-l-bounces@carnot.physics.buffalo.edu] On Behalf Of John Clement
Sent: Wednesday, September 22, 2010 3:56 PM
To: 'Forum for Physics Educators'
Subject: Re: [Phys-l] Galileo was wrong

This is certainly in agreement with the Wikipedia. But I remember reading
somewhere that the Pope was interested in his project because it would
improve astronomical tables needed for navigation. And I also recall that
the data was supposed to eventually go the Vatican, but Kepler ran off with
it. This may have come out of one of the Harvard Project Physics readers,
which had both physicists and historians working together. Since Tycho had
a Holy Roman Emperor at Prague as his patron in later years, he was
certainly somewhat under the thumb of the Catholic church. So there may
have been some promises made to wring concessions. Being a wealthy man, he
could afford to go and do where he pleased, while making concessions on
paper.

John M. Clement
Houston, TX


My understanding is that Brahe was actually trying to find good data that
would verify the Ptolemaic system (or more accurately his and/or latter
day versions of that system.)


I think this was an ambiguous antecedent. Kepler was outside, but
Galileo
inside. As I understood Brahe actually was doing his observations with
the
support of the Pope, but Kepler ran off with his notebooks after Brahe's
death.



I find it hard to think of Galileo as being outside the influence of
the Catholic Church. He seems like a pretty go insider to me.

He needed some sort of circular inertia to explain the continue
motion of the planets. Just a guess, perhaps he appealed to the
ideal circular motion as why they continued.



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