Kepler, Newton, and Einstein: “Wrong” Theories and the Progress of Science
Note: This event was moved from Friday, June 6 to Thursday, June 12, due to technical problems with the SL grid.
You’re invited to a the next edition of Dr. Knop Talks Astronomy! Here are the timespace coordinates; details follow the portrait of Newton:
When: 10:00 AM PDT (SL Time) on Thursday, June 12
Where: The Galaxy Dome floating above the sim named “Spaceport Bravo”
SLURL: http://slurl.com/secondlife/Spaceport%20Bravo/117/66/278
Link in the Official SL Events Calendar
Isaac Newton
Kepler’s laws gave us a beautiful and powerfully predictive description of the Solar System: planets orbiting in ellipses with the Sun at its center. Newton’s Universal Theory of Gravity gave us the physics that explained Kepler’s laws but also showed that they weren’t perfect. Centuries later, Einstein’s General Relativity gave us our modern picture of gravity, showing that Newton’s gravity isn’t quite right. Science progresses by overthrowing old theories and showing that they are wrong… only, very often, the term “wrong” is over-simplistic, hiding subtleties in how science really progresses.
All are welcome. Feel free to ask questions or make comments.
This talk is part of a series of popular talks happening on the first Friday of each month, called Dr. Knop Talks Astronomy. Dr. Knop was on one of the teams that discovered the accelerating expansion of the universe.
Produced in association with the Meta Institute for Computational Astrophysics (MICA). For more information, see the MICA website.
