How the Bizarre Path of Mars Reshaped Astronomy [Kepler's Laws Part 1]

Special thanks to the Patrons:*
Juan Benet, Ross Hanson, Yan Babitski, AJ Englehardt, Alvin Khaled, Eduardo Barraza, Hitoshi Yamauchi, Jaewon Jung, Mrgoodlight, Shinichi Hayashi, Sid Sarasvati, Dominic Beaumont, Shannon Prater, Ubiquity Ventures

Welch Labs

References
On the Shoulders of Giants: The Great Works of Physics and Astronomy. (2003). Kiribati: Penguin.
Koestler, A. (2017). The Sleepwalkers: A History of Man's Changing Vision of the Universe. United Kingdom: Penguin Books Limited.
The Cambridge Concise History of Astronomy. (1999). United Kingdom: Cambridge University Press.
Mazer, A. (2011). Shifting the Earth: The Mathematical Quest to Understand the Motion of the Universe. Germany: Wiley.
Voelkel, J. R. (2021). The Composition of Kepler's Astronomia Nova. United Kingdom: Princeton University Press.
Kepler, J. (2015). Astronomia Nova. United States: Green Lion Press.
Stephenson, B. (2012). Kepler’s Physical Astronomy. Switzerland: Springer New York.
Brahe, T., Dreyer, J. L. E. (1972). Tychonis Brahe Dani Opera omnia. Netherlands: Swets & Zeitlinger.

[enque]

When you said "you'll have to wait until next episode for that" i was like I can't wait!"

[andersjjensen]

Kepler's quote about his own work is right up there with Sir Isaac Newtons famous "This theory takes for granted a force that works instantly across infinite distances. Only a madman would belive such a thing" criticism of his own model of gravity that stood for 200 years before Einstein expanded it.

(EDIT: Some twat found a typo 6 months later.)

[Spark_Books]

Nobody has ever explained Kepler's discovery process in this much detail ever before. All textbooks and videos just gloss over it and skip to the final result. Thank you for this wonderful work :)

[Maxflayr]

So basically, Kepler performed a manual gradient descent to find the right parameters for his model, lol.

[josepereira]

Johannes Kepler is my favorite machine learning algorithm.

[EloSportsTalk]

Kepler BRUTE FORCING his Mars calculations is kinda badass

[timoooo]

I find it astonishing that Kepler came up with the laws of planetary motions BEFORE the invention/discovery of calculus 🙌🙌🙌

[Thepineapplemonk]

This is so cool! The idea of doing all this by hand without any digital instrumentation or computation is incredible.

[frankmalenfant]

I named my cat Kepler. He thinks my life revolves around him.

[ShieldAre]

Small mistake at 11:40: The years for Ibn al-Shatir should be AD, not BC.

Excellent video, a very interesting explanation of the sort of measurements and reasoning that (I assume, discussed in the next video) ultimately led Kepler to arrive at the important missing conclusion from Copernicus' heliocentric model: The orbits of the planets are slightly elliptical, not perfectly circular. But I hadn't ever even heard about equant, and it surprises me, because of how close it gets to the idea of elliptical orbits.

[ЕгорБайченко-уш]

The question is why Moon was neglected in favor of planets. Distance to the Moon can be measured accurately both in relative and absolute terms by triangulation and apparent angular size and it completes twenty times as many revolutions than Mars thus accumulating observation data much more rapidly

[dominicestebanrice]

This is jaw-dropping good content; a masterpiece in the form. I've never seen such a complete yet concise exposition. And the integrated graphics are top-tier.

[FireRaptor]

Whenever I searched for an explanation of the Kepler's laws I always found an explanation using the Newton's laws. I've always wanted to know how Kepler actually discovered his laws before differential calculus and Newton laws were invented. Thank you very much.

[jefflormans]

Superb production values. The use of clipped photos and quotes on 'aged' paper was stunning. Simple, easy, but unique and stunning. It amazes me how brilliant people like Kepler and Newton actually were. You tend to read about their achievements without realizing what they really involved. Thanks for doing this.

[TazariaGaming]

I love the story from how we went from our ancient understanding of the planets to our current model of the Solar system. It spans thousands of years and so many brilliant minds. There is something beautiful about retracing those steps and watching our understanding of the universe evolve over time. Thank you for covering it! Very excited for the next video

[Pherecydes]

The most important and incredible part of the Kepler story is that he had the wherewithal to scrutinize his original model, and after continuing to collect data, decided that his original model was mistaken and that a new model fit better. Today, the Platonic solid model would become accepted as "fact", hailed as "the most accurate and precise model of the solar system we've ever created", and scientific journals would all refuse to publish anyone else's alternative theory.

[KP]

Outstanding work! I love the vibe of these old-timey book illustrations. Kepler's crazy 3d frame looking thing MC Escher drawing belongs on a psychedelic rock album cover

[jmrm]

I've read short histories of Astronomy several times. They all leave out, "Then Keplar stole a dead man's data..."

But they did manage to mention that Tycho Brahe lost part of his nose in a sword duel, and wore a prosthetic replacement.

[jonr]

7:40 That right there is the money shot. The sublime animation graphics & explanation are the USP of this channel.

Told me stuff I never knew (but which random dudes in C16 had figured out), and has the grace to actually break the complex geometry down to a level I can grasp.

Should be mandatory in every school.

[BruceKoerner]

Wrong kind of vein. It should be "Don't let me die in vain."