The Long, Sad Road Trip of Johannes Kelper

For a curious person, there is nothing so exciting as to confront the unknown. You tilt your head, squint very hard, and with a rush of epiphany it all makes sense-- until suddenly it doesn't. By the time you've figured it all out, you've given half your life to the problem, travelled over most of a continent, and seriously annoyed your wife.

Near the dawn of the 17th century, the night's sky was a mystery partially-solved. Some heavenly bodies, like the stars and the moon, moved in regular annual or monthly patterns that, given sufficient observation time, you could work out with pen and paper-- or giant stone circles if megaliths are your thing.

Planets were another matter entirely. They seemed to dart this way and that over the course of time. These paths were so odd, in fact, that it seemed deliberately obtuse. It was hard not to take it all personally, as if some Prime Mover was doing all this intentionally to taunt these nascent astronomers who had learned so much about the inky enigma of the night's sky.

Planets

The term "planet" is based on a Greek word meaning wanderer- as in, where is this thing even going?

"I got this!"

- JK

Kelper thought he had it all figured out. Math!

But in the summer of 1595, a math teacher named Johanes Kepler came to believe that he had it all figured out. He was in no way intimidated by the doubt sewed by these confusing patterns. Doubt and confusion were anathema to him. Kepler was a deeply religious man with a keen understanding of a universe in which every thing had a place, and for every place a thing.

If he were a Marvel super hero, his super power would have been certainty.

He would solve the age's most vexing scientific conundrum, and he'd do it with his old pal geometry. He based his theory on the concept of perfect shapes: cubes, tetrahedrons and such. Perfect forms for a perfect cosmos created, he believed, by a perfect being.

The only thing he lacked was observational data to prove his revolutionary (apologies for the pun) idea. As a theorist, he didn't have his own charts for reference. The published charts didn't match his predictions, so (of course) they had to be mistaken. This required new data, but that could be easily resolved. All he needed was a set of observations to confirm what he already knew. It would work. It had to.

That opportunity would present itself in early 1600. Kepler received an invitation to visit astronomer Tycho Brahe at his new observatory in Prague. The duo formed the 17th century's very own odd couple: the sci fi nerd and the hart-partying Danish rock star.

Kepler was, indeed, a sci fi nerd. He wrote Somnium, a story about what astronomy might be like from the perspective of another planet, widely credited as the first work of science fiction. Somehow, the fact that it remained unpublished until his death lends the work even more hardcore sci fi cred.

Brahe, on the other hand, lived the life of what can only be described as "the world's most baller astronomer."

Three decades earlier, Brahe lost his nose in a duel-- not over a woman, mind you, but over a mathematical formula. As a result he wore a copper one with the kind of confidence that says "no, this is not weird at all."

In short, Brahe lived, loved, and partied like a post-Rennaissance Danish nobleman. At the same time, he managed to compile a treasure trove of astronomical observations.

Also, just to set the scene, Brahe had a pet moose roaming around.

As you might imagine, none of this sat well with Kepler, but he had to find a way to get his greedy mits on that sweet, sweet data. The two entered into negotiations for employment, but something always got in the way.

This could have been due to their wildly diverging personalities, though it's possible that other factors (i.e. protestantism falling in and out of fashion in western europe during this period and, as a result, being chased from one town to the next by angry mobs) may have played a role as well.

Then, in the fall of 1601, Brahe did the rudest possible thing. He died.

In a rare stroke of good luck for Kepler, he took over for Brahe as the imperial mathematician. Excited at the prospect of finally getting quality time with his beloved data, Kepler shouted "ah-ooo-gah!" as his tongue rolled out onto the floor like a cartoon wolf, though there are no extant eyewitness accounts to support this description.

He ran the numbers nervously. He had dragged his wife and children across Europe for this. It had to be right.

It's hard to overestimate the professional, personal and spiritual crisis Kepler experienced in that moment. Everything. Years of work. Worthless.

His wife Barbara remained unamused by all of this, probably sighing in the way people do when your antics have exhausted them beyond the point of being able to articulate anything resembling a protest.

"I told you we never should have left Graz!"

- Barb

elipses

Kepler never gave up on his notion of perfect solids in spite of repeatedly failing to discover a way to make this idea fit the data (because he couldn't) (because it was wrong), though he did manage to come up with something amazing, the real reason you know his name today.

This mind-blowing revelation came to him, the way such moments of pure intuition often do, after months of failure and desperate fiddling. Then suddenly, there it was: "elipses, man. Elipses."

In other words, planetary orbits are not circles as previously believed, but ovate paths in which speeds vary.

“The square of the orbital period of a planet is directly proportional to the cube of the semi-major axis of its orbit. (mic drop)”

Kepler managed to perfectly describe the movement of the planets decades before early physicists like Isaac Newton would use the concept of gravity to do more or less the same thing. Kepler did it with geometry, of course, which is somehow more impressive.

Math touchdowns all round.

These three laws of planetary motion formed the foundation of our understanding of orbital mechanics and, eventually, rocket science.

Today, Kepler's name is plastered on observatories, space telescopes, and academic buildings all over the world- and for good reason.

Time after time, Kepler found himself knocked down by religious & political persecution, personality conflicts, and his own misaprehensions, and each time he found the wherewithal to get back up again.

Brahe may have been the "world's most baller" astronomer, but Kepler was almost certainly the most Chumba Wumba.

Sources:

Wikipedia Contributors. "Johannes Kepler." Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia

Wikipedia Contributors. "Tycho Brahe." Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia

Sagan, Carl. Cosmos. New York: Ballantine Books, 1985. Print.

Note: Some of the segments were based on a sketch I wrote for the podcast Machine Court in 2013.

Image Credits:

Portrait of Tycho Brahe by Eduard Ender

Engraving of Johannes Kepler by C. Barth, 1859

Kepler Telescope rendering and various space images from NASA