Maybe you don’t already know the story of Urbain Le Verrier. He was a french astronomer of the second half of the XIX°. This is the guy who, only using mathematics and reasoning, predicted the existence of a planet he never directly saw. Just by using celestial mechanics and data he found out some discrepancies in the orbit of planets. The only fitting explanation was the existence of a yet undiscovered planet. It was Neptune. He sent a letter to a fellow German astronomer and asked him if he could check whether or not his theory was correct. He was spot on. Johann Gottfried Galle found Neptune right where it was supposed to be (with 1° of accuracy). He was the first human to see Neptune using the telescope of the Berlin observatory, and the theoretical predictions of Le Verrier. Quite a wonderful story in itself isn’t it ? But the most interesting thing about Le Verrier is about what he was
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Relativity, Truth and Social Media
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Maybe you don’t already know the story of Urbain Le Verrier. He was a french astronomer of the second half of the XIX°. This is the guy who, only using mathematics and reasoning, predicted the existence of a planet he never directly saw. Just by using celestial mechanics and data he found out some discrepancies in the orbit of planets. The only fitting explanation was the existence of a yet undiscovered planet. It was Neptune. He sent a letter to a fellow German astronomer and asked him if he could check whether or not his theory was correct. He was spot on. Johann Gottfried Galle found Neptune right where it was supposed to be (with 1° of accuracy). He was the first human to see Neptune using the telescope of the Berlin observatory, and the theoretical predictions of Le Verrier. Quite a wonderful story in itself isn’t it ? But the most interesting thing about Le Verrier is about what he was