In 1543, Nicolaus Copernicus revived Aristarchus' Heliocentric System in
an attempt to rid Ptolemy's geocentric system of the un-Aristotelian
idea of the Equant. He desired to create a model of the planets that
would please the mind as well as preserving appearances. Rather than
reinstate the ideal of the Aristotelian World View, he was to set the
stage fo ... Show More
Oct 2007
Lecture 14b: Copernicus from Au2006
Because my voice recorder malfunctioned 15 minutes into my Lecture on Copernicus on 2007 October 9, I've added this recording of my Copernicus lecture from Autumn Quarter 2006. It is the same basic material, but since I generally improvise on a basic outline, there will be some d ... Show More
42m 1s
Mar 2006
Lecture 44: Life, the Universe, and Everything (Life Part II)
How can we search for extraterrestrial intelligence, and what are we looking for? This second part of a 2-part lecture picks up where we left off yesterday by examining SETI, the Search for ExtraTerrestrial Intelligence, and reviews what we might look for and how. We will use thi ... Show More
45m 56s
Sep 2006
Lecture 2: Astronomical Numbers
Before we can begin our exploration of astronomy, we need to develop a
common language for notating large numbers, and introduce the basic
units of length, mass, and time that we will use throughout the quarter.
We will first re-introduce the basic metric system, explaining how t ... Show More
43m 29s