Discarded Worlds: Astronomical Ideas that Were Almost Correct

  • Video
  • 1 hours
  • Level: all audiences

This is a video from IHMC (IHMC is a not-for-profit research institute of the Florida University System) of a 2012 talk by Br. Guy Consolmagno, S. J., of the Vatican Observatory. The following description is from IHMC:

Astronomy is more than just observing; it’s making sense of those observations. A good theorist needs a good imagination…and no fear of being wrong. Aryabaha in ancient India and Ptolemy in ancient Rome, the medieval bishops Oresme and Cusa, the 19th century astronomers Schiaparelli and Pickering, all rose to the challenge; and they were all almost correct. Which is to say, they were wrong… sometimes hilariously, sometimes heartbreakingly so. What lessons can we take from these discarded images?