1666

1666 - Unraveling - Newton's Miraculous Year

A few decades after Galileo risked his life and soul before the Inquisition, it was becoming clear that the Ptolemaic model was not an optimal way of looking at the universe. Using observations from Tycho Brahe's observatories, Kepler had determine not only the advantages of Copernicus' view,  but that the planets rotated around the sun along ellipses, not circles.

Questions remained, however, that twenty-three-year-old Isaac Newton wanted to answer - like what was making the planets move, and what kept them moving, and where they would be next.

Knowing how fast they were moving, and confirming the type of curves they were following, and knowing how long those curves were all necessary to answer this. The input to these questions had to be the the discrete points in space that could be observed on each available clear night. Any proposed would need to work with the years of independent observations that already existed. 

Except that general tools for doing this did not exist. There were formulae for answering some questions in specific instances - such as parts of circles - but Newton needed to be able to handle less regular and less studied curves. He would need someone to invent these tools in order to answer his questions. 

So he did. 

Although his results were published later, it was in 1666 that Newton invented calculus, as an intermediate step on the way to confirming not only that the planets moved, but that they moved in ellipses not circles, and determining the relationship between their movement, speed, and distance from the sun. He further determined that gravity followed an inverse-square law, stronger when objects were larger, weaker as they moved away. The calculus alone would have been an astonishing achievement, only enhanced by the practical use to which it had been put.  During that year Newton also also made important discoveries in optics and fluid mechanics, making his mark as one of the most important scientists of all time.