Who was the man who forever changed our understanding of gravity, contributed a lot in the field of optics and was an (angry) partner of the differential and integral calculus?
(The article is taken from the program 'Making history!', A bi-weekly podcast about science, technology and history)
If life were a card game, then Newton was given a particularly bad set of cards at birth in 1643.
Isaac Newton's family was a simple and uneducated peasant family, and to add to that - Newton's father passed away three months before his birth, leaving his young and pregnant wife to face the world alone.
Newton grew up with his mother until the age of three, then a dramatic change took place in his life - a change that would leave its mark on him until his last day. Little Isaac's mother met a rich merchant, a man forty years older than her, who agreed to marry her. Newton's mother demanded, as a condition of the wedding, that the rich merchant register a private plot of land in Isaac's name, which he would receive when he grew up. The intended groom agreed, but on one condition - that the child be sent to grow up away from them, with the mother's parents.
In the harsh reality of the seventeenth century, the young mother did not have many choices. Little Newton was literally torn from his mother's arms, and sent to live with his grandparents for many years. One can imagine how traumatic this horrible experience was for such a small child, that the only safe ground he knew in his entire world - his mother - was dropped from under his feet. There is no doubt that this childhood trauma made a decisive contribution to Newton's mature character: a lonely man, a suspect who trusted no one. Newton may have been an undeclared homosexual, which may explain the disconnection from conservative society. He didn't have long relationships with women, and for twenty years the closest person to him was his university roommate.
Even in the academy, Newton did not lick honey. First, he was a relatively older student and second, he came from a low social and economic status, so he had to work as a servant for another student to make ends meet. One can assume that making beds and emptying night pots full of urine did not make Newton the 'Paris Hilton' of the layer.
The academic atmosphere around him was not one of the best either. The University of Cambridge is today considered one of the great educational institutions in the world, but in the seventeenth century, in Newton's time, things looked completely different. Cambridge was a third-rate university that was ranked behind the prestigious Oxford University. As a rule, Cambridge mostly produced very good clergymen, or very bad doctors.
One of the reasons why Cambridge was so bad is that the lecturers insisted on teaching the outdated and irrelevant teachings of Aristotle, while the rest of Europe had already begun internalizing the discoveries of Copernicus and Galileo. Newton realized, soon, that his teachers were only wasting his time: he abandoned the official study material, and moved on to read the writings of Descartes and other modern physicists.
Let us leave Newton to read his books in peace, for now, and move on to a book about another brilliant scientist - Robert Hooke - who was to become Newton's greatest enemy.
the optics
Robert Hooke was born in 1635, almost eight years before Newton. Hook was a small, weak and pale boy who the doctors didn't give him much chance of surviving. Until the age of seven, Hook ate exclusively dairy foods, as his parents believed he would not be able to withstand the physical challenge of digesting meat. He was very short - an interesting historical fact that we will understand the importance of later.
What nature took from him in the field of athletics and muscles, he returned in gray cells. At a relatively young age, Hooke developed a precise and revolutionary mechanical watch mechanism, which brought him considerable publicity and fame. Through this invention he came to be a research assistant in the laboratories of important scientists, and from there the path was short to full membership in the British Royal Society of Sciences, where Hooke became the most important and influential scientist among its members.
One of Hooke's important discoveries (the one related to our case) is the fact that white light consists of a collection of different colors. He built a kind of simple prism - a piece of glass with straight edges - through which he passed the light, and studied the way in which light is refracted and separated into different colors. He published his discoveries in an important and influential book that became a great bestseller - a book that Newton also read, most likely.
When Isaac Newton was nearing the completion of his bachelor's degree, a deadly plague broke out (the plague that killed a fifth of Londoners). One of the consequences of this epidemic was the closing of the university and sending all the students out of town until the fury passed. Newton also moved to live on the farm for a long time. Who would have thought that it was there, away from the bustle and homework of the university, that Newton would do the work that changed science forever.
In the field of optics, Newton tried to get to the root of the phenomenon of the refraction of light rays into a rainbow of colors. Robert Hooke, as mentioned, discovered that white light contains many colors - but Newton was the one who understood how the prism is able to break down light into its components. Newton discovered that the light beam that hits the prism breaks and changes its direction as a result of the sharp transition between the air and the glass.
But Newton's truly revolutionary insight was that each color within the light beam is refracted differently within the prism. The red color breaks very slightly, while the blue color changes direction drastically. As a result, each color within the beam of light leaves the prism in a completely different place, and instead of one point of white light on the screen - we get the colorful rainbow that Pink Floyd, geniuses from a completely different era, put on the cover of the record 'The Dark Side of the Moon'.
The discovery that the degree of refraction of light depends on its color caused an immediate revolution in the entire field of telescope construction. All telescopes until then used central lenses, which refracted the light rays and focused them - like a magnifying glass - on one single point. Newton realized that this idea was doomed to failure because it was impossible to concentrate all the light into one point: each color was refracted to a different extent, and instead of a focused point of light we would get a large, blurred and colorful circle.
Mirrors, unlike lenses, do not refract the light but reflect it. The reflection of the light does not disperse the colors, and each color is reflected at exactly the same angle. Newton sat down in front of the desk, and built a telescope that was based on mirrors instead of lenses. This model was instantly the best telescope in the world.
But one man was not satisfied with this display of purpose: Robert Hooke. In all his explanations and demonstrations, Newton did not even mention a single word about Robert Hooke's work on the refraction of light into colors. Hook, of course, was deeply offended. A hard fight broke out between him and Newton, with insults and accusations that quite embarrassed the Royal Society in front of the rest of the world. In the end, Hooke and Newton agreed to settle the conflict between them and reach a reconciliation - at least outwardly. They exchanged polite letters in which each confirmed the importance of the other's work. The letter that Newton wrote to Hooke is the more interesting of the two, because in it Newton wrote the following:
"What René Descartes did was a good step, and you added much...If I have seen further, it is only because I have stood on the shoulders of giants."
Seemingly, a polite sentence in the restrained British style - but there are researchers who find precisely in this sentence the cynicism and malice that characterized Newton. By actually mentioning the name of René Descartes, Newton canceled Hooke's work and stated that if anyone deserves credit for the right of the first - the credit goes to Descartes. The 'shoulders of giants' thing is even more cynical and mean, given that Robert Hooke was a dwarf and a hunchback, and Newton may have simply been mocking him. Again, this whole interpretation is only a conjecture based on Newton's known character: we will never know if this was Newton's real intention.
Newton and Edmund Halley
Newton's story, 'The Mathematical Principles of the Natural World' (or for short - 'Principia Mathematica'), is one of the most important scientific works in human history, if not the most important among them. It is surprising to discover, then, that his writing is the result of a completely random coincidence, centered on a talented young astronomer named Edmund Halley.
Halley is a friend of Robert Hooke and other scientists in the Royal Society, and together they came up with ideas and theories regarding a question that troubled many physicists: what keeps the planets in orbit around the sun, and what causes them to move precisely in these orbits and not in other orbits?
The dominant idea was that there is a force of attraction between the planets and the sun, and that this force decays according to the square of the distance. That is to say, when the distance between the celestial bodies increases twice - the force of attraction between them decreases four times. The inner feeling among the group of scientists was that this idea could explain the elliptical orbits of the planets, but the mathematics required to prove this whole story was so complicated... that no one could find the arms and legs between all these equations!
Some time later, in 1684, Edmund Halley went to visit his acquaintances. Cambridge happened to be right around the corner, and Halley decided to drop by to visit Newton and exchange a few words with him. As the two talked about new ideas in physics, Halley recalled the discussions he had with Robert Hooke about gravity. He asked Newton, casually, how the orbits of the planets should look assuming that gravity decays as the square of the distance. Newton answered him immediately: elliptical orbits, of course!
Halley was amazed by Newton's decisive answer. Where does this confidence come from? Ask. Newton replied to him: since I have already proved it. A distraught Halley asked Newton to see the proof, and Newton dug through the notebooks but could not find the appropriate pages. He promised to rewrite the proof and send it to Halley as soon as possible. This is how the book 'Principia Mathematica' was born: the culmination of Isaac Newton's work, and the work that established him in the collective consciousness as a genius like no other in all of history. All this wonderful work took place in a period of only about five to ten years, and after that - nothing. From then on Newton did not contribute anything more to science.
For a short time Isaac Newton was a member of the British Parliament. He was elected to the position following political maneuvers by the party leaders, and not due to his parliamentary skills: during the entire time he was in the House of Representatives, his only comment recorded in the minutes was that Sir Isaac Newton asked to close the window because a gust of wind was coming in.
Isaac Newton died in 1727, at the age of 84, and was buried in the nation's greatest plot in Westminster Abbey. After his death, it was reported that large amounts of mercury were found in his body, perhaps as a result of his many experiments in alchemy. The toxic mercury may have had an effect on Newton's eccentric character - we will never know for sure - but there is no doubt that his special character contributed critically to his achievements. In Newton's own words: "Plato is my friend, Aristotle is my friend - but the truth is my best friend."
More on the subject on the science website
33 תגובות
The poor state of theoretical physics stems from a belief in the existence of the law of conservation of quantity of matter, similar to the law of conservation of quantity of energy.
Energy is a quantitative thing, and the law of quantitative conservation applies to it.
The energy can change appearances, but the quantity is always conserved.
Matter is not a quantitative thing, so the law of quantitative conservation cannot apply to it.
Matter is a physical form, and the concept of quantity does not apply to form.
Gold is the name of a physical form, built from the combination of amounts of energy and passive time. This combination is called matter, but this combination is not a quantitative thing.
Carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, lead, are names of physical forms, and each physical form is built from a combination of certain amounts of passive time and energy.
Any such combination is called matter, but matter is not a quantitative concept.
The passive time and energy that create matter are quantitative concepts.
Amazingly, Newton stated that matter is quantitative, and all the physicists who came after him accepted his statement without question.
This acceptance resulted in the poor state of accepted theoretical physics.
Newton also stated that matter has a gravitational force, which is proportional to its quantity.
A lot of matter - a lot of gravity, a little matter - a little gravity.
And here, too, all physicists accepted his assertion.
Physicists also accepted the idea that quantum matter is made up of particles.
Today it is clear that the poor state of theoretical physics is due to the acceptance of the Newtonian view, and the acceptance of the idea that matter is made up of particles.
The neural view offers a correction, with the help of a new and revolutionary physical concept, which is the passive time. Matter is a physical form, created by combining amounts of passive time and energy.
Passive time actually exists in reality, in contrast to active time that exists only in a person's consciousness, and it disappears as soon as you think about it.
An interesting article that updated me on the history of science.
Once (in high school) I thought that Newton invented his Yesh Mayen theory.
And in this article it is revealed that he really rode on the shoulders of giants. Just as he said.
It turns out that the law of universal gravitation was already discussed in scientific circles before Newton proved it when he showed, by mathematical means, that if the force of gravity becomes the square of the distance, the planet must follow an elliptical orbit.
It turns out that Hooke split a beam of sunlight using a triangular prism before Newton, and was the first to conclude that sunlight is composed of other colors. Newton used the same experiment and the same conclusions - and went even further.
Newton developed Hadua at the same time as Leibniz. What are the chances that this is a coincidence? almost zero. And this means that there was a common reason for this development: the mathematical knowledge of their time was ripe for the development of Hadua. especially after the developments of Descartes. And indeed: both relied on Descartes, but used different signs for the same ideas.
I know that Newton knew nothing and a half about the concept of energy that Leibniz invented. Newton developed the laws of momentum without energy considerations.
Now things came together for me into a more correct view of the scale of Newton's scientific enterprise.
What is interesting is the third area of his work: the laws of mechanics that he formulated. I wonder what the scientific knowledge was then in this context. In any case, it is clear that some of Archimedes' laws were known. His impressive work in Syracuse was also known (but not for all its scientific details - which have been lost in the depths of time)
In general, Newton wrote an article about the Temple and was an alchemist. He was responsible for minting coins in England on behalf of the British Bank. He made sure to hang many counterfeiters. I also thought he had a Swiss friend. The biggest debate was who created the differential calculus, was it the English Newton or the German Leibniz?
Just hanging out late at night
Good night
Herzl Yanai
Why should it bother us that Newton was a man of faith?
Not a hidden homosexual and not a plasterer. Just a person who didn't know how to have a relationship with girls of the opposite sex. Which makes him the exact opposite of a homosexual. And yet, as far as I remember, he had a romantic relationship with a woman who did not mature - despite his will. I mean, he was a stereotypical scientist.
And he was a man of independent thought. He had atheist friends, like Voltaire, but he remained a very religious man. What a shame for you, the greatest scientist in history was the exact opposite of Atheist.tz
Great article
Ahla wrote
To Michael
Whatever
Why should we spend energy on agents?
We haven't fought in two weeks!
Soon, with God's help, BSD, Inshallah, Touch Wood, my father will approve my article,
So let's save energy for the expected confrontation.
Happy holiday Michael
Sabdarmish Yehuda
Yehuda:
Why do you tie strings of interpretations to the word agent and ignore (intentionally?) the rest of what he said?
I will quote from the quote you gave.
It begins like this:
"The opinion does not allow that inanimate wild matter will act on another matter and be affected by another matter without the mediation of something else, which is not matter, and without mutual contact."
That is - in other words - when there is no mutual contact - there must be an intermediary and this intermediary cannot be material.
The quote ends in a less decisive way (against the possibility of material) as follows:
"But I leave it to my readers to decide at their own discretion whether this "agent" is material or immaterial."
But you - Yehuda - do not even leave it to Newton himself to decide according to his judgment what he himself says!
The question about how gravitation is transferred did bother him and it should have bothered him even more because, as I said - he thought it was transferred instantly - that is, in zero time - that is - another hypothesis of his that really does not fit with particles (nor with reality - but not from the same Cause).
To Michael and his cheering friend
It says "Agent" there, so what? Maybe he meant Agent 007 Gravity?
Whatever.
Perhaps we will at least agree on the important fact that Newtoch was also troubled by the transitory form of gravitation in space.
And by the way, I sent my upgraded article to my father, let's pray that in these difficult moments that I am teasing him bitterly, he will know how to make wise decisions about my article.
Therefore, if he finally decides to publish it in science, I ask to behave nicely and not break his and my mood.
Respond only politely and gently!
Happy holiday to all agents and responders
Sabdarmish Yehuda
By the way, there is no mistake in the translation here. The English text is exactly the same (apart from the fact that it starts near the end of page 56) so there is nothing to copy here.
Suddenly I noticed that I repeated the words of Aryeh Seter.
What is clear from the above quote is that Newton did not even claim that the agent was material and therefore, obviously, did not claim that it was particles.
to Arya Seter
First I will bring the quote from the source in the Agnet universe and let my respondents decide if they knew what Newton meant. Maybe someone will find the source in English and then we will be sure, but between us, he probably did not mean that the agent is the curvature of space, and with your permission we will continue to attribute this wisdom to Einstein.
Below is the quote from the elegant universe:-
The Elegant Universe by Brian Greene, Mater Publishing, 2000, and I quote to you and to everyone what is written in chapter three, called "Einstein's Happiest Thought", where on page 58 it is about Newton's reference to gravitation,
And I quote from the book from the beginning of the page:-
...that is to say, how does it happen that two bodies that are physically separated from each other, sometimes by hundreds of millions of kilometers, nevertheless affect each other's movement? By what means does gravity perform its task? This is a problem that Newton himself was clearly aware of, in his own words:
Mind does not allow that inanimate wild matter will act on another matter and be affected by another matter without the mediation of something else, which is not matter, and without mutual contact. The possibility of gravity being innate, intrinsic and essential to matter so that one body may act on another body through an empty space without the mediation of anything else in whose presence it would be possible to transfer their action and force, from one to another, is to me such an absurdity that I believe that no person who has the ability Sound thinking in philosophical matters cannot fall into it. Gravity must be caused by an "agent" acting regularly according to certain laws, but I leave it to my readers to decide at their own discretion whether this "agent" is material or immaterial.
End of quote.
The commenters will decide what the "poet" meant by his words.
In addition, as the commenters must have understood, I will first submit the article I wrote to my father for his judgment.
Happy holiday
Sabdarmish Yehuda
To my father
As we agreed, I am changing the article in the "painful" points and I hope that the result will satisfy both of us.
In any case, I will respect your judgment and I appreciate your work very much.
The article will be ready today or tomorrow, and will be sent to you by email.
Happy holiday
Sabdarmish Yehuda
And one more thing.
You referred us to the "elegant universe" where Newton is quoted and according to you his opinion is that gravity probably works through particles. I checked the source you mentioned; Neither its kind nor its parts... He says that gravity cannot work "without the mediation of something else, which is not material, and without mutual contact"... "Gravity must be caused by an agent"... "I leave it to the readers to decide at their own discretion whether this agent is material or to my material"
If so, not necessarily particles. Perhaps the curvature of space due to the mass of each body is the same agent...
To Judah
You wrote that "light spreads according to an inverse ratio to the square of the distance" and you meant that it weakens accordingly; Right?
I think there is some misunderstanding here.
A light beam that does not get distracted (and does not encounter barriers) continues all the time with the same intensity. The problem is with a practical light source that radiates in a diverging beam, or for the purpose of the example - a point source that radiates at all angles in space. So it is clear that in the spreading envelope of the radiation front, as you move further away, there are fewer photons per unit area - according to the ratio you described. And this seems to be what is meant by saying that the intensity is inversely proportional to the square of the distance, which does not happen in a theoretical light source whose beam is not diverged.
Good riddance
Does this article also constitute a period summary?
Will the next chapter of the treatise be called: "The last of the scientists and the rest of the magicians"?...
Regards to Avi Bilzovsky.. from "The Last of the Mohicans".. and the first.
Hugin: Happy Holidays..see you in 40 days..
Me, Michael, Higgs and more will surely be happy to give a peer review
Yehuda, I am waiting for the revised version of the article. As I told you I always prefer things that have appeared under peer review. You promised to change accordingly. I'm waiting.
Yehuda, write your article in Google documents / base or something like that. and give a link
Yehuda:
I think I just proved myself wrong.
I don't know why you call nebulosity and what it is caused by and how it is supposed to behave, but it is clear that referring to it requires some constant that speaks of its essence.
In any case - there is no chance that the formula you present will be accepted.
I tested a script without energy loss and in which Newton's formula is obtained without any change.
I also tested a scenario with energy loss in the collisions of the particles among themselves and this scenario creates gravitation which also exactly matches Newton's formula but fades, with time (not with distance) throughout the universe. Apparently, according to this scenario, gravity should have already disappeared.
Another problem in this scenario is of course the question of what happens to that energy that is lost.
The problem of the fate of the lost energy is also common to any scenario with ambiguity in which the energy is supposed to be lost.
Beyond that, the problem of the decay of gravity over time - in all its existence - is also a necessary consequence of this scenario.
Rather the decay with distance does not arise from it because all particles are supposed to lose energy all the time regardless of their distance from any mass.
You are welcome to send me the article but I am sure that the motivation you attribute to my father as the "dark mass knight" is not justified. There must be another reason for the non-publicity.
To Michael
Beautiful, beautiful, so if I believe in my formula then something else has to rotate the galaxies. Did you know that a pressure difference of ten to the power of minus fourteen atmospheres from the edge of the galaxy to the center is enough to create the rotation?
I sent an article to my father Blizovsky and unfortunately he is not ready to publish it because it is not "flattering" to the dark mass. Maybe you can convince him to publish it? Listen, if anything, maybe I'll send it to you in an email so you can see if there's room for it to be published (despite your principled objection to the content, and maybe because of that)
And as far as I'm concerned, the formula is correct, because it also refers to losing power due to the medium, for example:-
Light spreads inversely proportional to the square of the distance. But this is without referring to the medium in which the light moves. Let's say a traffic light loses its way due to the "haze" of the medium 50% every km then if its intensity is 900 at a km distance then at a distance of two km its intensity is not 225 (nine hundred parts two squared) that is half of that 112.5 and at a distance of 3 km it will be nine times a quarter
That is only 25.
The formula in gravitation also refers to "nebulosity" and is better and uses the natural number for its development. By the way, why don't you open it?
Good Day
Sabdarmish Yehuda
Yehuda and Yael:
In fact it links to a comment I once wrote on the subject of the beauty of science.
Maybe I will suggest to my father to expand it to the scope of an article.
Yehuda:
In science, a theory is abandoned if it contradicts the experiment, and gravity pushing clearly contradicts the experiment (which happens to be not an experiment that needs to be planned and conducted, but what happens moment by moment and hour by hour).
This is in addition to the fact that the development of the gravity formula you did is wrong (and by the way - in my opinion you should be happy that it is wrong because the error in it reduces the gravity even compared to the existing formula and the smaller the gravity the harder it is to explain the rotation speed of the galaxies)
rationalize
I agree with you and I always maintain that just because something is simpler does not make it more correct.
But, if a certain problem has two solutions, one complicated and one simple, please use the simple one.
This is also what the monk William of Ockham said in his "Ockham's Razor".
For example, the solutions of relativity are more correct even though Newton's are simpler, but in situations where the tiny difference is not important, Newton should be preferred for reasons of convenience alone.
Happy holiday
Sabdarmish Yehuda
Yehuda,
I don't think nature has a preference between simple and complicated.
This is some kind of personification that humans tend to project on nature. But what seems elegant to us is not always so to nature.
We created this coding - the language in which we come to explain nature. Our brain wants to believe that nature speaks the same language and sees the world as we do, but it is not trivial at all.
If the matter of the graviton has already been mentioned.. the theory that best integrates the matter of gravitons is string theory - there it is called a closed string. Of course there are also quantum theories that do not incorporate the gravitron (but they are the minority), such as loop quantum gravity - which is a type of quantum gravity.
In any case, so far no one has been able to prove experimentally that there is such a thing as gravitons, although in theory it works quite well. Not surprisingly, gravitons are hard to find given that gravity is so weak.
Let's wait and see
To Michael
First of all I am really happy that we are getting to know each other. It's already good.
I noticed that we are not ashamed to admit our mistakes.
I hope you also saw that I have a healthy intuition, as you do.
I am always honest and the lie is on my side.
If I said that Newton thought that gravitation must be done by a messenger "agent", then it is true, the source: - The Elegant Universe, by Brian Greene, Mater Publishing, year 2000, there on page 58.
I also once read the English original and it matches the Hebrew translation.
But now we will move on to the "painful" subject of pushing gravity and the simple universe.
You and I agree on almost all the problems because of which the idea of pushing gravity and the simple universe should be abolished, except that I still argue that since many points become clear, understandable and clear, because of pushing gravity and the simple universe, the end should be postponed.
Maybe because I created the idea of the simple universe and have a hard time abandoning it??….I don't think so.
Maybe we will see it differently, will we give up a cute animal we have just because it is disabled??
Wouldn't you recommend a movie just because one or two actors played it poorly,
Would you throw away a book of songs in which three or four songs are bad, or, on the contrary, would you keep it even because of one good song you find in it? And the simple universe has some good songs!
So we gave the poet a chance!
Between us Michael, if, and let's just say if, you were a creator of the universe, wouldn't you prefer to create a universe according to the recipe of the "simple universe"? Because really, why get involved?
Happy holiday
Sabdarmish Yehuda
Yehuda:
The truth is, I thought you were already convinced.
I just find it hard to imagine being so stubborn while ignoring any evidence to the contrary.
I thought that the fact that in some discussion you remained without an answer to arguments that contradicted your opinion should cast some doubt on you and that when this happens in discussions, when each time the previous arguments are abandoned and you are shown additional contradictions in your words, you would have converted your religion.
Very strange.
I don't remember that Newton believed that a particle was needed.
I do not claim that it is not - although it seems that it does not agree with his opinion about action in zero time, but it is possible that he believed.
I don't think the sentence you gave shows that.
To Michael
What you showed, I do not agree. But we won't go into that.
Just for curiosity's sake, I brought Newton's opinion that he thought a particle was needed for gravity. He was even quite blunt towards those who disagreed and claimed that gravity was capable of acting at a distance without an "agent".
Have a good day and a happy holiday
Sabdarmish Yehuda
Yehuda:
Newton thought that gravitation affects from a distance immediately.
The topic of particles is not absent from modern physics either and you have surely heard about the graviton hypothesis.
On the other hand - the fact that two theories have some words in common does not create agreement between them.
It seems to me that what I have already shown you should have convinced you that the simple universe does not even agree with reality in its own right.
You see Michael, people have always fought because of gravity.
And by the way, you know that Newton said that gravitation probably works with the help of particles, or, as he said:- ""an agent" that acts regularly according to certain laws"
Good night
Sabdarmish Yehuda