WEBVTT - Invention Playlist: The Telescope 0:00:03.000 --> 0:00:09.680 Welcome to Invention, a production of I Heart Radio. Hey, 0:00:09.800 --> 0:00:12.640 welcome to Invention. My name is Robert Land, and I'm 0:00:12.680 --> 0:00:16.000 Joe McCormick, and I thought we should start today with 0:00:16.239 --> 0:00:20.080 a question about science, one that is maybe more vexing 0:00:20.120 --> 0:00:23.800 the more you think about it. So an often unexamined 0:00:23.840 --> 0:00:28.880 assumption that undergird's scientific investigation all of science is this 0:00:28.960 --> 0:00:32.479 idea that there are laws of nature, right, and that 0:00:32.520 --> 0:00:37.440 those laws are are physically fundamental, and they apply everywhere 0:00:37.520 --> 0:00:40.680 and they are never violated. Right. Yeah, it would be um, 0:00:40.720 --> 0:00:44.160 it would be catastrophic if science changed from say country 0:00:44.200 --> 0:00:47.240 to country or county to county. Right, you go across 0:00:47.280 --> 0:00:50.200 the state line and you fall upright. Yeah. So water 0:00:50.320 --> 0:00:53.199 boils at a hundred degrees celsius or two twelve fahrenheit 0:00:53.320 --> 0:00:55.960 in my kitchen, it should also boil at the same 0:00:56.000 --> 0:00:57.960 temperature in my bedroom, or in the kitchen of the 0:00:57.960 --> 0:01:00.560 white castle down the street, or a hundred miles away 0:01:00.560 --> 0:01:03.360 in a different town. Right now. You might interrupt there 0:01:03.360 --> 0:01:06.440 and say, oh, but actually water sometimes does boil at 0:01:06.480 --> 0:01:09.760 a different temperature, right, Like at high elevations, uh, where 0:01:09.800 --> 0:01:13.520 atmospheric pressure is lower, it's easier for water to boil 0:01:13.640 --> 0:01:16.560 because there's less pressure pressing down on the water, so 0:01:16.600 --> 0:01:18.920 it actually does boil at a lower temperature, like at 0:01:18.959 --> 0:01:21.480 three thousand meters, water boils at more like nine d 0:01:21.600 --> 0:01:24.240 degrees celsius. And in fact, Robert, I don't know if 0:01:24.240 --> 0:01:26.280 you've ever read these, there are great stories that take 0:01:26.319 --> 0:01:29.319 this to the extreme. Did you know about the unbearable 0:01:29.319 --> 0:01:33.520 sadness of boiling potatoes on Mount Everest? So there are 0:01:33.560 --> 0:01:37.520 these stories about mountaineers trying to cook on Mount Everest 0:01:37.959 --> 0:01:40.319 and they would boil potatoes in a pot of water 0:01:40.440 --> 0:01:42.720 to eat them, but they boil them and they boil 0:01:42.840 --> 0:01:45.319 them and boil them for hours and hours, and after 0:01:45.400 --> 0:01:49.120 hours of cooking, the potatoes were still basically raw. And 0:01:49.160 --> 0:01:52.440 the problem is on Mount Everest that you're up so 0:01:52.560 --> 0:01:55.880 high that the boiling point is so low. The boiling 0:01:55.920 --> 0:01:59.000 water in the pot is not hot enough to cook potatoes. 0:01:59.480 --> 0:02:01.320 It's like sort of like trying to cook them in 0:02:01.360 --> 0:02:04.920 hot tap water even though it's boiling. It's a In fact, 0:02:05.000 --> 0:02:07.640 I would say it's actually like an inverse pressure cooker, right, 0:02:07.680 --> 0:02:10.000 you know, pressure cooker allows your food to get hotter 0:02:10.080 --> 0:02:13.040 because of the increased pressure going up on Mount Everest. 0:02:13.080 --> 0:02:15.440 And trying to cook something is like doing the opposite. 0:02:16.880 --> 0:02:20.560 But actually, you know, there, we've not discovered an absence 0:02:20.600 --> 0:02:22.840 of an underlying law just because water boils at a 0:02:22.880 --> 0:02:26.400 different temperature at different elevations. What we've actually discovered is 0:02:26.440 --> 0:02:29.160 a deeper underlying law that the boiling point of a 0:02:29.160 --> 0:02:32.520 liquid varies along with pressure, and that that relationship is 0:02:32.560 --> 0:02:35.880 mathematically deterministic. And I would say this is the assumption 0:02:35.919 --> 0:02:39.280 that pretty much guides almost all of applied science in 0:02:39.320 --> 0:02:41.480 the world today. It's the idea that the laws of 0:02:41.480 --> 0:02:44.440 physics are out there and they don't change or very 0:02:44.560 --> 0:02:48.320 depending on special cases or where you are. But how 0:02:48.320 --> 0:02:50.840 do we know that conditions on the Earth and the 0:02:50.840 --> 0:02:54.160 Moon might be different, but that the underlying physical laws 0:02:54.200 --> 0:02:57.400 that give rise to those conditions are exactly the same. 0:02:58.040 --> 0:03:00.239 And maybe one thing that's important to point out in 0:03:00.400 --> 0:03:04.000 understanding this is that people haven't always thought this way. 0:03:04.320 --> 0:03:08.320 There is a powerful tradition, going back into the ancient world, 0:03:08.680 --> 0:03:13.480 sort of viewing the behaviors of things in reality as 0:03:13.560 --> 0:03:18.040 a large collection of special cases, governed by their own 0:03:18.200 --> 0:03:22.560 special essences and and by by special circumstances, maybe like 0:03:22.639 --> 0:03:26.480 divine intervention, maybe like some types of magic, maybe just 0:03:26.560 --> 0:03:29.840 by you know, the essence of the way a person 0:03:30.080 --> 0:03:32.959 falls is different than the way a planet falls, because 0:03:33.160 --> 0:03:36.080 a planet is a different thing than a person, And 0:03:36.200 --> 0:03:38.240 so you you'd end up with the idea that the 0:03:38.240 --> 0:03:41.960 heavens are not subject to the same physical forces as 0:03:42.000 --> 0:03:44.680 the Earth. And we see this all throughout ancient cosmology, 0:03:45.000 --> 0:03:48.600 just thinking that there are different different laws applying to 0:03:48.720 --> 0:03:52.800 different places and circumstances in the universe. Now, on one hand, 0:03:52.840 --> 0:03:55.560 you could argue that, well, we don't really know that 0:03:55.640 --> 0:03:58.320 physical laws are the same everywhere, right, and and that's 0:03:58.400 --> 0:04:01.280 kind of true, like at the very edges of our understanding. 0:04:01.320 --> 0:04:03.880 There could be ways of arguing that physical laws aren't 0:04:03.920 --> 0:04:07.720 really laws, you know, maybe they're just generalizations we make 0:04:07.720 --> 0:04:11.520 based on observation, or maybe there could be cosmological scenarios 0:04:11.560 --> 0:04:13.480 when they're different. You know, maybe in the beginning of 0:04:13.520 --> 0:04:16.240 the universe the laws were different or could have been different. 0:04:16.560 --> 0:04:20.000 But for the most purposes in the present, that assumption 0:04:20.200 --> 0:04:23.560 that the physical laws are the same everywhere has proven 0:04:23.600 --> 0:04:27.719 extremely useful and generating accurate scientific theories that make correct 0:04:27.760 --> 0:04:32.200 predictions and create powerful technology. So I wanted to think 0:04:32.200 --> 0:04:34.799 about at the beginning of today. Where did this assumption 0:04:34.880 --> 0:04:37.480 of the uniformity of physical laws come from? How did 0:04:37.520 --> 0:04:39.800 we end up thinking this way about the world, that 0:04:39.880 --> 0:04:43.799 there's just sort of like a set of underlying ways 0:04:43.920 --> 0:04:47.320 that things work and that that governs everything. Well, as 0:04:47.360 --> 0:04:50.200 the title of the show indicates, we're going to tie 0:04:50.200 --> 0:04:52.480 it to an invention, you're exactly right now, we don't 0:04:52.480 --> 0:04:55.360 want to tie it entirely to this invention, because there 0:04:55.360 --> 0:04:57.719 are a bunch of different strains of thinking throughout history 0:04:57.760 --> 0:05:00.000 that I think have contributed to this way of seeing 0:05:00.080 --> 0:05:02.839 the world that we generally share now. But I believe 0:05:02.920 --> 0:05:07.520 one really powerful moment of transition here was centered around 0:05:07.520 --> 0:05:10.960 a particular piece of technology, and that technology is the 0:05:11.000 --> 0:05:15.400 subject of today's episode, which is the telescope. Yes, more 0:05:15.400 --> 0:05:19.120 specifically the optical telescope. Right now, we're just doing one 0:05:19.160 --> 0:05:21.040 episode today here, so we're not going to be able 0:05:21.080 --> 0:05:23.479 to focus on all the different kinds of telescopes. We 0:05:23.560 --> 0:05:25.480 may come back to them in the future, but we're 0:05:25.480 --> 0:05:30.680 gonna be focusing on specifically the earliest optical refracting telescopes, 0:05:31.240 --> 0:05:34.160 right and uh, and yeah, it's really it really is 0:05:34.279 --> 0:05:36.960 kind of hard to to overstate the importance of the 0:05:37.000 --> 0:05:40.119 telescope in the history of science and in the history 0:05:40.120 --> 0:05:43.440 of our understanding of the cosmos. Yeah, there's a great 0:05:43.520 --> 0:05:47.000 quote about the invention from the Invention of the Telescope 0:05:47.000 --> 0:05:52.880 by Albert van Helden. From van Helden writes, quote, among 0:05:52.920 --> 0:05:55.599 the scientific instruments which have played an important role in 0:05:55.640 --> 0:05:58.120 the growth of man's knowledge of the world around him, 0:05:58.320 --> 0:06:02.359 the telescope occupies a position of historic pre eminence, rivaled 0:06:02.400 --> 0:06:05.320 only by the microscope, which was a natural outgrowth of 0:06:05.320 --> 0:06:08.520 the telescope. In a real sense, the telescope can be 0:06:08.560 --> 0:06:12.760 considered the prototype of modern scientific instruments, and learned men 0:06:12.839 --> 0:06:15.839 in the seventeenth century, the first century of its existence, 0:06:16.160 --> 0:06:19.480 were acutely aware of its important role in the formation 0:06:19.839 --> 0:06:22.760 of a new astronomy. Yeah, and some of the earliest 0:06:22.800 --> 0:06:25.520 accounts of what was viewed through the very first telescopes. 0:06:25.600 --> 0:06:28.719 You can you can kind of feel the electricity coming 0:06:28.760 --> 0:06:32.120 off of the writing, right, like, like the excitement with 0:06:32.160 --> 0:06:35.039 seeing stuff that not just seeing new things. I mean 0:06:35.120 --> 0:06:37.719 we still see new things in the heavens that people 0:06:37.720 --> 0:06:40.480 have never seen before. Just this year there was the 0:06:40.560 --> 0:06:43.600 very first direct imaging of a black hole, not using 0:06:43.640 --> 0:06:47.119 an optical telescope, but but using you know, a form 0:06:47.160 --> 0:06:50.600 of magnifying the heavens. And that was astonishing because we 0:06:50.600 --> 0:06:52.800 were looking at something we've never seen before. But as 0:06:52.800 --> 0:06:55.200 amazing as that was, what if instead of just seeing 0:06:55.200 --> 0:06:58.600 a new thing, you were able to see the universe 0:06:58.640 --> 0:07:02.160 in a completely different way that now, for the first time, 0:07:02.240 --> 0:07:05.520 you can look at really anything beyond the moon as 0:07:05.600 --> 0:07:08.120 more than a point of light. Yeah, it's really I 0:07:08.120 --> 0:07:12.080 mean it's really hard to avoid optical metaphors for this 0:07:12.160 --> 0:07:15.800 optical technology. Like I want to think, it's like it's 0:07:15.840 --> 0:07:19.480 like being able having poor eyesight your entire life and 0:07:19.520 --> 0:07:22.720 then finally putting on a pair of glasses and seeing 0:07:22.760 --> 0:07:28.040 things come into sharper detail, you know, solidifying things that 0:07:28.120 --> 0:07:32.320 you suspected already, but also bringing you know, fine print 0:07:32.480 --> 0:07:36.520 into view that was invisible to you previously. That sort 0:07:36.520 --> 0:07:38.640 of thing. Yeah, And I think that's another reason why 0:07:38.680 --> 0:07:41.520 the telescope is such. Um, you know, a major invention 0:07:41.600 --> 0:07:44.920 is that we are predominantly, you know, optical beings. We 0:07:45.000 --> 0:07:48.800 depend so much on our sense of sight, and this 0:07:49.680 --> 0:07:55.080 so greatly improved our ability to do optically see things. Well. Yeah, 0:07:55.120 --> 0:07:57.600 I mean, one thing that's worth thinking about is the 0:07:57.720 --> 0:08:02.160 very idea that that we could even view the heavens 0:08:02.160 --> 0:08:04.320 with a with a viewing instrument, you know, with a 0:08:04.320 --> 0:08:09.080 magnification device that's entirely contingent on the details of life 0:08:09.120 --> 0:08:11.400 on planet Earth. If you go to another planet where 0:08:11.400 --> 0:08:14.240 maybe life forms evolved at the bottom of an ocean 0:08:14.360 --> 0:08:17.200 around geothermal vents or growing off of some kind of 0:08:17.240 --> 0:08:21.480 like you know, chemosynthesis process in a clouded, hazy atmosphere 0:08:21.560 --> 0:08:23.920 like that of Venus or that of Titan, where you 0:08:23.960 --> 0:08:26.920 just can't you can't see the guy. I mean, there's 0:08:26.920 --> 0:08:29.480 no reason we had to evolve on a planet where 0:08:29.520 --> 0:08:32.000 you could look at the stars every night, but somehow 0:08:32.000 --> 0:08:34.640 we did. And of course those stars have always intrigued us. 0:08:34.640 --> 0:08:38.360 I mean, human history is a story of of people's 0:08:38.520 --> 0:08:40.560 looking to the heavens and trying to figure out what 0:08:40.679 --> 0:08:42.800 is going on up there. Yeah, and that's a great 0:08:42.800 --> 0:08:45.360 point we should start with, which is that astronomy did 0:08:45.400 --> 0:08:49.240 not begin with the telescope. Astronomy long predates the telescope. 0:08:49.280 --> 0:08:53.640 There is a vast tradition of naked eye astronomy going 0:08:53.720 --> 0:08:57.200 back in ancient history, and sometimes it's astonishing what ancient 0:08:57.240 --> 0:09:00.160 and medieval astronomers could figure out. It could discuss ever 0:09:00.600 --> 0:09:04.000 without optical telescopes, just using the naked eye, sometimes maybe 0:09:04.000 --> 0:09:07.439 in conjunction with other primitive tools like measuring instruments or something. 0:09:08.200 --> 0:09:11.440 I mean, for starters, like other planets were known before 0:09:11.880 --> 0:09:15.800 before the telescope. Right, Oh yeah, a Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, 0:09:15.880 --> 0:09:19.880 and Saturn are all observable with the naked eye. Uh, 0:09:20.440 --> 0:09:24.040 Uranus and Neptune are generally considered to be only visible 0:09:24.160 --> 0:09:27.760 via the telescope with with an asterix there. Yeah, Uranus 0:09:27.840 --> 0:09:31.400 is uranus. We always fight about how to pronounce this Urinus. 0:09:31.480 --> 0:09:34.400 Let's say, Uranus is technically I think visible with the 0:09:34.480 --> 0:09:39.080 naked eye under extremely favorable conditions, but it's very, very faint. 0:09:39.120 --> 0:09:43.000 It was officially usually recognized as being discovered by William 0:09:43.000 --> 0:09:46.720 Herschel in Sight one with the telescope. Of course, telescopes 0:09:46.760 --> 0:09:49.400 had been around for a good long while in Sight one, 0:09:49.800 --> 0:09:52.800 but it had probably been observed by others in centuries 0:09:52.880 --> 0:09:55.320 past who thought it was some kind of faint star, 0:09:55.600 --> 0:09:59.760 just barely visible. Herschel actually initially thought Uranus was a comet. 0:10:00.920 --> 0:10:03.559 On our other podcast, Stuff to Blow Your Mind, we 0:10:03.559 --> 0:10:06.600 we've been kind of considering the different planets and there 0:10:07.200 --> 0:10:09.880 in their their their moons. From time to time, we 0:10:09.920 --> 0:10:12.240 really we really need to go to look at the 0:10:12.280 --> 0:10:14.760 outer planets a little more. Oh yeah, I wonder if 0:10:14.760 --> 0:10:16.560 there's there's much to say there. I feel like the 0:10:16.760 --> 0:10:21.880 really sexy moons show up around Saturn and Jupiter. Like 0:10:22.000 --> 0:10:25.959 on Jupiter you've got Europa, which is everybody's favorite to 0:10:26.040 --> 0:10:28.960 find some potential life at because they think their oceans 0:10:29.000 --> 0:10:31.760 underneath the icy crust. And then you've got Io, which 0:10:31.800 --> 0:10:35.520 is just a wonderful yellow hell of volcanoes and sulfur 0:10:35.559 --> 0:10:37.520 and all that great stuff. And then around Saturn, of 0:10:37.559 --> 0:10:39.800 course you've got Titan, which is an intriguing mystery. I'm 0:10:39.800 --> 0:10:42.320 not aware of anything like that going on with Neptune 0:10:42.559 --> 0:10:44.640 or Uranus, but maybe I haven't given them a fair ship. 0:10:44.760 --> 0:10:46.800 I mean, the planets themselves, I think would be would 0:10:46.800 --> 0:10:49.720 be good topics, you know, uh, just so we can 0:10:49.760 --> 0:10:51.840 say that we have covered all of them, uh you know, 0:10:51.880 --> 0:10:54.079 just in time to have to like update with new 0:10:54.120 --> 0:10:56.200 information for all of Oh yeah, well I can't. We'll 0:10:56.240 --> 0:10:58.320 do We'll do an episode on Uranus just so we 0:10:58.360 --> 0:11:01.640 can pronounce its seventeen different Yeah. I believe a listener 0:11:02.040 --> 0:11:05.440 provided a different pronunciation recently, didn't they we heard I 0:11:05.480 --> 0:11:08.520 think we've heard uranus. Of course, we've heard uranus. We've 0:11:08.520 --> 0:11:12.880 heard uraas uh. I think that's it for now. Well, 0:11:12.880 --> 0:11:14.680 we gotta bring you back to the telescope. Okay, So 0:11:15.400 --> 0:11:17.960 here here's a question. I wonder about how many stars 0:11:18.400 --> 0:11:21.200 can you actually see without a telescope. I know there's 0:11:21.200 --> 0:11:24.400 got to be some general cut off point that most 0:11:24.440 --> 0:11:26.960 people aren't going to be able to see stars below 0:11:27.000 --> 0:11:31.080 a certain brightness. Yes, yeah, there's there's a there's a 0:11:31.160 --> 0:11:35.040 there's a system here for determining how visible various objects are, 0:11:35.280 --> 0:11:40.120 and there is a ballpark number. According to astronomer dorit 0:11:40.280 --> 0:11:44.080 Hof Late of Yale University, the total number of stars 0:11:44.080 --> 0:11:47.080 in the sky that can currently be seen from both 0:11:47.120 --> 0:11:51.520 hemispheres and given optimal conditions, is nine thousand and ninety 0:11:51.600 --> 0:11:55.280 six or four thousand, five forty eight stars per hemisphere, 0:11:55.679 --> 0:11:58.600 give or take, depending on the position in the season. 0:11:59.720 --> 0:12:02.880 It's monomers use the magnitude scale to measure star and 0:12:03.000 --> 0:12:06.280 planet brightness, so the higher the number, the fainter the 0:12:06.360 --> 0:12:09.720 object is in the sky. So the naked eye limit 0:12:09.800 --> 0:12:14.040 for most humans is six point five. Now, really bright 0:12:14.120 --> 0:12:17.160 objects actually have a negative rating on this scale. So 0:12:17.200 --> 0:12:21.199 a full moon is a negative twelve point seven highly visible, 0:12:21.679 --> 0:12:26.840 and the sun, yeah, everybody's seen this, uh, is a 0:12:26.880 --> 0:12:29.720 negative twenty six point seven. Now, I was looking at 0:12:29.760 --> 0:12:31.839 an article on this from Sky and Telescope, which is 0:12:31.880 --> 0:12:35.839 a wonderful website for anyone that's interested in astronomy, and 0:12:36.400 --> 0:12:40.480 Bob King has an article from titled nine thousand and 0:12:40.559 --> 0:12:43.640 ninety six stars in the sky? Is that all? And 0:12:43.640 --> 0:12:46.200 and he shares the following that was just a nice 0:12:46.240 --> 0:12:49.680 quote about the visibility that this. You know, this brings 0:12:49.760 --> 0:12:52.640 up quote. While the total number of naked eye stars 0:12:52.640 --> 0:12:56.120 may seem unimpressive, consider what happens in the sky in 0:12:56.240 --> 0:12:59.920 and around cities where most of us live. From the suburbs, 0:13:00.000 --> 0:13:03.839 the magnitude limit is around plus four for a worldwide 0:13:03.840 --> 0:13:07.240 total of about nine hundred stars, or half that for 0:13:07.400 --> 0:13:10.599 your location. If we set the city limit at magnitude 0:13:10.600 --> 0:13:13.920 plus two stars similar to the Big Dipper in brightness, 0:13:14.120 --> 0:13:17.760 we're left with just seventies stars worldwide, or thirty five 0:13:17.880 --> 0:13:22.360 stars visible from say downtown Chicago or Boston, right, because 0:13:22.360 --> 0:13:26.040 you're only ever seeing half. Yeah, that's that's a paltry 0:13:26.120 --> 0:13:29.240 number of stars. That kind of makes me hate our cities. Well, yeah, 0:13:29.360 --> 0:13:32.760 I mean, light pollution is a real detriment to uh, 0:13:32.800 --> 0:13:35.000 you know, in any kind of you know, amateur or 0:13:35.040 --> 0:13:37.720 certainly professional astronomy. I think I've mentioned this on one 0:13:37.760 --> 0:13:42.240 of our podcasts before, and at the risk of getting sappy, 0:13:42.559 --> 0:13:46.200 I one time went to a rural area in Oregon, 0:13:46.320 --> 0:13:49.120 you know, not near any big cities, and I guess 0:13:49.120 --> 0:13:52.560 it must have been very clear and dry in the night, 0:13:52.640 --> 0:13:55.959 and and I went outside, and I remember I saw 0:13:56.240 --> 0:13:59.760 so many stars. I I felt like I was going 0:13:59.760 --> 0:14:04.840 to fall over. And it was overwhelming. How different the 0:14:04.960 --> 0:14:07.959 sky is in a really dark sky area. Oh yeah. 0:14:08.000 --> 0:14:11.760 I had a similar experience in Georgia's own okay, Finoki Swamp, 0:14:11.840 --> 0:14:14.120 which is an area where is it's just there's no 0:14:14.320 --> 0:14:16.040 light pollution. You get out in just the midst of 0:14:16.040 --> 0:14:19.560 this enormous swamp land, and the stars are just overwhelming. 0:14:19.600 --> 0:14:23.200 Like it's no wonder that people sometimes and let's say 0:14:23.200 --> 0:14:25.240 that they've encountered a you know, they've seen a UFO 0:14:25.320 --> 0:14:29.120 in the sky. Um, because in a way it's like 0:14:29.120 --> 0:14:32.880 like seeing the cosmos like that, um, you know, unfiltered 0:14:32.880 --> 0:14:36.320 by light pollution. It it you know, it's It's almost 0:14:36.360 --> 0:14:39.840 like seeing some sort of alien spaceship. You know, you're 0:14:39.920 --> 0:14:42.840 you're confronted with the enormity of the cosmos. It was 0:14:42.840 --> 0:14:45.520 a borderline religious experience for me. I mean it felt 0:14:45.520 --> 0:14:48.280 like it felt like a revelation. I've gone my whole 0:14:48.280 --> 0:14:50.280 life on Earth looking up at the sky at night 0:14:50.320 --> 0:14:53.880 and never seen anything like this. Now that being said, 0:14:54.640 --> 0:14:57.800 an informed look at the skies, even from a city 0:14:58.240 --> 0:15:01.440 such as Atlanta, you can you can still have some 0:15:01.680 --> 0:15:06.040 you know, some interesting, you know, astronomical observations like it's 0:15:06.160 --> 0:15:08.840 it's it's wonderful video to be able to say, pinpoint 0:15:08.960 --> 0:15:12.320 Mars in the sky and pointed out to somebody and 0:15:12.640 --> 0:15:14.920 think about the fact that that is it. This is 0:15:14.960 --> 0:15:17.440 the planet that we've you know that do you hear 0:15:17.480 --> 0:15:19.880 about on the news that you see these this footage job. 0:15:19.920 --> 0:15:22.960 There's so many questions have been asked about there it 0:15:23.040 --> 0:15:25.760 is in the sky, I am observing it. Oh yeah, 0:15:25.800 --> 0:15:28.560 I've I've tried to cultivate that skill before, being able 0:15:28.600 --> 0:15:30.360 to just point things out in the sky, and I've 0:15:30.400 --> 0:15:33.000 never gotten good at it. Well, the apps really help 0:15:33.080 --> 0:15:36.280 these days. There's so many great um Star and Planet 0:15:36.320 --> 0:15:38.720 i D apps you can sort of cheat off of 0:15:38.760 --> 0:15:41.400 those and then have the experience you know, Yeah, I 0:15:41.440 --> 0:15:43.560 do like trying to find the direction of the center 0:15:43.560 --> 0:15:46.280 of the galaxy at any given time and point in 0:15:46.320 --> 0:15:50.040 the direction of Sagittary as a star, the supermassive black hole, 0:15:50.080 --> 0:15:53.360 which I know our descendants must be destined to someday 0:15:53.440 --> 0:15:56.800 just drive straight into. Now. Of course, all the stuff 0:15:56.840 --> 0:15:58.600 we were just talking about is looking up with the 0:15:58.680 --> 0:16:01.440 naked eye with a tell us gope. Things are very different, 0:16:01.520 --> 0:16:05.360 right because they magnify light so uh so with just 0:16:05.480 --> 0:16:10.960 the original refracting optical telescope, which was just a convex 0:16:11.160 --> 0:16:14.320 lens that gathered light from a wider field, and then 0:16:14.320 --> 0:16:19.720 it was paired at a certain distance with a concave eyepiece. Uh. Galileo, 0:16:19.880 --> 0:16:22.800 when he was looking into the sky was astonished by 0:16:22.880 --> 0:16:24.920 what he saw. He wrote, I have seen stars in 0:16:25.160 --> 0:16:28.760 myriads which have never been seen before, and which surpassed 0:16:28.760 --> 0:16:33.760 the old previously known stars in number more than ten times. Right. 0:16:33.800 --> 0:16:36.040 I mean we have to think back to that magnitude scale, 0:16:36.200 --> 0:16:40.600 you know, and the idea that suddenly, uh, cosmic bodies 0:16:40.720 --> 0:16:45.200 of a magnitude or more beyond previous human observation are 0:16:45.240 --> 0:16:49.040 now visible. Yeah, like it's it's you know, it's really 0:16:49.080 --> 0:16:52.320 crazy to imagine that. You really have to underline that statement. Yeah, 0:16:52.360 --> 0:16:54.000 and this would have been at the beginning of the 0:16:54.000 --> 0:16:57.840 sixteen hundreds. He's using the most primitive telescopes. Now, of 0:16:57.880 --> 0:17:00.320 course we see it's funny we can look can do 0:17:00.400 --> 0:17:03.160 like a little tiny patch of the sky where before 0:17:03.200 --> 0:17:05.879 there would have been nothing, and with the powerful telescopes 0:17:05.920 --> 0:17:08.320 of today, we zoom in and see almost like ah, 0:17:08.920 --> 0:17:11.040 it's like when you you know, zoom in on water 0:17:11.240 --> 0:17:13.639 with a microscope and you see all the little bacteria 0:17:13.720 --> 0:17:16.199 living in it, except now we see galaxies full of 0:17:16.280 --> 0:17:20.800 stars where previously we thought there was nothing. Alright, Well, 0:17:20.800 --> 0:17:22.440 on that note, we're going to take a quick break, 0:17:22.440 --> 0:17:24.240 but when we come back, we're going to get to 0:17:24.240 --> 0:17:28.320 the question who invented the telescope? Where did it come from? 0:17:28.400 --> 0:17:31.679 And and more importantly, like what does it say about 0:17:31.680 --> 0:17:41.840 the time the timing of this invention? Alright, we're back. 0:17:42.000 --> 0:17:44.960 So now we're talking about the invention of the original 0:17:45.000 --> 0:17:47.760 optical telescope, and we should start off saying at the 0:17:48.119 --> 0:17:51.080 very top that credit for the invention of the telescope 0:17:51.200 --> 0:17:54.679 is highly disputed. What counts you know, do just like 0:17:54.760 --> 0:17:57.520 descriptions written in a book count if we don't have 0:17:57.560 --> 0:18:00.439 evidence that it was actually made, what were people actually 0:18:00.440 --> 0:18:04.840 talking about when they wrote about various kinds of magnification. Historically, 0:18:04.960 --> 0:18:07.879 credit for the invention of the telescope is most often 0:18:07.920 --> 0:18:09.679 given to a figure we're going to mention in just 0:18:09.720 --> 0:18:13.880 a minute, a Dutch spectacle maker named Hans Lipper shy 0:18:14.040 --> 0:18:19.560 or Hans lippersh lippers hay is how I've seen multiple 0:18:19.560 --> 0:18:23.520 different pronunciations. Uh so, yeah, so lippers hey, Lipper she 0:18:23.760 --> 0:18:26.439 lippers high. We'll we'll say them all, but there are 0:18:26.440 --> 0:18:29.439 a lot of different contenders that that have competed in 0:18:29.480 --> 0:18:31.720 the minds of historians, and we won't have time to 0:18:31.760 --> 0:18:34.880 mention them all. We will highlight a few, right, yeah, 0:18:34.920 --> 0:18:37.119 and uh yeah, it's we we really have to stress 0:18:37.160 --> 0:18:38.640 that not only it's not just one of these things 0:18:38.640 --> 0:18:42.359 where it was disputed later, where like historians are saying, actually, 0:18:42.920 --> 0:18:46.199 this person working in this other land had you know, 0:18:46.280 --> 0:18:48.360 some other ideas or seemed to have a product type 0:18:48.520 --> 0:18:50.720 and no, I mean it was disputed at the time 0:18:51.080 --> 0:18:53.960 in Lipper's own country. Yeah, and we'll touch on the 0:18:54.200 --> 0:18:56.480 details of that. Well. I think one of the reasons 0:18:56.560 --> 0:19:00.320 that it's so disputed is that the essential technolo ology 0:19:00.359 --> 0:19:04.000 for creating the telescope had existed for a long time 0:19:04.119 --> 0:19:09.280 before anybody ever made a telescope exactly. So Leprosy lived 0:19:09.320 --> 0:19:13.640 fifteen seventy through sixteen nineteen, and it's worth noting that 0:19:13.640 --> 0:19:16.600 that here at this point in in his life, he was, 0:19:16.640 --> 0:19:19.919 of course a spectacle maker, and spectacles had been around 0:19:19.920 --> 0:19:23.840 in Europe for at least three centuries. Uh. And I'd 0:19:23.840 --> 0:19:25.800 actually love to come back to a future episode of 0:19:25.880 --> 0:19:30.080 Invention where we'll talk about those three centuries, talk about uh, glasses, 0:19:30.080 --> 0:19:33.680 spectacles where they came from. But basically the idea is, 0:19:33.720 --> 0:19:36.520 as Europe emerged from the Dark Ages and its economy 0:19:36.560 --> 0:19:39.640 rebounded from the invasions of the Dark Ages, it became 0:19:39.680 --> 0:19:44.359 increasingly beneficial to ensure that functional eyesight was maintained in 0:19:44.400 --> 0:19:49.440 their aging scholars and scribes. So that that's why eyeglasses 0:19:50.160 --> 0:19:53.520 west by spectacles emerged really in Europe, well right, I mean, 0:19:53.600 --> 0:19:57.719 eyeglasses would be a technology that extended the working life 0:19:57.800 --> 0:20:01.760 of people who copied documents for living and because they 0:20:01.800 --> 0:20:04.760 didn't have a printing press yet in some of that time, 0:20:05.440 --> 0:20:10.200 hand copying of documents was incredibly important for preserving knowledge 0:20:10.200 --> 0:20:13.359 and spreading it. Yeah, this is the necessity in the 0:20:13.240 --> 0:20:18.560 invention scenario here. Um. You know, eyeglasses are largely attributed 0:20:18.640 --> 0:20:22.679 to a Venetian invention, sometimes around thirteen hundred and for 0:20:22.760 --> 0:20:25.480 our fellow name of the rose Fans out there, the 0:20:25.560 --> 0:20:28.360 story of murders in a medieval abbey that they take 0:20:28.400 --> 0:20:32.080 place in thirteen seven, and their their use is certainly 0:20:32.119 --> 0:20:35.600 factors into a burn of Echo's plot. The use of spectacles. Yeah, 0:20:35.640 --> 0:20:38.080 the main detective in the story, William of Baskerville. He 0:20:38.119 --> 0:20:41.640 has a pair of spectacles, but they're not like normal, right, 0:20:41.680 --> 0:20:43.360 It's not like, oh, you can just go get new 0:20:43.400 --> 0:20:46.960 spectacles somewhere, Like if he loses them, that's a problem. Yeah, yeah, 0:20:47.119 --> 0:20:50.280 for sure. But yeah, some three hundred years separate the 0:20:50.280 --> 0:20:52.920 birth of spectacles and ultimately the birth of the spectacle 0:20:52.960 --> 0:20:57.080 making trade. Uh from this event right where a spectacle 0:20:57.160 --> 0:21:00.440 maker takes the technology and creates tell us gop out 0:21:00.440 --> 0:21:03.600 of it. And then the reason for creating this telescope 0:21:03.800 --> 0:21:06.920 is it turns out it's not to gaze at the heavens, 0:21:06.960 --> 0:21:09.760 but to better kill people on the battlefield. I see. 0:21:10.840 --> 0:21:13.160 So basically and this is this is the story as 0:21:13.160 --> 0:21:18.399 it specifically concerns Lippers. During the early sixteen hundreds, Dutch 0:21:18.440 --> 0:21:23.760 military reformer Prince Maurice of Nassau offered monetary rewards for 0:21:23.800 --> 0:21:27.159 any inventions that could help modernize the Dutch fighting force. 0:21:27.800 --> 0:21:30.840 Lippers took his knowledge of spectacles and applied them to 0:21:30.880 --> 0:21:36.000 the problem, developing what he called the Looker, which he 0:21:36.080 --> 0:21:39.520 filed a patent for in six eight and their varying 0:21:39.680 --> 0:21:44.040 versions of Lippers's eureka moment ranging from him observing children 0:21:44.119 --> 0:21:47.760 playing with lenses in his shop and watching them, you know, 0:21:47.840 --> 0:21:49.880 hold one lens up and then hold the other lens 0:21:49.960 --> 0:21:53.439 up and make objects at a distance appear closer. And 0:21:53.440 --> 0:21:56.159 then there are also just accusations that he he flat 0:21:56.160 --> 0:21:58.760 out stole the idea from someone else, and we'll get 0:21:58.760 --> 0:22:03.240 to that as well. But the question that emerges from 0:22:03.240 --> 0:22:06.119 all this is wouldn't this invention have been obvious to 0:22:06.240 --> 0:22:11.000 anyone familiar with the three hundred year old technology of spectacles. Yeah, 0:22:11.040 --> 0:22:14.880 so you've spectacles work on the principle of magnification through 0:22:15.520 --> 0:22:19.120 refraction through glass. So you've got glass as a transparent medium. 0:22:19.359 --> 0:22:22.240 You can make a rounded edge on the outside of 0:22:22.320 --> 0:22:25.160 one of these discs of glass right like and basically 0:22:25.160 --> 0:22:28.719