Newton – Cosmology and the History of Wonder

“To develop working ideas efficiently, I try to fail as fast as I can.” — Richard Feynman

Aristotle (384–322 BCE) argued that if the void existed, every object would fall through the void at the same unlimited speed, because there would be nothing to hinder its motion. Therefore, Aristotle concluded, the concept of the void is absurd. This was one of several arguments he gave for its nonexistence. Over eight centuries later, John Philoponus (Approx 490-570 CE) thought otherwise. He lived over a thousand years before Galileo, and his works of critical commentary on Aristotle’s physics were largely forgotten for many centuries.

So, what actually happens when you drop a feather and a bowling ball in vacuum? Here is a full-scale demonstration, carried out in the world’s largest vacuum chamber:

An earlier demonstration was carried out on the Moon using a hammer and a feather by Apollo 15 astronaut David Scott:

Cosmology Folks: I am going to try an experiment tomorrow and need your help.

When you arrive in class, please arrange yourselves into small groups of from 2-3 students each. Then, with your colleagues, please discuss the following: Newton’s theory of Absolute Space and Absolute Time, implies the concept of a Universal Now. In Newton’s view, each Universal Now is like a page in a book, and ‘eternity’ is like the entire stack of pages that make up the book. The analogy is not perfect, because Newton believed time is continuous, but you get the idea.

Here is Mel Brooks’ take on it, from the movie Spaceballs.

Question: Does the future already exist, and does the past still exist? (This type of theory is called the Block Universe.) If the past and future all exist, not just ‘Now’, why do we only experience a single Now? Please discuss…

See you tomorrow (aka the next page in Newton’s book).