Episode 3.notebook March 25, 2014 Episode 3: When Knowledge Conquered Fear. Comet: Originally thought to be an omen of bad things, we now know that comets are dirty ice-balls with very elliptical paths around the sun. Disaster: Literally means "bad star." It has come to mean a horrible event. The Battle of 1066, when the Saxons invaded England, was started because of a Comet. Humans are great at Pattern Recognition. We are so good, that sometimes we find False Patterns.Episode 3.notebook March 25, 2014 Comets come from the Oort Cloud. This is a spherical cloud around the solar system that contains lots and lots of comets. It is not really visible. 1) It's dark out there. 2) The Oort Cloud is not very dense. Each comet is very far away from each other. Sometimes, a comet drifts a little closer to the sun, and gets pulled in. Then it passes by another planet, and gets tugged harder. Eventually these comets may fall into a smaller, regular orbit. Who predicted the Oort Cloud? Jan(Yahn) Oort. He also figured out how far we are from the center of the galaxy.Episode 3.notebook March 25, 2014 In 1664, there was a comet, and then The Plague hit, and London was consumed in a fire. Edmund Halley was not afraid. He wanted to study it, and was RICH. Daddy bought him awesome toys and sent him to awesome schools. Eventually, this lead to awesome science. -Mapped constellations of Southern Hemisphere. -Sent on many expeditions and mapped the Magnetic Field. -Created Diving Bells. -Created Weather Map. -Laid foundation for Population Statistics. -Accurately predicted scale of the Solar System. -Discovered that stars move, this is called Proper Motion.Episode 3.notebook March 25, 2014 Halley worked for The Royal Society in London, which was lead by Hooke. Hooke: described the motion of springs (Hooke's Law) Used & Invented microscope to first view cells. Improved on Telescopes. Invented Air Pump. Helped re-design London after the fire. Newton: Born on Christmas Day, 1643. -Explain refraction of light. -Invented the Reflection Telescope. -Then he got insulted by Hooke and went recluse. -Invented Calculus. -Halley approached Newton with the problem of planetary motion. Newton already figured it out because he made a math model for Gravity.Episode 3.notebook March 25, 2014 Newton published a book called Principia. It almost wasn't published because the Royal Society lost a lot of money printing the History of Fish. Principia covered many Natural Laws, like Physics, Gravity, and Planetary Motion. Principia also predicted the possibility of space travel. If you go fast enough, you just might miss the Earth as you fall. Halley had one last legacy; he predicted the return of a comet approx 50 years after the prediction. He was right, so we named that comet Halley's Comet.