PATH TRACKING

DISCOVERIES AND
LANDMARK
DEVELOPMENTS
 ANCIENT WORLD
 20th -16th Century B.C. - Ancient Babylonian tablets show knowledge of
the distinction between the moving planets and the "fixed" stars, and the
recognition that the movement of planets are regular and periodic.
 15th - 12th Century B.C. - The Hindu Rigveda of ancient India describes the
origin of the universe in which a "cosmic egg" or Brahmanda, containing the
Sun, Moon, planets and the whole universe, expands out of a single
concentrated point before subsequently collapsing again, reminiscent of the
much later Big Bang and oscillating universe theories.
 5th Century B.C. - The Greek philosopher Anaxagoras becomes arguably
the first to formulate a kind of molecular theory of matter, and to regard the
physical universe as subject to the rule of rationality or reason.
 5th Century B.C. - The Greek philosophers Leucippus and Democritus
found the school of Atomism, which holds that the universe is composed of
very small, indivisible and indestructible building blocks known as atoms,
which then form different combinations and shapes in an infinite void.
 4th Century B.C. - The Greek philosopher Aristotle describes a geocentric
universe in which the fixed. spherical Earth is at the centre, surrounded by
concentric celestial spheres of planets and stars. Although he portrays the
universe as finite in size, he stresses that it exists unchanged and static
throughout eternity.
 4th Century B.C. - The Greek philosopher Heraclides proposes that the
apparent daily motion of the stars is created by the rotation of the Earth on its
axis once a day, and that the Sun annually circles a central Earth, while the
other planets orbit the Sun (a geocentric model with heliocentric aspects).
 3rd Century B.C. - The Stoic philosophers of ancient Greece assert a kind of
"island universe" in which a finite cosmos is surrounded by an infinite void
(similar in principle to a galaxy).
 3rd Century B.C.-The Greek mathematician and geographer Eratosthenes
proved that the Earth was round, and made a remarkably accurate calculation
of its circumference and its tilt (as well as devising a system of latitude and
longitude, and, possibly, estimating the distance of the Earth from the Sun).

 3rd Century B.C.-The Greek astronomer and mathematician Aristarchus of
Samos is the first to present an explicit argument for a heliocentric model of the
Solar System, placing the Sun, not the Earth, at the center of the known
universe. He describes the Earth as rotating daily on its axis and revolving
annually about the Sun in a circular orbit, along with a sphere of fixed stars.
 2nd Century B.C. - The Greek astronomer Hipparchus of Nicea makes the first
measurement of the precession of the equinoxes, and compiles the first star
catalogue (in which he proposes our modern system of apparent magnitudes).
He also improves on the Solar System model of Apollonius of Perga , in which
an eccentric circle carries around a smaller circle (an epicycle), which in turn
carries around a planet.
 2nd Century B.C. - The Hellenistic astronomer and philosopher Seleucus of
Seleucia supports Aristarchus’ heliocentric theory, and links the tides to the
influence of the Moon.
 2nd Century A.D. - The Roman-Egyptian mathematician and astronomer
Ptolemy (Claudius Ptolemaeus) describes a geocentric model, largely based on
Aristotelian ideas, in which the planets and the rest of the universe orbit about a
stationary Earth in circular epicycles, which becomes the scientific orthodoxy
for nearly two millennia (essentially until Copernicus in the 16th Century). He
also details the complex motions of the stars and planetary paths using
equants , allowing astronomers to predict the positions of the planets .
MEDIEVAL AND RENAISSANCE
WORLD

5th Century A.D. - The Indian astonomer and mathematician Aryabhata proposes
that the Earth turns on its own axis, and describes elliptical orbits around the Sun,
which some have interpreted as heliocentrism
 6th Century A.D. The Christian philosopher John Philoponus of Alexandria
argues against the ancient Greek notion of an infinite past, and is perhaps the
first commentator to argue that the universe is finite in time and therefore had a
beginning.
 7th Century - The Indian astronomer Brahmagupta, a follower of the heliocentric
theory of the Solar System earlier developed by Aryabhata, recognizes gravity as
a force of attraction in his "The Opening of the Universe" of 628, in which he
describes a force of attraction between the Sun and the Earth.
 9th Century - The Muslim astronomer Ja'faribn Muhammad Abu Ma'shar al-
Balkhi developes a planetary model which some have interpreted as heliocentric
model.
 9th-11th Century - Early Muslim and Jewish theologians such as Al-Kindi ,
SaadiaGaon and Al-Ghazali offer logical arguments supporting a finite universe.
 11th Century - The Arab polymath Alhazen (also known as Ibn al-Haytham) becomes the first to apply the scientific
method to astronomy.
 11th Century - The Persian astronomer Abu al-Rayhan al-Biruni describes the Earth's gravitation as the attraction of all
things towards the centre of the Earth and hypothesizes that the Earth turns daily on its axis and annually around the
Sun.
 11th Century - The Persian polymath Omar Khayyam demonstrates that the universe is not moving around Earth, but
that the Earth revolves on its axis, bringing into view different star constellations throughout the night and day. He also
calculated the solar year as 365.24219858156 days (correct to six decimal places).
 14th Century - The Arab astronomer and engineer Ibn al-Shatir (of the Iranian Maraghaschool of astronomy) refines
and improves the accuracy of the geocentric Ptolemaic model and develops the first accurate model of lunar motion.
 15th Century - The Turkish/Persian astronomer and mathematician Ali Qushji rejects the Aristotelian notion of a
stationary Earth in favour of a rotating Earth. .
 15th Century - Somayaji Nilakantha of the Kerala school of astronomy and mathematics in southern India develops a
computational system or a partially heliocentric planetary model in which Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn orbit
the Sun, which in turns orbit the earth.
 1543 - The Polish astronomer and polymath Nicolaus Copernicus (adapting the geocentric Maragha model of Ibn al-
Shatir to meet the requirements of the ancient earth rotates on its axis once daily heliocentric universe of Aristarchus) ,
proposes that the sun once a year , and demonstrates that the motions of celestial objects can be explained without
putting the earth at rest in the centre of the universe . His copernican Principle (that the Earth is not in a central.
specially favoured position) and its implications (that celestial bodies obey physical laws identical to those on Earth) first
establishes cosmology as a science rather than a branch of metaphysics, and marks a shift away from
anthropocentrism.
 1576 - The English astronomer Thomas Digges popularizes
Copernicus ideas and also extends them by positing the existence
of a multitude of stars extending to infinity, rather than Copernicus'
narrow band of fixed stars.
 1584 - The Italian philosopher Giordano Bruno takes the
Copernican Principle a stage further by suggesting that even the
Solar System is not the centre of the universe. but rather a relatively
insignificant star system among an infinite multitude of others.
 1587 - The Danish nobleman and astronomer Tycho Brahe
develops a kind of hybrid of the Ptolemaic and Copernican models,
a geo-heliocentric system similar to that of SomayajiNilakantha, now
known as the Tychonic system. This involves a static Earth at the
centre of the universe, around which revolve the Sun and the Moon,
with the other five planets revolving around the Sun.
EARLY MODERN WORLD

 1605 - The German mathematician and astronomer Johannes

Kepler establishes his three Laws of Planetary Motion,
mathematical laws that describe the motion of planets in the
Solar System, including the ground-breaking idea that the
planets follow elliptical, not circular, paths around the Sun.
Newton later used them to deduce his own Laws Motion and his
Law of Universal Gravitation.
 1610 - The Italian mathematician and physicist Galieo Galilei
develops an astronomical telescope powerful enough to indentify
moons orbiting Jupiter, sunspots on the Sun and the different
phases of Mercury, all of which are instrumental in convincing
the scientific community of the day that the heliocentric
Copernican model of the Solar System is superior to the
geocentric Ptolemiac model.
 • 1632 - Galileo Galilei first describes the Princir Relativity, the idea that the fundamental laws of phi are the
same in all inertial frames and that, purely observing the outcome of mechanical experiments, on cannot
distinguish a state of rest from a state of constant velocity. •
 1633 - The French philosopher René Descartes outlines a model of a static, infinite universe made up of tiny
"corpuscles" of matter, a viewpoint not dissimilar to ancient Greek atomism. Descartes' universe shares many
elements of Sir Isaac Newton's later model, although Descartes' vacuum of space is not empty but composed
of huge swirling whirlpools of ethereal or fine matter, producing what would later be called gravitational effects.
 1638 - Galileo Galilei demonstrates that unequal weig would fall with the same finite speed in a vacuum, and
that their time of descent is independent of their mass. Thus, freely falling bodies, heavy or light, have the same
constant acceleration, due to the force of gravity.
 1675 - The English physicist Sir Isaac Newton argues that light is composed of particles, which are refracted
by acceleration toward a denser medium and posi he existence of aether to transmit forces between particles.
 1687 - Sir Isaac Newton publishes his "Principia", which describes an infinite, steady state, static universe, in
which matter on the large scale is uniformly distributed. In the work, he establishes the three Laws of Motion
(“a body persists its state of rest or of uniform motion unless acted upon by an external unbalanced force”; “
force equals mass times acceleration“; and "to every action there is an equal and opposite reaction") and the
Law of Universal Gravitation (that every particle in the universe attracts every other particle according to an
inverse-square formula) that were not to be improved upon for more than two hundred years. He is credited
with introducing the idea that the motion of objects in the heavens (such as planets, the Sun and the Moon) can
be described by the same set of physical laws as the motion of objects on the ground (like cannon balls and
falling apples).
 1734 - The Swedish scientist and philosopher Emanuel Swedenborg proposes a hierarchical
universe, still generally based on a Newtonian static universe. but with matter clustered on
ever larger scales of hierarchy. endlessly being recycled. This idea of a hierarchical universe
and the "nebular hypothesis" were developed further (independently) by Thomas Wright
(1750) and Immanuel Kant (1775).
 1761 - The Swiss physicist Johann Heinrich Lambert supports Wright and Kant's hierarchical
universe and nebular hypothesis, and also hypothesizes that the stars near the Sun are part
of a group which travel together through the Milky Way, and that there are many such
groupings or star systems throughout the galaxy.
 1783 - The amateur British astronomer John Michell proposes the theoretical idea of an
object massive enough that its gravity would prevent even light from escaping (which has
since become known as a black hole). He realizes that such an object would not be directly
visible. but could be identified by the motions of a companion star if it was part of a binary
system. A similar idea was independently proposed by the Frenchman Pierre-Simon Laplace
in 1795.
 1789 - The French 89 - The French chemist Antoine-Laurent de Lavoisier definitively states
the Law of Conservation of Mass (although others had previously expressed sin including the
ancient Greek Epicurus, the Persian Nasir al-Din al-Tusi and the 18th scientists Mikhail
Lomonosov, Joseph Black Cavendish and Jean Rey), and identifies (albeit sli incorrectly) 23
elements which he claims can broken down into simpler substances.
 1803 - The English scientist Thomas Young demonstrates in his famous double-slit experiment, the
interference of light and concludes that light is a wave, not a particle as Sir Isaac Newton had ruled
 1805 - The English chemist John Dalton develops his atomic theory, proposing that each chemical
element is composed of atoms of a single unique type, and that, though they are both immutable and
indestructible, they can combine to form more complex structures.
 1812 - William Smith describes the evidence of fossils in rock strata for the advancement of geology.
 1839 - The English scientist Michael Faraday conclude from his work on electromagnetism that,
contrary to scientific opinion of the time. the divisions bet the various kinds of electricity are illusory.
He al establishes that magnetism can affect rays of light, that there is an underlying relationship
between the Itect rays of light, and phenomena.
 1864 - The Scottish Iship between the two demonstrates that electric through space in the form of
light and that elec nagnetic fields travel are all manifestations of el constant speed together laws
original and even light Gauss, Michael Farada . He collected unified and consistent theo rl Friedrich
Equations). Ampère into a unified and consistent theory ( often known as Maxwell’s E quations).
 1896 - The French physicist Henri Becquerel discovers that certain kinds of matter emit radiation of
their own accord (radioactivity).
 1897 - The British physicist J. J. Thomson discovers the electron, the first known sub-atomic particle.
MODERN WORLD
 1900 - The German physicist Max Planck suggests, while describing his law of black body radiation, that
light may be emitted in discrete frequencies or "quanta", and establishes the value of the Planck constant to
describe the sizes of these quanta. This is often regarded as marking the birth of quantum physics.
 1905 - The German physicist Albert Einstein shows how the photoelectric effect is caused by absorption of
quanta of light (or photons), an important step in understanding the quantum nature of light and electrons,
and a strong influence on the formation of the concept of wave particle duality in quantum theory.
 1905 - Albert Einstein publishes his Special Theory of Relativity, in which he generalizes Galileo's Principle
of Relativity (that all uniform motion is relative, and that there is no absolute and well-defined state of rest)
from mechanics to all the laws of physics, and incorporates the principle that the speed of light is the same
for all inertial observers regardless of the state of motion of the source.
 1905 - In a separate paper, Albert Einstein derives the concept of mass-energy equivalence (that any mass
has an associated energy) and his famous E = mc equation.
 1907 - The German mathematician Hermann Minkowski realizes that Einstein's Special Theory of Relativity
can be best understood in a four-dimensional space, which he calls "space-time" and in which time and
space are not separate entities but intermingled in a four-dimensional space.
 1911 - The New Zealand chemist Ernest Rutherford interprets the 1909 experiments of Hans Ernest
Marsden, establishing for the first planetary model of the atom, where a central nu circled by a number of
tiny electrons like planets a sun.
 1915 - The German physicist Karl Schwarzschild provides the first exact solution to Einstein's field
equations of general relativity (even before Einstein publishes the theory) for the limited case of a
single spherical non-rotating mass, which leads to the "Schwarzschild radius” which defines the size
of the event horizon of a non rotating black hole.
 1916 - Albert Einstein publishes his General Theory of Relativity, in which he unifies special relativity
and Newton's Law of Universal Gravitation, and describes gravity as a property of the curvature of
four-dimensional space. Objects including planets. like the Earth, to instance) fly freely under their
own inertia through warped space-time, following curved paths because is the shortest possible path
in warped space.
 1916 - The Austrian physicist Ludwig Flamn examines Schwarz child's solution to Einstein's field
equations and points out that the equations theoretically allow for some kind of invisible connection
between two distinct regions of space-time (later to become known as a “wormhole”).
 1917 – Albert Einstein publishes paper introducing the “cosmological constant” into the General
Theory of Relativity in an attempt to model the behavior of the entire universe, an idea he later called
his “greatest blunder” but which, in the light of recent discoveries, is beginning to look remarkably
prescient.
 1919 - Ernest Rutherford is credited with the discovery of the proton when he notices the signature
of hydrogen nuclei when alpha particles are shot into nitrogen gas. In these experiments, he also
became the first person to transmute one element into the other (nitrogen into oxygen) through a
deliberate man made nuclear reaction.
 1919 - The English astrophysicist Arthur Eddington uses his measurements of an eclipse to confirm the
deflection of starlight by the gravity of the Sun as predicted in Albert Einstein's General Theory of Relativity.
 1919 The German mathematician Theodor Kaluza proposes the addition of a fifth dimension to the General
Theory of Relativity, a precursor to much later superstring theory attempts to combine general relativity and
quantum theory. The Swedish physicist Oskar Klein independently proposes a similar idea in 1926.
 1922 - The Russian biochemist Alexander Oparin hypothesizes that life on Earth began in a "primeval soup"
of matter and water between 3.9 and 3.5 billion years ago, as chemical reactions produced small organic
molecules from substances present in the atmosphere. which were then organized by chance into the more
complex organic molecules that are the basis of life.
 1922 - The Russian cosmologist and mathematician Alexander Friedmann discovers the expanding
universe solution to Einstein's general relativity field equations. The solution for a universe with positive
curvature (spherical space) results in the universe expanding for a time and then contracting due to the pull
of its gravity, in a perpetual cycle of Big Bang followed by Big Crunch now known as the oscillating universe
theory.
 1925 The American astronomer Edwin Hubble proves conclusively that nebulae such as the Andromeda
Nebula are much too distant to be part of the Milky Way and are in fact entire galaxies outside our own, thus
settling the "Great Debate" about the nature of spiral nebulae and the size of the universe. ⚫
 1925 - The Austrian theoretical physicist Wolfgang Pauli establishes an important quantum mechanical
principle known as the Pauli exclusion principle, whis that no two identical fermions (such as electro occupy
the same quantum state simultaneously .
 1926- The German physicist Werner Heisenberg formula his uncertainty principle, that the values of certain
pai of variables cannot both be known exactly (i.e. the more precisely one variable is known, the less
precisely the other can be known), a central concept in quantum physics.
 1926 - The Austrian physicist Erwin Schrödinger publishes what is now known as the Schrödinger Equation,
a central and revolutionary achievement in quantum physics. Later, in 1935, he proposes the famous
"Schrödinger's Cat" thought experiment or paradox concerning quantum superposition, decoherence and
entanglement.
 1927 - The Belgian Roman Catholic priest and physicist Georges Lemaître proposes (even before Hubbles
corroborating evidence) that the universe is expanding, followed in 1931 by the first definitive version of what
has become known as the Big Bang theory of the origin of the universe. .
 1928 - The British physicist Paul Dirac provides a description of the "spin" of elementary particles such as
electrons which is consistent with both the principles o quantum mechanics and the Special Theory of
Relativity, and predicts the existence of an
 . 1929 - Edwin Hubble definitively shows that all the galaxies in the universe are moving away from us
according to a formula which has become known as Hubble’s law, showing that the universe is not in fact
static, but expanding.
 1932 - The English physicist James Chadwick discovers the neutron: the American physicist Carl Anderson
identifies the positron (the anti-electron which had been predicted by Paul Dirac a few years earlier); and the
British physicist John Cockcroft and the Irish physicist Ernest Walton succeed in transmuting lithium into
helium and other chemical elements using high energy protons, popularly referred to as "splitting the atom".
 1934 - The Swiss-American astronomer Fritz Zwicky and the German-American Walter Baade coin the
term "supernova" and hypothesize (correctly) that they are the transition of normal stars into neutron
stars, as well as the origin of cosmic rays. Zwicky also uses the viriall theorem to deduce the existence
of unseen matter what is now called dark matter) in the universe, as well as the effect of gravitational
lensing.
 1935 - Albert Einstein and the Israeli physicist Nathan Rosen achieve a solution to Einstein's field
equations known as an Einstein-Rosen bridge (also known as a Lorentzianwormhole or a
Schwarzschild wormhole).
 1935. The Indian-American astrophysicist Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar establishes the
"Chandrasekhar limit of about 1.4 solar masses, above which a star must continue to collapse into a
neutron star rather than settling down into a white dwarf.
 1939 - The discovery of nuclear fission results from the Berlin experiments of Otto Hahn, Lise Meitner,
Fritz Strassmann and Otto Frisch.
 1948 - The English astronomer Fred Hoyle and the Austrians Thomas Gold and Hermann Bondi
propose a non-standard cosmology (i.e. one opposed to the standard Big Bang model) known as the
steady state universe. This theory describes a universe that has no beginning and no end, and that
expands continuously, but in which new matter is constantly created and inserted as it expands in order
to maintain a constant density, so that its overall look does not change over time.
 1963 - The New Zealand mathematician Roy Kerr discovers a solution to Einstein's general relativity
field equations which describes a spinning black hole, and argues these are likely to be common
objects throughout universe
 1965 - The American astronomers Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson discover the existence of cosmic
microwave background radiation, considered by most to be the best evidence for the Big Bang
model of the universe (and effectively disproving Hoyle et al's steady state universe theory).
 1966 - The Russian physicist Andrei Sakharov outlines the three conditions necessary for the
observed matter antimatter imbalance in the universe to be possible, and hypothesizes about
singularities linking parallel universes.
 1969 - The Murchison meteorite falls on Australia, revealing significant quantities of organic
compounds and amino acids (the basis of early life on Earth) which originated in outer space.
 1970 - The English physicist Stephen Hawking provides along with Roger Penrose, theorems
regarding singularities in space-time, indicating that singularities and black holes are actually a fairly
generic feature of general relativity. He also predicts that black holes should in theory emit radiation
(known today as Hawking, radiation) until they eventually exhaust their energy and evaporate .
 1980 - The American physicist Alan Guth proposes a model of the universe based on the big bang,
but incorporating a short, early period of exponential cosmic inflation in order to solve the horizon
and flatness problems of the standard Big Bang model.
 1980 - The invention of the Scanning Tunnelling Microscope, by the German Gerd Binnig and the
Swiss Heinrich Rohrer, shows visually for the first time that matter is composed of spherical atoms
stacked row on row.
 1983 - The Russian-American physicist Andrei Linde develops Guth'scosmic inflation
idea further with his chaotic inflation (or eternal inflation) theory, which sees our
universe as just one of many "bubble universes" that have developed as part of a
multiverse.
 1984-86 - A series of important discoveries in string theory leads to the "first
superstring revolution", and it is first realized that string theory might be capable of
describing all elementary particles as well as the interactions between them.
 1995 - The American theoretical physicist Edward Witten and others develop M-theory,
and spark a flurry of new research in string theory, sometimes called the “second
superstring revolution". •
 1998 - Observations of distant Type la supernovas, both by the American astrophysicist
Saul Perlmutter and by the Australians Nick Suntzeff and Brian Schmidt, indicate that
they are actually further away from the Earth than expected, suggesting an accelerating
expansion of the universe.
 2002 - The American physicist Paul Steinhardt and South African-British physicist Neil
Turok propose another variation of the inflating universe known as the cyclic model,
developed using state-of-the-art M-theory, superstring theory and brane cosmology,
which involves an inflating universe expanding and contracting in cycles.