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The discovery of the planet Neptune was a triumph of mathematics. While studying the orbit of the planet Uranus, Urbain Leverrier realized that its perturbations suggested the presence of an unknown planet in an orbit beyond that of Uranus. Leverrier promptly calculated where the planet should be found. On September 23, 1846, the astronomer Johann Galle (in Berlin) looked at the indicated spot - and discovered Neptune in less than an hour.
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The universe we see when we look out to its furthest horizons contains a hundred billion galaxies. Each of these galaxies contains another hundred billion stars... The silent embarrassment of modern astrophysics is that we do not know how even a single one of these stars managed to form. Martin Harwit |
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