Planetary Radio: Space Exploration, Astronomy and Science - Author Dava Sobel's New Book About Copernicus: A More Perfect Heaven

Episode Date: December 5, 2011

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Hello, Bill Nye the Planetary Guy here. I'd like to thank you for listening to PlanRad, Planetary Radio. This is how we get everybody in the world to participate in space exploration. The Planetary Society has tens of thousands of members. We petition Congress. We participate in space conferences all over the world because we want to bring out the best in people. And that's what space exploration does. It just changes the way we think about our place in space. And by listening to Plan Rad, you're part of the community.

So if you get time, please check out our website, planetary.org, and think about supporting us because we are working together to change the world. It's an exciting time in space exploration and I'd very much like it if you were an active participant. Thanks again for listening. I gotta fly. Bill Nye the Planetary Guy. Deva Sobel and her book about the man who revolutionized the heavens,

this week on Planetary Radio. Welcome to the travel show that takes you to the final frontier. I'm Matt Kaplan of the Planetary Society. Copernicus did not publish on the revolutions of the heavenly spheres until just before his death. Now there is a fascinating and beautiful book about this man and how he changed our view of the cosmos. Its author, Deva Sobel, will join us. We won't hear from Emily Lakdawalla this week.

She is attending the annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union, and she'll provide an extended report on that gathering next week, which means we can go directly to Bill Nye, the planetary guy. Bill, we got good news and bad news. I guess we'll start with the bad news, which is one spacecraft which is looking more and more like it is not going to be headed to Mars' moon Phobos. That's right. The Phobos-Grunt mission, the Russian word for soil is grunt,

was going to go to the Martian moon Phobos, scoop up a little Phobos and come back in three years. Well, you start on such a journey by getting an Earth orbit, parking orbit, and then firing a big thruster and shooting off. Well, it looks like that thruster isn't going to fire, and the European Space Agency has given up. They've been helping out tracking this thing. It goes across the sky very fast.

You have very little time to send it a signal and very hard to get a photograph, but there are some photographs and you can see them on the Planetary Society website on Emily Lakdawalla's blog. I think the entry is December 2nd. Yeah, you'll find her reporting on that. And it's, of course, as always, her reportage is very good. And the thing is stuck and it's heartbreaking. You know, the Planetary Society is invested in this. We have our living interplanetary flight experiment bolted on. And it looks like the whole thing is going to burn up in the Earth's atmosphere around middle of January. But check out the pictures. It really is striking that these guys were able to get these shots. But it is heartbreaking. The Russians sent the first missions to Venus successfully. They sent the first missions to the Earth's moon.

If you want to go to the space station, you take a Soyuz rocket. But they've tried 23 times to go to Mars, and they haven't made it. It's heartbreaking. Meanwhile, Matt, Curiosity, MSL, the Mars Science Laboratory, is right on track. It launched perfectly. It's right on its course. It's going to land on Mars Sunday night, August 5th, or Monday morning, August 6th, depending on your time zone. And come to PlanetFest. It's going to be wild. A little early to invite people, I suppose, but we are going to be celebrating in Pasadena on those two days, August 4th and 5th. And we are negotiating to celebrate in several other science centers and museums, planetariums around the world, because this really is another global effort. People all over the world got together to build this exquisite spacecraft that will make the next discoveries on Mars. And who knows where that will lead us.

My dream, as always, is to find evidence or a way to find evidence of life on that other world. It's an exciting time in planetary exploration. It really is. Bill, thank you so much. It's always good to talk to you. And we'll do it again next week. Thank you, Matt. Bill Nye is the executive director of the Planetary Society, the science and planetary guy. Up next, another conversation with Deva Sobel. Her newest book is about the man who put our planet in its proper place in the solar system and the cosmos. That, of course, is Copernicus, and the book is A More Perfect Heaven. We'll pick that up in just a few moments. Did you get hooked on Deva Sobel's work with longitude, or was it Galileo's daughter? Regardless, you can now get your hands on the latest work by this historian

who so beautifully tells us about people who profoundly change the course of knowledge and exploration. Her latest is A More Perfect Heaven, How Copernicus Revolutionized the Cosmos. It has made me realize that this 15th and 16th century Polish physician and church official deserves more admiration and gratitude than I've felt till now. Yet there are key portions of his life about which we know very little. As you'll hear, Deva has found a unique and very entertaining way to deal with these episodes. Deva, it's a delight to get you back on Planetary Radio. It's been much too long, but then it's been a long time since we talked about your last book, The Planets. Thanks for returning to the show.

Hi, Matt. I'm happy to be back. Thanks for returning to the show. Hi, Matt. I'm happy to be back. Just how revolutionary was it, pun intended, that this fellow Copernicus decided that the Earth was not at the center of the universe? I mean, after all, this was at the time of Columbus, and a lot of people knew or believed that the world was round. People have known the Earth is round since ancient times. The idea that we needed Columbus to

sail west to get east to teach us that the planet is actually round is a fiction introduced by Washington Irving in the 19th century. But the question of the Earth's motion is a whole other agenda. And I think today, we know it so well, that it is hard to imagine a time when people could not accept it. And yet, we know those things only because we've been told. If you had to figure out the Earth's motion by yourself, it would be very hard to do. There is nothing that gives you a sense of the motion. It's counterintuitive. It's not only counterintuitive, it goes against received wisdom. And one of the things Copernicus worried about most during the close to 30 years that he kept the idea from publication

was the worry that people would use passages from the Bible twisted to their purposes to discredit him. He worried a lot about ridicule, because it just seemed ridiculous for the earth to be rotating and revolving as fast as it would have to go to account for the heavenly motion. This was not a fire-breathing revolutionary. In fact, had it not been for this, you might have called him a Copernicus groupie who showed up, you might have written your book about an effective bureaucrat who instituted currency reform. Exactly. Copernicus did lots of things, but seems to have been an obedient type of person. He belonged to a church community, was a canon, meaning an administrator of the Catholic Church in the northern regions of Poland.

He grew up in a place that was German speaking, so his native language was German, but he was a subject of the King of Poland. He grew up in a place that was German speaking, so his native language was German, but he was a subject of the King of Poland. He did so many other things. He was personal physician to the bishop. He administered the church lands. He set up a system of currency reform that the Senate and the King actually adopted. On the side, he had this extraordinary idea and devoted all his free time to the pursuit of his astronomy, something he got interested in probably as a college student. That's the first evidence of his interest in astronomy comes from the books he collected when he was a student. If he had not come up with this, I would not have written a book about him. The idea which had preceded him by many centuries by Aristarchus in the 3rd century BC,

although unfortunately Aristarchus' book on his sun-centered plan disappeared in antiquity. So there is no remnant of it. There's only a summary of the idea by Archimedes in a book that was translated and published the year after Copernicus died. So although Copernicus knew of other astronomical work by Aristarchus, he never knew about that piece of Aristarchus' work. It would have been a great solace to him to have known that, and he certainly would have mentioned it because he felt he needed all the support he could muster. With all the threats he faced, just perceived and the real ones possibly, what drove him? Why did he push forward

with this research? I think he felt from early on that he had actually discovered the true structure of the cosmos, something that was deemed impossible in his day. The only way you could know such things would be to have them divinely revealed to you. But something about his work perhaps convinced him that he had experienced a divine revelation. When he had the idea of putting the sun at the center and the earth in motion, he had a reason for the varying speeds of the planets. Before that, it didn't really make sense. And the order of the planets was not known definitely.

So by putting the sun at the center and the earth in motion, now all the planets lined up in order of their speed. Although he knew nothing of gravity, he must have seen that as the correct arrangement, even though he couldn't prove it. So he comes up with this truly revolutionary concept, and then he's prepared to just sit on it. I mean, how did word even get out to this fellow, Reticus, who so much of this story revolves around? I keep using that word. It's hard to avoid it. Even before Reticus was born, Copernicus wrote a very brief summary of his ideas. He alerted a few fellow mathematicians to his idea. And because this type of letter served as a scientific journal in that day,

people had the freedom to copy letters they received and send them to other potentially interested parties. Over the years, Copernicus was working, doing the mathematics, making observations, writing his book, the idea was slowly making its way among astronomers. When Reticus, the young German genius, who by 22 was already a professor at Martin Luther's University in Wittenberg, he was traveling around Germany seeking out established astronomers to learn more.

And in Nuremberg, he was told about Copernicus, and he went to visit him. This was a long, difficult, dangerous journey, but he seems to have been highly motivated. I mean, apparently he just shows up at Copernicus's door to somewhat to the distress of Copernicus. Yes. Well, we don't know how Copernicus reacted. This was the reason I wanted to write a play. Everyone knows that this meeting took place. There is ample documentation. For one thing, soon after Reticus arrived, he wrote his own summary of Copernicus's theory and got it published as a way to show Copernicus that there would be a receptive audience. The world would not explode if he made a formal statement of his ideas. That document exists.

Other letters exist from Reticus to his colleagues back in Germany. The meeting was long and productive, but there is no record of what got said, how Reticus was received. And the biggest question for me, how did they get around the fact that the bishop where Copernicus lived had grown so paranoid about the Protestant Reformation that he had banished all the Lutherans? And of course, Reticus was Lutheran, but somehow Copernicus kept him there for two years. Author Dava Sobel on her new book about Copernicus, A More Perfect Heaven. Much more in a minute. This is Planetary Radio. I'm Sally Ride.

After becoming the first American woman in space, I dedicated myself to supporting space exploration and the education and inspiration of our youth. That's why I formed Sally Ride Science, and that's why I support the Planetary Society. The Society works with space agencies around the world and gets people directly involved with real space missions. It takes a lot to create exciting projects like the first solar sail,

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can join and receive a Planetary Radio t-shirt. Members receive the internationally acclaimed Planetary Report magazine. That's planetary.org slash radio. The Planetary Society, exploring new worlds. Welcome back to Planetary Radio. I'm Matt Kaplan. Dava Sobel has returned to our show with her new book about the man who revolutionized our view of the cosmos. In fact, that's nearly the book's subtitle. The new work by the author of Longitude, Galileo's Daughter, and the Planets is a more perfect heaven.

It follows the life of the revered and reverent astronomer Copernicus, who was as much a physician and bureaucrat as he was a stargazer. Deva had to face the problem other biographers have run into with Copernicus. There are key periods of his life about which we know next to nothing. So in the absence of background material, you interrupt your beautiful lyrical prose, quite typical of your past work, and we find this play, which I guess is how you wanted to express your speculation. Yes, it's clearly labeled as drama, fiction. It is an imagined narrative. clearly labeled as drama fiction. It is an imagined narrative. To add to that, I put a preface at the beginning of the book with a nod toward the famous anonymous preface in Copernicus's

book that tells readers not to take it too seriously. But my preface says that this is a book, a carefully researched historical narrative with a play in the middle that imagines the missing parts. This preface warning us not to take this too seriously. Obviously, people took it quite seriously, but it was not a book. It was not a book that was immediately rejected or banned by the Church. In fact, I got the impression it was almost embraced by elements of the church. Copernicus decided to dedicate the book to the Pope as a way of showing that he had no irreverent intentions. And the dedication letter is quite long and describes

his fear of ridicule and his fear of what he called babblers who knew nothing of astronomy but would seize on some passage of the Bible to show that Copernicus's ideas were wrong. One imagines that he must have gotten permission to dedicate the book to the Pope. However, you can be certain the Pope never read it. He did turn it over to his theological advisors, who really didn't like it, and said negative things about it in print, but not in a way that had an effect. and the first astronomers who read it were convinced by the preface that the notion was merely a way of thinking about the motions you shouldn't really put the sun at the center and set the earth moving but if you did that you could calculate the planetary positions better than you had been able to before. 50 or 60 years went by. Kepler was ready to embrace the idea.

Tycho was not. That would be Tycho Brahe. Yes, he could not absorb the Earth's motion or the great distance to the stars that the heliocentric design required. Tycho found that ridiculous, that the stars would have to be much too big, too far away, too big. It struck him as almost as ridiculous as the Earth's motion.

So he rejected it. But Galileo was leaning toward Copernicus, called himself a secret Copernican in a letter to Kepler. But when Galileo made his first telescopic discoveries, then he became convinced that Copernicus was right. And he began endorsing him publicly, both in lectures and in writing. And Galileo's great crime was to communicate in Italian because he was interested in reaching an audience of intelligent adults who had not had a university education and so could not read Latin. And that is why the church came down so hard on him. So in 1616, the Inquisition told Galileo to stop talking about these things and listed Copernicus's book on the Index of Prohibited Books as suspended until corrected. How long was it before the Church finally decided that the reality of the cosmos could be accepted as part of church doctrine? It took a long time. In Galileo's time, it was certainly not accepted. By the time Galileo died, that was 100 years after Copernicus's book. By the 18th century, the ban on teaching the earth's motion was lifted. However, Galileo's book and Copernicus's

book remained on the index till 1835. Incredible. I mean, well into the period of enlightenment when we, that really did shock me, by the way, that I just maybe threw inertia. It was left there. It was part of the inertia because certainly other people were already talking about the Earth's motion. And this aspect interests me so much because what we consider today the real proof of the Earth's motion, things like the aberration of starlight, Foucault's pendulum, and the main proof, the discovery of parallax. One of the objections to Copernicus was, if the Earth is traveling all the way around the sun every year, then certainly the stars should look different from one point in the orbit to another. But they don't. And Copernicus's answer was, well, that's because they're so far away, you can't see a difference.

He was right about that. And it took till the 1860s to have telescopes powerful enough to detect a difference in the stellar position over the course of a year. By that time, people had already accepted it. So it wasn't as though the world was waiting for the absolute proof. By the time of Newton, when there was a complete schema for all of these ideas, they became accepted. Everything fit together too well. It made too much sense. So by the end of the 17th century, scientists really had embraced it. Your book closes in the current day with maybe the final effort to rehabilitate, that's a terrible word to use, to put Copernicus in the position of respect that he deserves, and the Church was a full participant in this.

Copernicus was recently exhumed, and his remains identified definitively, and then he was given a formal burial where the highest bishop of Poland presided. The Church has embraced him. He never suffered any kind of condemnation. Even when his book was on the index, it wasn't really banned. It was suspended until corrected, which was a different category. And certainly in the time of Pope John Paul II, who was Polish and considered Copernicus a hero. He's definitely been okay in all circles. And scientists continue to admire and reward him. The most recent event being the naming of element number 112, Copernicium. Just a salute from modern-day chemists and physicists. If you would like to learn more about the Copernican Revolution and how it has changed our view, not just of the cosmos,

but to a degree of ourselves, I can highly recommend A More Perfect Heaven, How Copernicus Revolutionized the Cosmos by our guest, Deva Sobel. You'll find it in all the usual places. It's published by Walker & Company. And Deva, I just want to thank you once again for being part of the radio show and bringing us this terrific exploration of one of the great figures of history. Thank you, Matt.

I always enjoy talking to you. Deva Sobel is also the author, of course, of Longitude and Galileo's Daughter and The Planets, which was the last conversation we had with her on this show. I look forward to the next opportunity, even though it may be a few years, Deva. I get slower and slower. And better and better. We'll be right back for our weekly visit with Bruce Betts. And look at that night sky, which Copernicus made so much more impressive. Time once again for What's Up?

Here at the end of this episode of Planetary Radio, Bruce Betts is here. He's the director of projects for the Planetary Society, and I think he'll tell us what's up in the night sky, but we've got other fun stuff too. Hello. I'm ready for fun stuff. It's all fun. It's all good. It's all big fun. Hey, let's get right into what's up in the sky, because there's some cool stuff happening in the next couple weeks. December 10th. Total lunar eclipse. Visible from many, many many places from all of Asia and

Australia, most of Europe, Africa, and most of North America, including us. In the greatest eclipse, meaning when it is deepest in eclipse, is at 1432 universal Time, 632 Pacific Standard Time for us in the morning. So it actually, the moon sets for us, being selfish, during eclipse. But good visibility and always cool to have a total lunar eclipse. We also have the traditional best meteor shower of the year, the Geminids, peaking on December 13th and 14th, but moonlight will be obscuring the faintest meteors this year. Moonlight gets in your eyes.

Ow! That's why I wear sunglasses at night. We also have our friends the planets up, Venus super bright low in the west, and then turn your head around, look more towards the east or southeast, and you'll see super bright low in the west and then turn your head around look more towards the east or southeast and you'll see super bright Jupiter also Saturn and Mars in the pre-dawn we move on to this week in space history it was 1972 when we had the last Apollo land on the moon Apollo 17 landed on the moon this week, 1972. We also had in 1990, Galileo made its first Earth flyby on the way to Jupiter.

Kept coming back around. What do you think it did two years later exactly? Came by home again. Exactly. Its second Earth flyby on the way to Jupiter. Forgot its launch. Exactly. Mom!

Just stick it out at geostationary Orbit. I'll grab it on the way by. It's going to be a long trip. All right, we move on to random space fact. What was that little head jerk thing? Trying not to blow out the microphone. Yeah, you get so mad when I do that. Do it one more time.

You want me to blow out the microphone? No, you get so mad when I do that. Do it one more time. You want me to blow out the microphone? Just don't turn as far. Random space fact. Now that was good. Oh, that was good. Okay. We're going to make you a radio guy yet. God.

It'll only take another 25 years. The Saurus, although it sounds like some species on star trek the saris s-a-r-o-s is a period of about 18 years and 11 days do you know why we care i don't even know what that word is go ahead exactly that's why it's a random space fact that is how long it takes for the eclipse cycle to basically repeat. So one Saris later, after an eclipse, whether solar or lunar, the sun, earth, and moon return to approximately the same relative geometry, and a nearly identical eclipse will occur. What? Me, Saris?

You, Saris. Me, Jane. Wait, no, no, no. So with this lunar eclipse coming up uh presumably when saris ago there was another one nearly identical we go on to the trivia contest and we asked you who was the first uh soviet or russian to launch on a u.s launch vehicle how'd we do you know i made a big deal about thinking oh i didn't know there'd been any. And then the first answer came in, the first correct answer, and I thought, well, of course he figuratively slapped his forehead. It was, thank you. Do it again so we can hear it.

Oh, I love it. You didn't actually need me to do it again, did you? No, not really. Sergei Krikalev. Sergei Krikalev. Sergei Krikalev, of course. The guy who's been in space more than any other human being. Exactly. And he first launched on a space shuttle in 1994.

We're going to give a Planetary Radio t-shirt to Caesar. It's either Caesar or Caesar. Musitani. Musitani in Manassas, Virginia. You've been there. I have. I've been there multiple times. It's very Manassas.

We thank you, Cesar or Cesar. You've won for this week. Let's give other people a chance. All right, here's a new trivia contest. Speaking of Saris, how many Sars are there in a Saris? I kid you not. The unit of Sar, S-A-R. How many of them are there in a SARS? I kid you not. The unit of SAR, S-A-R. How many of them are there in a SARS? S-A-R-O-S.

Go to planetary.org slash radio. Find out how to enter. Be sure to enter by Monday, December 12th at 2 p.m. Pacific time, or you will be SARS. That was brilliant. That's what that was. Everybody go out there, look up at the night sky, and try to forget whatever you're most Saris about. Thank you, and good night.

I've already forgotten. He's Bruce Betts, the Director of Projects for the Planetary Society, who joins us every week here for What's Up. I don't even know what we're talking about anymore. Planetary Radio is made possible by a grant from the Kenneth T. and Eileen L. Norris Foundation and by the members of the Planetary Society, which is responsible for its content. Clear skies.