Dr. Brian Keating
speaker
1,291 appearances
4 recordings
4 series
first heard Dec 2024
last heard Sep 2025
Dr. Brian Keating’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Appearances
So what was the milieu of the time was that the Earth was the center of the universe, which was our solar system effectively was the whole universe. They didn't know about stars and galaxies, certainly. We can get into that later. But there was what's known as the Ptolemaic concept of the organization of the cosmos.
So the earliest cosmological models were that the sun is the center – the earth is the center of the universe and everything goes around it. However, these were not dopes. They knew that there were problems with that model. There are certain aspects of the orbits of planets for example. I mentioned Mercury's retrograde and what does retrograde mean?
We don't have to get into it, but there are anomalies that the planets will undergo at different times of the year due to the fact that the Earth is, we know now, rotating, revolving around the sun and rotating on its axis, but the main effect is its revolution around the sun.
And the other planets are too in the same plane, the zodiac plane, what's called the ecliptic due to the angular momentum of the proto-solar system. And sometimes the Earth goes faster than, say, Jupiter. So originally it will be out in front, if you will, of the planet, forward center of motion, as you like to say. And then it will be behind it later on.
And so it looks like Jupiter is making like this weird S curve. And they couldn't explain that if the Earth is the center of the solar system except that they added on what are called epicycles.
They added on extra little orbits of the planets in order to account for that motion that sometimes it appears, yes, we're moving bulk motion, but then sometimes it goes in the opposite direction when we're going in the same direction. So smart. Yeah, they were very smart.
I should say – sorry, Andrew. The reason that they had good glass is they were some of the foremost – explorers, right? A lot of the early trade and they were, what did exploration give them? Access to trade. So they could get the finest silicon and glass and they could make it themselves. That's their economics. Again, capitalism always wins, right? This is a lesson that we shouldn't forget.
Their commerce, their economies allowed them to do trade and get – acquire the best, highest quality materials, then that was used to make the best scientific equipment. And it's just curious. It would be like if we – they built these scientific tools, but they didn't use them for science.
So imagine like building the Large Hadron Collider or SLAC or something like that and then not using it, just like using it to like measure – I think SLAC is sitting empty, right?
People do that with their cameras. Sure. They geek out. Right. Everyone's got their thing. Yep.
I think it's a lot. I mean, my childhood was pretty tumultuous. I think you and I have a lot of things in common, both fathers, scientists and physics and math in my case, very hard driving, very hard to live up to their shadows that they cast, for example, at least in my case. And you seem to have just a beautiful relationship with your dad now, but I'm sure it wasn't always like that.
In fact, you talked about that.
Yeah. And that episode they texted you is a real gift, not only for all of us who got to witness it, but also for grandchildren, him, his legacy, and so forth. and even your dad's wife and your mom. But the point is, yes, it transported me.
I was living through, after the divorce of my parents, I lived with my stepfather who had adopted us, changed our names, moved to different, we were changing schools every couple of years. And that discovery of the moon next to Jupiter, it was sort of like solving a puzzle. There's a famous saying by Albert Michelson. It was the first Nobel Prize winner in American history. Trevor Burrus, Jr.
: For what? Peter Van Doren, Jr. : Physics, sorry. Michelson, Morley, he proved in some sense that the Earth is not moving through the ether. That was hypothesized by luminaries beforehand. But the point was when a child solves a puzzle, like you would think, well, like an adult, you solve a Rubik's Cube. Okay, I did it once. I don't have to do it again. But like my son will keep doing it.
I'll keep like showing off. Can I get it faster? Video games, same thing. Once you solve the video, you don't just like throw it out and stop doing it. You get a taste of that thrill of discovery. Yes, it's diminished. And yes, we become inured to it as we get older and a little bit more – there's just things we have to get – take care of in life and especially as a professor scientist.
You can't like marvel over the same things you did when you first did these experiments. But as an – you get transported. And you get to encounter something that you feel like no one has ever done before. For example, when I got my first telescope that night, a couple of months after discovering this, I looked through it and I saw the same features on the moon.
And I have a 3D printed moon that my son made to show you. And it has all the craters represented on it. It's so cool. And I saw the exact same craters on the moon that Galileo saw. And then I looked at Jupiter. And when you look at Jupiter, you not only see these beautiful atmospheric bands on it. And I brought you a telescope as your end of the year holiday gift.
It's yours to keep and no money down. Thank you. Keating brand telescope. Thanks for the gift. And I looked at Jupiter. And when you look at Jupiter, as I hope you'll do tonight or with your crew later on, you will see not only the planet, not only its little atmospheric stripes, maybe even the great red spot, which is amazing, three times bigger than the Earth.
You can see it from Earth with this little telescope I got you. But you see four little stars. And there are four stars that are to the left, to the right. They're in a plane with the midpoint of these equatorial storms that are brewing on Jupiter. We know that they've been going on for at least 400 years because Galileo saw them. So that sets a limit, a minimum time.
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