Saturday 8 May 2010

A History of Astrophysics - Part 1

The introduction of the telescope in Western Europe in the 1600s revolutionized astronomy, but it did not found it as a discipline. Astronomy had existed in some form for thousands of years prior to this. It is consequently impossible to assign a specific date to its founding. This is not the case with astrophysics. People in ancient and medieval times might speculate on the material makeup of stars and celestial bodies, but they had no way of verifying their ideas.

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