No big science section of the post today. Instead they brought together several of the scientific concepts they introduced earlier. See previous threads for my discussions on the astrolabe (tool used to measure the position of Mars in this episode), Ptolemy, and retrograde motion.

I found this episode to be surprisingly emotional for me. I don’t think it is necessarily meant to be, but perhaps it was speaking to my inner scientist heart. Badeni’s insatiable thirst for knowledge had led him close to self destruction. When Oczy walked in talking about documents that could change his life, Badeni almost let the stifling and punishment of his curiosity send Oczy away. However, his curiosity managed to keep just enough of a desire for knowledge lit inside him that he took a risk on what Oczy talked about. He came so close to letting the most momentous thing to ever happen in his life walk out the door. It also harkens back to Rafal’s speech to Nowak, that the thing the church is trying to, and will fail to kill is curiosity and the desire for truth itself. Nowhere is that more evident than in Badeni.

One thing that I wish we had seen more of was Oczy’s struggle to take that first Mars measurement. We see him facing a sky full of eyes and then cut to him having completed the task. I feel like there was likely a more meaningful struggle there. What was it that kept him there and helped him face his fears?

Their demonstration of how retrograde motion appears was fine I think. I am not sure it would really help people that don’t have a grasp of it, but it’s hard for me to put myself in those shoes at this point. I think they did do a pretty good job explaining retrograde motion and epicycles this episode and show how persuasive a “beautiful” theory can be. @rikka@ani.social

When I was in grad school, I was studying biophysics, but since I was in the physics department, I had to take classes in a broad range of topics including quantum and particle physics and many of my fellow cohort worked in particle physics and did stints working at the LHC. I remember having long talks with them about this theory or that theory of what could shake out after the LHC was powered on (super-symmetry and string theory were popular topics of the day). The general consensus among all of them was that the standard model had to be incorrect in some way. A non-insignificant reason for that was that it was too messy. It required caveats, corrections, assumptions, etc. that they didn’t like and felt should not be needed in a more complete model. All that is to say that this sense of how “beautiful” a scientific theory is remains a powerful motivating factor for practicing scientists to this day. So, having two models that both work practically, but one is much more beautiful, people tend to go for the beautiful model/theory.

Speaking of beauty, this show continues with beautiful night sky shots. The end with Oczy being able to look at the night sky and find it beautiful was a really nice moment.