THE BEAUTY IN MATHMATH: THE ONE AND ONLY
Math can be used to explain all of the amazing things that take place in space. René Descartes lived from 1596 to 1650. On the night of November 10th 1619 he had a series of dreams that led him to belive he would discover a universal science which he would later come to see was math. Newton took up Descartes thinking, that all things in the physical world could be explained with math. At the time it was an extremly controversial stance to take. From orbits to the energy of the sun, over hunderds of years we have discovered the reasons why things happen the way they do and it has reinforced Descartes's and Newton's idea: math explains the physical world.
WHO MADE IT HAPPEN?
Nicolaus Copernicus(1473-1543), Galileo Galilei(1564-1642), Johannes Kepler(1571-1630), René Descartes(1596-1650), and Sir Isaac Newton(1642-1727) were all fundamental in the development of math, astronomy, philosophy, physics, the spreading of knowledge, and the increases in understanding of the known universe in their respective times and for generations after them.
Nicolaus Copernicus developed his own celestial model of a heliocentric planetary system. He was a famed astronomer, despite the fact that he had a law degree and an incomplete education in practical medicine.
Galileo Galilei was an astronomer, and mathematician. Who spent the elder years of his life proving a heliocentric planetary system that Copernicus couldn't. He also made extremly significant discoveries about pendulum motion.
Johannes Kepler was the first to correctly explain planetary motion. He was a famous astronomer, one of the first to right an outspoken defense of the Copernican system.
René Descartes was a French mathematician, scientist, and philosopher. "I am thinking therefore I exist" (Descartes).
Sir Isaac Newton was an English natural philosopher. His achievments vary from inventing infinitesimal calculus, to proposing an new theory of light and color. He is often referred to as the founder of modern physics because of his comprehensive laws of motion.
NEWTON'S LAWS
(http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/newton-principia)
Newton's first law: "When viewed in an Inertial reference frame, an object either remains at rest or continues to move at a constant velocity, unless acted upon by an external Force." Originally, Descartes proposed three laws of nature. The first two laws state, in almost exact quotation, Newton's first law. "that each thing, as far as is in its power, always remains in the same state; and that consequently, when it is once moved, it always continues to move." and "all movement is, of itself, along straight lines."
Newton's second law: "The vector sum of the forces on an object (F) is equal to the mass (m) of that object multiplied by the acceleration (a) of the object: F = ma." This is undoubtly the foundation for classical mechanics.
Newton's theird law: "When one body exerts a force on a second body, the second body simultaneously exerts a force equal in magnitude and opposite in direction on the first body." This law is one of the hardest laws to understand and the most counter intuitive. However, this law is fundamental to physics and espeically to orbits.
Using these laws and Newton's law of universial gravitaion he proved Kepler's law of planatary motion.
ORBITS
Orbits are repeating paths that one body takes around a larger body. Orbits are formed by the gravitational attraction between two objects. When one object is much smaller than another and it is traveling relativley faster than the other object it can form an orbit. The orbit is made beacuse as gravity pulls the smaller object towards the larger object, the smaller object travels past the larger object only to be countinuosly pulled toward the larger object. In lammens terms it is countinously falling toward the earth but traveling as fast as the earth curves away.
LAGRANGIAN POINTS
"If the spacecraft is placed between Sun and Earth, the Earth's gravity pulls it in the opposite direction and cancels some of the pull of the Sun. With a weaker pull towards the Sun, the spacecraft then needs less speed to maintain its orbit. If the distance is just right, about 4 times the distance to the Moon or 1/100 the distance to the Sun, the spacecraft, too, will need just one year to go around the Sun, and will keep its position between the Sun and the Earth. That position is the Lagrangian Point L1, so called after the Italian-French mathematician who pointed it out, Joseph Louis Lagrange."(NASA) There exsits 5 lagrange points in total.
At each point the forces from the the the two bodies equal the force from the larger body to the smaller body. This makes an object at any of the Lagrangian points have the same obital period as the smaller body. These points are incredibly useful. Having a still sensor, or relativley still in comparison with the earth, is invaluble in making regular accurate measurements. One flaw in these points is that they tend to be unstable and require regular corrections in order to maintain such an orbit.