Johannes Kepler determined just how the planets of our solar system make their way around the sun.
He published his innovative work on the subject from 1609 to 1619, and in the final year of that decade he also came up with a theory that each planet sings a song, and each in a different voice at that.
Not all of the best minds of the scientific revolution thought purely in terms of calculation.
The blog ThatsMaths
describes Kepler's mission as explaining the solar system in terms of divine harmony, finding a system of the world that was mathematically correct and harmonically pleasing.
Truly divine harmony could presumably find its expression in music, an idea that led Kepler to explain planetary motions in terms of harmonic relationships, a scheme that he called the 'song of the Earth.
According to this scheme, each planet emits a tone that varies in pitch as its distance from the Sun varies from perihelion to aphelion and back, that is, from the nearest they get to the sun to the farthest they get from the sun and back - producing a continuous glissando of intermediate tones, a whistling produced by friction with the heavenly light.'
Kepler named the combined result "the music of the spheres," but what does it sound like?
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