Resources for the Skies
On Christmas Day in 1758, Halley’s Comet appeared in the sky, sighted by Johann Palizsch. This time, though, its appearance had been predicted in advance by the man it would come to be named after, Edmond Halley, who realized the comet was subject to Newtonian laws of motion and successfully connected it to historical sightings of particularly impressive comets at roughly seventy-five year intervals. Predicting other celestial phenomenon was well known – eclipses had been predictable for centuries. Christopher Columbus, for example, had used the technique to intimidate the peoples of Jamaica into cooperation on his fourth trip to the Americas, in 1504; suggesting to them that he had much more power than he actually did. But many cultures had … Continued