“There is not a discovery in science, however revolutionary, however sparkling with insight, that does not arise out of what went before”*…
Analysis of an ancient codebreaking tablet has revealed that Babylonian astronomers had calculated the movements of Jupiter using an early form of geometric calculus some 1,400 years before we thought the technique was invented by the Europeans.
This means that these ancient Mesopotamian astronomers had not only figured out how to predict Jupiter’s paths more than 1,000 years before the first telescopes existed, but they were using mathematical techniques that would form the foundations of modern calculus as we now know it…
Look more closely at the foundations of modern calculus at “This ancient Babylonian map of Jupiter just changed history as we know it.” And read the Science article reporting the findings here.
* Isaac Asimov
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As we calculate the differential, we might send radiant birthday greetings to James Alfred Van Allen; he was born on this date in 1914. A space scientist who learned to miniaturize electronics during World War II, he was instrumental in establishing the field of magnetospheric research in space, and led the scientific community for the inclusion of scientific research instruments on space satellites. The Van Allen radiation belts were named after him, following their discovery by his Geiger–Müller tube instruments in 1958 on the Explorer 1, Explorer 3, and Pioneer 3 satellites during the International Geophysical Year.
