Movers And Shakers Flashcards
Edwin Hubble
- working at Mount Wilson observatory
– 1924 – discovered cepheid in the Andromeda “nebula”
- he proved it was so far away it have to be it’s own galaxy
- I looked at think nebula, assuming that these were very different – compare the light from this far away nebula to the light of closer nebulae
- > discovered red shift – the further away galaxies are, the faster they are moving away from us (Hubbles law)
George Gamow (Big Bang)
– Universe started as hot and compressed “suit” of neutrons, protons and electrons that eventually called into the elements that make up the universe
– Some scientists liked this theory because it had religious connotations
John Theophilus Desguliers
– Successful popularizer and demonstrator, coffee house lecturer in London
– Also lectured at his house, at the Royal Society, and for the royal family
– Enthusiastic Newtonian, Copernican
Build an instrument to show the motions of the planets
Carl Sagan (1934 to 1996)
– Cosmos a personal voyage
John Tyndall
- Irish physicist
- experimented with the transmission of radiant heat and light through various gases
- show that certain gases that water vapor, carbon dioxide, O-Zone - absorb heat
- some of these gases that Tyndale had investigated are part of the earth atmosphere
- these gases are responsible for the greenhouse effect
Svante Arrhenius (1859-1927)
- Swedish physicist (electrophysics) and Nobel prize winner
- early 1900s -> suggested that we are adding CO2 to the atmosphere by burning fossil fuels -> May cause an increase in global temperature
–. Calculated an estimate: doubling CO2 -> 1.5-4.5 C
- didn’t think it was a problem - Sweden is cold
Charles Keeling (1928-2005)
– American chemist
– The Keeling curve that an accurate recording of CO2 levels in the atmosphere
– The collection site was on Mona Loa in Hawaii started in 1958
Naomi Oreskes
– wrote merchants of doubt
- tracks a small group in the cold war – promoted the idea of doubt
- environmental extremism (SDI)
– Claims we fell for it because we haven’t connected the dots to the bigger picture and because we have the wrong view of science. we think that science provides proof – science provides us with the consensus of experts not certainty
Georges Louis Leclerc, Count de Buffon
- French naturalist
– Newtonian, experimentalist, and materialist
– Super intendant of the Royal Gardens in Paris
– Wrote a book called natural history – the comprehensive theory of the earth
Assumed, tip the sun and planets were bits of the sun cooled – experiment: got a bunch of rocks and put them in a superhot furnace – measure time to cool off, extrapolated the earth was about 70,000 years old
George’s Cuvier
– French naturalist
– Fossil based stratigraphy
- Established extinction beyond doubt
Dash each species will adapt to its environment – against early evolutionists
– Extinction by catastrophic event (catastrophism)
James Hutton
– Imagined the earth as a machine with three stages of operation
1.rivers and water breaks down rocks and wash them into the ocean
2. deposited in horizontal layers into the ocean
3. the matter by its weight and pressure generates heat uplifts new continents
– was it deist
Charles Lyell
- Scottish geologist
- uniformatarianist
– “Principles of geology” - attack on catastrophism/retreating ocean
- think about a time when forces were different
Erasmus Darwin
Gradual development of life over long periods of time
Jean-Baptise Lamarck
– French naturalist
- believed in spontaneous generation
– Species went from simple to complex
– Species adapt it to environment through the inheritance of acquired characteristics
Charles Darwin
– Came from a well to do family
– Studied medicine and arts (clergy man)
– While at Cambridge – botany and geology
– Gentleman naturalist aboard the beagle
Galapagos: find many species of animals Dash related to those on mainland but different
– Darwins finches: evolution due to natural selection – more offspring are born than will survive
