Read The Universe Within for Free Online Page A

the fields of mathematics and statistics. There are, for example, the Laplace equation, the Laplacian operator, and the Laplace transform, tools to understand electricity, magnetism, and the motion of bodies in space. His real passion was to uncover the order in the heavens, the shape of the planets and the orbits of celestial bodies. With this intellectual goal, he converted the philosophical ideas of Swedenborg and Kant to the precise language of mathematics.
    If a dust cloud in space gets to the right size, Laplace conjectured, particles inside will interact such that gravity will pull them together as other forces act to separate them. This push-pull means that a relatively amorphous cloud of dust can, under conditions where the pull wins out, develop into a swirling disk of debris. Over time, the gravitational attraction of the particles of dust in the disk break it into separate concentric rings—imagine a striped Frisbee. If the mass of dust in the rings is large enough, the particles could then condense to form the various planets of the solar system. These big events would happen not overnight but over timescales of millions of years.
    Laplace’s mathematical reformulation of Swedenborg’s and Kant’s ideas served as midwife for their transformation from interesting concepts to testable predictions. But the problem was that the technology to make the necessary measurements didnot exist in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Consequently, our understanding of the formation of the solar system stagnated for over a hundred years.
    Enter big science. In 1983, scientists from the Netherlands, Britain, and the United States developed asatellite that couldmap the stars from an orbit around Earth. This predecessor to theHubble Space Telescope was designed to perform one kind of observation really well: measure theinfrared spectrum of the entire sky to assess how muchheat is emanating from different stars. Through the course of their lives, stars emit everything from visible light to infrared,ultraviolet, andgamma rays. Our eyes sense only a small fraction of the light stars create, so astronomers use a wide range oftelescopes, each tuned to differentwavelengths of light, to capture a more complete view.
    Because infrared signals from deep space are often weak, every source of interference needs to be removed from the sensors, even those made by vibratingatoms. To still the atoms, the device was cooled by liquidhelium to a temperature of -452 degrees Fahrenheit. With room on board for only one year’s supply of the coolant, the whole project became a race against time. It did its job, and the satellite, now defunct, continues to orbit the sky. In the years since, a small community of scientists has proposed a mission to give the satellite a helium recharge to put the sensors back in business. Limited budgets and the development of better technology have kept the satellite switched off.
    Despite the short life span of the satellite’s detectors, the mission was a huge success. In less than a year it charted almost 96 percent of the sky. The satellite mapped newasteroids andcomets until, in early 1984, it captured a glimpse of a star radiating far too much heat for its size and type. We have a good idea about how much heat different kindsof stars should produce, and something was clearly different about this star. The source of that extra radiation became clear upon closer inspection of the images. The star was encircled by a vast cloud of dust and debristhat held heat. This system,Beta Pictoris, became the first example of asolar system caught in the act of being born. A prediction born as intuition and converted to mathematics was confirmed after two hundred years.
    Beta Pictoris. One of the first images of a distant solar system being born. (Illustration Credit 3.1)
    Soon after itsformation, our solar system would have looked like Beta Pictoris. This moment of our history was chaotic; rocky debris