The Importance Of Basic Science

 Portuguese version

"Time will tell. We have a beginning now; developments will come with time."

— Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen, The New Marvel in Photography (1896)

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The first experiments with electrical discharges in a vacuum (or near vacuum) were conducted by the German Heinrich Geissler (1814–1879), a specialist in vacuum technology and glasswork. This study caught the attention of the British physicist Michael Faraday, who sought to study the relationship between electrical conduction in a gas and the pressure inside the tube. Faraday observed a faint light produced by the electrical discharge in the gas and noted the existence of a dark section in the tube, today called the Faraday Dark Space.

    Faraday also observed variations in the emitted spectrum (colors) depending on the type of gas used and the nature of the electrode. This would later become crucial in spectrometry, which allows materials to be characterized based on the light they emit.

Faraday dark space in the middle.

                                                      

    Subsequent studies by the German physicist Heinrich Geissler (1814–1879) led to the construction of tubes containing residual gas inside, equipped with platinum wire electrodes (anode and cathode). When a positive voltage was applied between the anode and cathode (cold cathode), these tubes generated light from the ionized gas. Geissler varied the voltage levels between the electrodes and observed the effects on the emitted light.

    Julius Plücker, who worked alongside Geissler and Jonathan Hittorf, demonstrated that at very high voltages and with cold cathodes, the gas would ionize, but it was also possible to observe a beam of particles moving in a straight line.

    In 1876, Eugen Goldstein (1850–1930) named these strange particle beams Cathode Rays. Goldstein identified that the rays were emitted perpendicularly from a metallic surface and that they carried energy.                                                  

    In 1890, Arthur Schuster (1851–1934) demonstrated that cathode rays could be deflected by an electric field, while William Crookes (1832–1919) showed that they could also be deflected by a magnetic field. Crookes focused his studies on the behavior of the resulting spectra.

Cathode ray being deflected by a magnetic field as stated by Crookes.

                            

    Building on Crookes' research, Heinrich Rudolf Hertz and Philipp Eduard Anton von Lenard, who was Hertz's assistant, made significant advancements in the study of cathode rays at the time.

    Thanks to these researchers, and many others, scientific knowledge eventually led to the Crookes tube, which played a crucial role in the work of the German physicist Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen twenty years later.

    In 1895, Röntgen began working with the Crookes tube in his small laboratory located at what is now the University of Applied Sciences in Würzburg. As said before, these tubes were carefully evacuated glass containers with two small metal plates placed at opposite ends. The plates were connected to the poles of a high-voltage generator, and when the current was passed through, a luminous radiation was emitted inside the tube—a type of luminescence that seemed to emanate from the remaining rarefied air within the tube. These experiments were conducted in dark laboratories to allow better observation of the faint radiations produced.

    One day, while conducting an experiment, Röntgen covered one of these tubes with black cardboard. By chance, there was a screen coated with barium platinocyanide on a nearby table. With each discharge in the tube, the screen glowed with a greenish light. The phenomenon occurred whether the coated side of the screen faced the tube or not.

    Röntgen concluded that the screen was being struck by an invisible radiation capable of passing through the black cardboard. This had to be a different kind of radiation, as the cardboard was opaque even to ultraviolet radiation.

    For the following weeks, Röntgen dedicated himself entirely to identifying the properties of this newly discovered radiation. Since he was unsure of its nature, he named it X-rays. Soon after, Kölliker, a professor in Würzburg, proposed the name Röntgen Rays.

    The experiments intensified. It became evident that this strange radiation originated from the high-vacuum tube. Röntgen then decided to place a book between the screen and the radiation source. To his surprise, the object cast only a faint shadow, indicating that X-rays could penetrate it.

    Next, he placed his own hand in the path of the radiation. His hand also appeared transparent—except for the bones, which stood out in the shadow. Finally, he used a photographic plate, which captured an image of his fingers, revealing a transparency unlike any seen with ordinary light.

    On December 22, 1895, Röntgen obtained the first X-ray image in history—a radiograph of his wife's hand. 

X-ray of Röntgen's wife.

                                                                

    The photograph confirmed that this was indeed a new form of radiation with the ability to penetrate opaque materials, only being blocked by substances with high atomic mass (such as lead and platinum).

    Nowadays, given the spread of medical technology and varying levels of healthcare across countries, it is likely that hundreds of thousands of X-rays are conducted worldwide each day. In some estimates, the global number might exceed 1 million X-ray exams per day.

    There are many stories analogous to the one above—a groundbreaking discovery like X-rays made possible by a long lineage of scientific "farmers" who cultivated the field of knowledge, each leaving behind fruits for the next to harvest—though perhaps only the most visible ones to the cultivator.

    As stated by Isaac Newton in one of his letters to Robert Hooke:

"If I've seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants."

    Basic sciences explore and push the boundaries of scientific knowledge. By their very nature, they seek to bring new understanding to natural phenomena, mathematics, and the humanities, deepening our comprehension of the world. They also lead to discoveries that offer new opportunities and methods for studying nature and society, as well as enabling practical applications of scientific breakthroughs. All of this, in turn, contributes to educational, cultural, and intellectual enrichment and provides the scientific foundation for human development.

Science As A Candle In The Dark

 

Portuguese version

Aristarchus of Samos (310 BCE - 230 BCE) found a book consisting of some hypotheses in which the premises lead to the conclusion that the universe is many times larger than currently recognized. His hypotheses are that the fixed stars and the Sun do not move, that the Earth revolves around the Sun in the circumference of a circle, with the Sun resting in the middle of the orbit.

— Archimedes, The Sand Reckoner.

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For thousands of years, humanity was obscured by simple answers to complex questions. Why didn’t it rain this harvest? Why did the river dry up? Why does the soil no longer bear fruit? Why do we fall ill? The simple answer: the universe is a puppet whose strings are moved by gods or goddesses, invisible and impossible to fully comprehend in their magnitude.

    However, 2,500 years ago, there was a glorious awakening in Ionia: in Samos and other nearby Greek colonies that flourished among islands and inlets in the bustling eastern Aegean Sea. Suddenly there were people who believed that everything was made of atoms; that humans and other animals had arisen from simpler forms; that diseases were not caused by demons or gods; that the Earth was merely a planet orbiting the Sun; and that the stars were very, very far away.

    This revolution gave birth to science from the incomprehensible. The universe is understandable, argued the ancient Ionians, because it presents an internal order: there are regularities in nature that allow its secrets to be uncovered.

    The first Ionian scientist was Thales of Miletus, who proved geometric theorems, demonstrating them without the arduous analysis later given by Euclid three centuries later — for example, the proposition that the base angles of an isosceles triangle are equal. There is a clear continuity of intellectual effort from Thales and Euclid to Isaac Newton, 2,000 years later, an event that accelerated modern science and technology.

    Anaximander of Miletus, a friend and colleague of Thales, was the first person in Greece to make a sundial. He argued that we are so helpless at birth that if the first human infants had been placed into the world and left alone, they might have died immediately. From this, Anaximander concluded that humans must have originated from other animals with more capable newborns. More than 2,000 years before Darwin and Wallace’s theory of evolution, he proposed the spontaneous generation of life in mud, with the first animals being fish covered in spines. Some descendants of these fish eventually abandoned the water and moved to dry land, evolving into other animals through the transmutation of one form into another.

    Empedocles, who flourished around 450 BCE, proposed that light traveled at a finite speed rather than instantaneously—an idea far ahead of his time. It was not until the 17th century that Ole Rømer provided the first quantitative measurement of the speed of light by observing the moons of Jupiter, laying the groundwork for later breakthroughs in physics, including Einstein's theory of general relativity. Empedocles also taught that there had been a great variety of beings on Earth, but that many races of creatures "were unable to reproduce and continue their species." Knowledge that was obscured for hundreds of years until Cuvier (1798 CE) establish extinction as a fact that any future scientific theory of life would have to explain.

    At a time when no one had heard of impact craters, Democritus (460 BCE) thought that worlds occasionally collided; he believed that some worlds wandered alone in the darkness of space, while others were accompanied by multiple suns and moons; that some worlds were inhabited, while others had no plants, animals, or even water; and that the simplest forms of life emerged from a kind of primordial mud. More than 2,000 years before John Dalton, Democritus coined the word atom, the Greek equivalent of "indivisible." Atoms, he said, were the ultimate particles, forever frustrating any attempts to break them into smaller pieces. Everything, he argued, is a collection of atoms, intricately arranged—even us. "Nothing exists except atoms and the void."

    In an intellectual exercise, Democritus imagined calculating the volume of a cone or a pyramid using an immense number of extremely small plates, diminishing in size from base to apex. He posed a problem that, in mathematics, is called the theory of limits. He was on the verge of discovering differential and integral calculus, the fundamental tool for understanding the world, which, as far as we know from surviving records, was not fully developed until Isaac Newton. Perhaps if Democritus' work had not been entirely lost, calculus might have been discovered in the time of Christ.

    The Ionian influence and the experimental method spread throughout Greece, Italy, and Sicily. However, in their time, the brief tradition of tolerance for unconventional views began to erode and then collapse. People started being punished for expressing different ideas. Their knowledge was suppressed, and their influence on history diminished. 

    The mystics were beginning to win.

    The great scientists, from Thales to Democritus and Anaxagoras, are often described in philosophy or history books as pre-Socratic, as if their primary function had been to sustain philosophical essence until Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle, and perhaps influence them a little. Instead, the ancient Ionians represent a different and quite contradictory tradition, one that aligns more closely with modern science. Because their influence remained powerful for only two or three centuries, there was an irreparable loss for all human beings who lived between the Ionian Awakening and the Italian Renaissance.

    After the Ionian period, philosophers like Plato and Aristotle gained great prominence. Plato, in particular, emphasized the world of ideas, while Aristotle developed a highly comprehensive philosophical system that ended up dominating Western thought for centuries. The more speculative approach of the Ionian philosophers, focused on natural causes, was ultimately overshadowed by these currents of thought.

    With the decline of Greece, the rise of the Roman Empire, and later the expansion of Christianity within the Roman Empire, there was a tendency to reject pagan thought, especially ideas that contradicted the Christian worldview. Since the Ionians presented natural explanations for the cosmos, without resorting to gods or supernatural forces, their ideas were seen as incompatible with Christian theology.

    In recognizing, as Pythagoras and Plato did, that the Cosmos is comprehensible and that there is a mathematical framework underlying Nature, there was a great advancement in science. However, in the suppression of facts, information, events, or truths that caused discomfort; in the idea that science should be reserved for an elite few; in the aversion to experimentation; in the acceptance of mysticism; and in the passive acceptance of slave societies, they delayed the human scientific enterprise. This suppression led to a long hibernation of scientific thought. Eventually, however, the Western world awakened. Experimentation and free inquiry once again became respected.

    It is said that of the seventy-three books written by Democritus, none have survived. All that we know of him comes from fragments, mainly concerning ethics and unoriginal justifications. The same applies to nearly all other ancient Ionian scientists.

    More than 2,000 years later, forgotten books and fragments were rediscovered. Da Vinci, Columbus, and Copernicus rekindled the scientific flame that had been extinguished for centuries. This period enabled advancements in various fields of knowledge, once again placing humanity in a context of social and technological development.

    History shows us that just as science was rediscovered after thousands of years of obscurity, it can also be forgotten or suppressed again if not properly safeguarded. Ignorance of scientific truths leads to regression, misinformation, and the rise of misconceptions that can dominate public opinion. Only by holding science as a guiding light in the darkness can we prevent another "blackout of reason" and ensure that the scientific achievements that so greatly benefit humanity continue to be disseminated and recognized, thus guaranteeing continuous improvements in the quality of life for society as a whole.

Kepler, the last scientific astrologer and the first astrophysicist

 Portuguese version

"Thinking God's thoughts after Him."

— Johannes Kepler

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For over a thousand years, the sciences of classical antiquity had been silenced. But by the late Middle Ages, faint echoes of these ancient voices, preserved by Arab scholars, began to weave their way back into the European educational curriculum.

    Johannes Kepler was born in Germany in 1571 CE and, as a young boy, was sent to a Protestant seminary in the provincial town of Maulbronn to become a clergyman. But as he grew older, his understanding of God expanded beyond a divine force to be feared and worshipped. To Kepler, God was the creative power behind the universe itself. Curiosity triumphed over fear. He longed to understand the origin and fate of the world—he dared to glimpse into the very mind of God.

    At Maulbronn, Kepler encountered remnants of ancient wisdom. Alongside theology, he studied Greek, Latin, music, and mathematics. In Euclidean geometry, he believed he had found a reflection of God's perfection and glory. Later, he would write:

"Geometry existed before the Creation. It is co-eternal with the mind of God... Geometry provided God with a model for Creation... Geometry is God Himself."

    Kepler asked himself: "If the world was created by God, should it not be examined with the utmost care? Is not all of creation an expression of the harmony within God's mind?" These questions relighted a new way of reading the book of nature—one not only embraced by Kepler but by many other scientists as well. This marked the dawn of the Scientific Revolution in Europe, after centuries of intellectual dormancy.

    At the time, it was believed that there were only six planets. Kepler, deeply religious, proposed that their orbits were arranged according to the five perfect geometric solids described by Pythagoras. To him, this was the most beautiful way to represent divine creation.

    Tycho Brahe, the era's foremost observational astronomer, had compiled the most precise catalog of celestial motions ever recorded. Kepler, a brilliant theoretical mathematician, relied on Brahe’s meticulous data to develop his calculations. The union of these two minds—the master observer and the master theorist—set the stage for mathematical models that continue to shape our understanding of orbital mechanics to this day.

    At first, Kepler resisted the astronomical data, as they did not fit his vision of a universe built on perfect geometric forms—the model he longed for. Even after Galileo’s discovery of Jupiter’s moons, which shattered the notion that all celestial bodies must orbit the Earth, Kepler hold to his belief in a divinely ordered cosmos. There was a time in his life when he felt honored—perhaps even chosen—to be the one to decipher the thoughts of God.

    But as time passed, Kepler saw imperfection in the world: in the Earth itself, in human society, and, ultimately, within his own being. And so he wondered:

"If the planets themselves are imperfect, why should their orbits be perfect?"

    This single thought changed the course of history.

    He tried various oval shapes, performed countless calculations, and even made arithmetic mistakes that initially led him to reject the correct answer. Months later, in desperation, he turned to a shape first studied in the ancient Library of Alexandria by Apollonius of Perga—the ellipse.

    To his amazement, the ellipse fit Tycho’s observations perfectly. He later admitted:

"The truth of nature, which I had rejected and chased away, returned by stealth through the back door, disguising itself to be accepted... Ah, what a foolish bird I have been!"

    This was the first non-mystical explanation of celestial motion, a breakthrough that placed Earth as just another province in the grand cosmos. "Astronomy," Kepler declared, "is a branch of physics."

    Kepler stands as a turning point in history: the last scientific astrologer was also the first astrophysicist.

    What is most striking about Kepler’s story is his scientific courage—he chose the harsh truth over his cherished and beautiful illusions. We continue to reap the benefits of that choice every day: when we send probes to distant planets, when we study binary star systems, when we analyze the movement of galaxies millions of light-years away.

    For wherever we look in the universe, Kepler’s laws still hold true.