I think of it not as Newton was wrong, but rather his explanation was incomplete.
Does Earth have two high-tide bulges on opposite sides? (2014)
11–20 of 96 posts
Re: Does Earth have two high-tide bulges on opposite sides? (2014)
#12[flagged]
His childhood was quite emotionally traumatic. I can imagine severe abandonment wounds given his situation.
Not only would he have felt abandoned, when his mother quickly remarried after his father's death, he could actually see the distant steeple where her mother had to relocate after her marriage - source of affection and emotional connect just tantalizingly out of reach.
That might explain his behaviour.
Re: Does Earth have two high-tide bulges on opposite sides? (2014)
#13The problem of predicting tides was so important that it attracted many Physics and Maths heavy weights. You can well imagine how important predicting tides would have been for D-day landing. One related fascinating historical artifact is the special purpose analogue computer designed by Lord Kelvin in the 1860s based on Fourier series, harmonic analysis. Think difference engine in it's cogs and cams glory, but speci…
Have you seen the SF bay model? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i70wkxmumAw
Re: Does Earth have two high-tide bulges on opposite sides? (2014)
#14The problem of predicting tides was so important that it attracted many Physics and Maths heavy weights. You can well imagine how important predicting tides would have been for D-day landing. One related fascinating historical artifact is the special purpose analogue computer designed by Lord Kelvin in the 1860s based on Fourier series, harmonic analysis. Think difference engine in it's cogs and cams glory, but speci…
Have you seen the SF bay model? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i70wkxmumAw
That was so fascinating. Thank you.
Re: Does Earth have two high-tide bulges on opposite sides? (2014)
#15In the animations, New Zealand stood out: the high and low tide chase each other counterclockwise around the islands!
Re: Does Earth have two high-tide bulges on opposite sides? (2014)
#16[flagged]
We ALL mostly make mistakes throughout our lives.
Newton just happened to be much more brilliant than most others - and exhaustively documented his scientific thoughts.
Re: Does Earth have two high-tide bulges on opposite sides? (2014)
#17When I was in grad school in astronomy, one of my professors told me "many a promising young researcher has run their career aground on the rocky shores of tides."
The mathematics involved in the theory of tides are formidable. Even in homogeneous, tidally locked systems things can get complicated very quickly.
But tides are nevertheless very important. One two objects pass very close to each other, tidal effects are substantial and can actual destroy one of the objects: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tidal_disruption_event
Re: Does Earth have two high-tide bulges on opposite sides? (2014)
#18[flagged]
> High-strung, antisocial, egotistical, domineering, rage-filled.
I think you are doing the man a disservice summarising him in such a way.
His interest in unorthodox/heretical religion was at least since he was at university. He spent a significant amount of time on alchemy.
Newton was the President of the Royal Society for over two decades, an MP for a similar amount of time which I would think required a lot of interpersonal relationships and socialising.
He seemed to get along well with family who cared with and lived with him and described him as loving.
The traits of holding grudges and raging were probably as common in academia then as they are today (tech is benign in comparison), but are otherwise sociable and genuinely trying to be good, albeit flawed, people.
He made numerous statements of modesty, the most famous being "If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants." This has, IMHO, been unfairly reinterpreted in recent times as being a insult to a rival rather than taken at face value.
If every comment, action, HN comment, tweet etc. of any person's entire life was interpreted in the least charitable light we would all be recorded in history as being as vile as you describe him.
I think at the end of the day he was just a gifted flawed human.
Re: Does Earth have two high-tide bulges on opposite sides? (2014)
#19Try to get your head around this while simultaneously not thinking of gravity as a force but curvature in spacetime.
Re: Does Earth have two high-tide bulges on opposite sides? (2014)
#20[flagged]
Can we at this distance tell the difference between bipolar, mercury poisoning, and repressed homosexual?
He was also responsible for the execution of a couple of dozen people. These executions were connected to his position as master of the mint.