A man is a marvel of nature.

god has given man the ability to find and search for the
purpose of his life,the universe and everything around him.he has given man
intelligence and logic,the power of reasoning and doubt.history is full of such men
and women who lost themselves to the power and beauty of the essence of the cosmos
and made it their passion to inhale the cosmic power around them.one such man was
Johannes kepler.born in 1571 in germany..as a boy he was sent to study for the clergy
to a protestant boarding school.but he was stubborn and extremely independent and
became isolated and withdrawn living there.

As he grew up he believed that the creative power of the cosmos was his god.he
closely studied euclids geometry and said-“geometry has existed before
creation..therefore it must be god himself”…he often thought why should I not be
allowed to study the universe if according to Christianity god has made it..y am I
being stopped? Being a brilliant thinker he became a teacher and taught maths in a
school in Austria ..but often would stop in mid sentence and think about the planets.at
that time there were only 6 known planets-mercury,venus,earth,mars,Jupiter and
Saturn.
Kepler thought why only 6? Can there be 20 planets? Why not? He did not believe
that the cosmos was not abundant to restrict its making to just 6 planets.there had to
be more.he also disagreed on the view of perfection that the church often preached-the
perfect wotld,the perfect thought …he said –“I do not believe that man is perfect or
that the earth is perfect either.so why should its orbit be so ?” Ptolemy,Pythagoras and
other Christian astronomers before kepler believed that the earth is a perfect circle and
hence follows a circular path around the sun.kepler was not too sure that was true.he
discovered that nars moves about the sun in an ellipse.if that is so isn’t it possible for
earth and the other planets to do so likewise?

Kepler was a daring man.to go against the church was blasphemy,nonetheless kepler
did not want to believe something his soul did not reckon with or that nature did not
show.he formulated 3 important laws on the basis of which we send satellites into
space and are able to study the motion of other planets.
The first law-a planet moves in an ellipse with the sun at one focus.
The second law-in a uniform circular motion an equal angle of a circle is covered in
equal times.but in an ellipse as a planet moves along its orbit it sweeps out a little
wedge shaped area within the ellipse.when it is close to the sun,in a fixed period of
time it traces out a large arc in its orbit but the area represented by that arc is not very
large because the planet is close to the sun.when the planet is far aay it covers a much
smaller area I nthe same time period but that arc is equal to the bigger area coz the sun
is more distant.kepler found that these 2 areas are the same no matter how elliptical
the orbit.
So the second law hence goes-in equal time the planets sweep out equal areas.

The third law-the squares of the periods of the planets to complete one orbit is equal
to the cubes of their average distance from the sun.
p-period of one orbit
a-average distance
p2=a3
lets take an example of the planet Jupiter here-
1 au=150 million km..
We know Ju
piter is 5 au from the sun..so –a3=5x5x5=125
So if p2=a3 then the square root of 125=11 to be close..and 11 years is what Jupiter
takes to finish one revolution.

Exactly 8 days after keplers discovery of his 3rd law a was leashed out in Prague
where he was.he was taken refuge.his wife and kid died in an epidemic and his
mother kathrina kepler was charged as being a witch and taken away.
This took a toll on his mind.he started talking to himself and would act weird.he
started to believe that the depressions on the moon were due to beings living there.he
argued that the circular shape of the craters implied a degree of order that only
intelligent life could explain.sadly he did not realize that the great rocks falling from
the sky could produce a local explosion that could carve out a circular cavity.he also
beleievd that gratll of china and the pyramids were built by alien beings.the idea that
geometrical order reveals an underlying intelligence was central to keplers life.what
he failed to understand was that intelligence was embedded
In the core of that order itself.
So the observational search for E.T began in the same generation as the invention of
the telescope!
Kepler believed that a day would come when celestial ships with sails would navigate
the sky.that is what we are doing today –using his laws.
The lifelong quest of Johannes kepler a man just like you and me to understand
planetary motion culminated 36 years after his death in the work of issac Newton.

The late astronomer carl sagan once said that astronomy is a humbling experience.we
live on a pale blue dot and our humlility lies in giving grace to such men who thought
different,who sought after the truth,who searched their souls to find the true meaning
of our selfish life on a planet we call earth.