Piers Sellers, NASA
British born astronaut Piers Sellers is planning to take into Space an original piece of Sir Isaac Newton’s apple tree when he flies on board the shuttle Atlantis, due to blast-off this Friday, 14th May 2010 from Cape Canaveral, Florida, USA.
The tree fragment, engraved with the scientists name is one of several pieces taken from the original apple tree that still stands at Woolsthorpe Manor, Newton’s former home.
The popular story goes that in 1666 Newton was sat under his tree when an apple fell and landed on his head and this inspired him to develop his universal law of gravitation. However, it is more likely that he was looking at his apple tree one day from afar and wondered why apples fall downwards to the ground, and why they accelerate from zero. – and thus coming up with the laws of gravity and motion.
Sellers said "While it's up there, it will be experiencing no gravity, so if it had an apple on it, the apple wouldn't fall … Sir Isaac would have loved to see this, assuming he wasn't spacesick, as it would have proved his first law of motion to be correct."
The event is part of the 350th anniversary celebrations of the Royal Society, the UK’s National Academy of Science, of which Newton, who died in 1727, was a former president..
The tree fragment, engraved with the scientists name is one of several pieces taken from the original apple tree that still stands at Woolsthorpe Manor, Newton’s former home.
The popular story goes that in 1666 Newton was sat under his tree when an apple fell and landed on his head and this inspired him to develop his universal law of gravitation. However, it is more likely that he was looking at his apple tree one day from afar and wondered why apples fall downwards to the ground, and why they accelerate from zero. – and thus coming up with the laws of gravity and motion.
Sellers said "While it's up there, it will be experiencing no gravity, so if it had an apple on it, the apple wouldn't fall … Sir Isaac would have loved to see this, assuming he wasn't spacesick, as it would have proved his first law of motion to be correct."
The event is part of the 350th anniversary celebrations of the Royal Society, the UK’s National Academy of Science, of which Newton, who died in 1727, was a former president..
RSS Feed