The History of Cosmic Ray Studies

c. 4500 BC

Science of astronomy first recorded

c. 2000 BC

Mesopotamian and Egyptian astronomers began to map the heavens.

1223 BC

First eclipse record

c. 800 BC

First recorded sunspot observation, noted in the Chinese "Book of Changes"

c. 700 BC

A common view in Greece was that the Universe is a rational place following universal, natural laws.

c. 600 BC

Greek philosophers describe the magnetic properties of natural lodestones

c. 450 BC

The Greek philospher Empedocles announces that all matter is formed from earth, air, fire, and water

440 BC

Leucippus introduces the concept of the atom as an indivisible unit of matter

c. 400 BC

Magnetic compass invented by the Chinese

c. 350 BC

Aristotle discovers that free fall is a form of acceleration

c. 300 BC

Aristotle theorized that the Earth was the center of the Universe.

c. 260 BC

Aristarchus of Samos proposed a heliocentric Universe.

525

Roman philospher Anicus Boethius is beheaded for his use of "magic" to determine the speed of light

1054

Chinese astronomers observed a supernova in Taurus. These supernova remnants are now known as the Crab nebula (M1). This image of the Crab nebula is courtesy of NASA.

c.1250

Roger Bacon suggested that a light vessel filled with some (hypothetical) fluid lighter than air could use the flotation principle in the atmosphere.

1543

Nicolaus Copernicus published De Revolutionibus Orbium Coelestium in which he provided mathematical evidence for the heliocentric theory of the Universe. He was the first European to claim that the Earth is not the center of the Universe.

1572

Tycho Brahe witnessed a supernova in the constellation Cassiopeia, and cited it as evidence that the heavens are not without change.

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