Urbain Le Verrier
French astronomer and mathematicianWikipedia
55
MENTIONS
15
EPISODES
13
PODCASTS
Search complete. 55 mentions across 15 episodes found for "Urbain Le Verrier".
Oct 23, 2026
William Lane CraigGUEST
For example, the sentence Mars has two moons permits us to infer there is something which is a moon of Mars.
William Lane CraigGUEST
By contrast, the sentence Le Verrier sought to discover Vulcan between Mercury and the Sun involves an intentional context because we cannot infer that there is something that Le Verrier sought to discover.
William Lane CraigGUEST
the criterion of ontological commitment proposed by one does not apply when it comes to intentional contexts.
William Lane CraigGUEST
For example, use of the singular term the boogeyman in the true statement, Johnny fears the boogeyman, does not commit us to the reality of the boogeyman.
David WalesNARRATOR
He determined to learn where this deadly storm had originated, the path it followed, and to set up a plan for tracking and predicting others of its kind in the future.
David WalesNARRATOR
And so he called in the famous astronomer, Le Verrier, and asked him to carry out the investigation.
David WalesNARRATOR
Urbain Le Verrier, then 43 years old, was known throughout the world as the discoverer of the planet Neptune in 1846.
David WalesNARRATOR
He knew of the works of Redfield and Reed on hurricanes, and by 1854 had noted the efforts of other Americans and Britishers to track extra-tropical storms.
David WalesNARRATOR
With their ideas in mind, he called on scientists in all European countries to send him observations of the weather on the days from November 12 to 16, preceding and following the day of the disaster at Balaclava.
David WalesNARRATOR
Information moved slowly between countries in those days, and though many scientists cooperated, it was February 1855 before Le Verrier had gathered the data he needed.
David WalesNARRATOR
In developing his plan, he was encouraged by the invention and spread of the electric telegraph in the United States, and he hoped that the extension of lines in Europe would provide fast-moving messages for his purpose.
David WalesNARRATOR
Before the end of February, Le Verrier handed his report to Napoleon III and recommended that a system of weather messages and of issuing warnings be established at once.
Phil PlaitHOST
Over time, its predicted position was off from where it actually was.
Phil PlaitHOST
The French mathematician, Urbain Le Verrier, concluded that this was due to an unseen planet, and was able to use the mathematics of orbital mechanics to predict where the new planet would be.
Phil PlaitHOST
He sent a letter with the predicted position to the Berlin Observatory.
Phil PlaitHOST
Astronomer Johann Galle read the letter, went right out, and found the planet that very night.
Arvin AshHOST
No one could explain it.
Arvin AshHOST
In 1859, French mathematician Urbain Le Verrier proposed that this odd motion of Mercury could be explained by a kind of dark matter.
Arvin AshHOST
This dark matter he proposed was an unseen small planet called Vulcan that lays somewhere between Mercury's orbit and the sun.
Arvin AshHOST
Of course, no one could find such a planet, but scientists explained that this planet was obscured because the sun was so bright that anything small in front or in back of it could not be seen.
AvailleNARRATOR
Even after all the disturbances caused by the attraction of other planets had been taken into account, there remained an inexplicable phenomenon, that is, an extremely slow turning of the ellipses described by Mercury on its own plane.
AvailleNARRATOR
Le Verrier had found that it amounted to forty-three seconds a century.
AvailleNARRATOR
Einstein found that, according to his formulas, this movement must really amount to just that much.
AvailleNARRATOR
Thus with a single blow he solved one of the greatest puzzles of astronomy.
Betty B.NARRATOR
On September twenty-third, eighteen forty-six, the telescope of the Berlin Observatory was directed to a certain point on the sky for a very special reason.
Betty B.NARRATOR
Galle, the astronomer of Berlin, had received a letter from Le Verrier of Paris, telling him that if he would look in a certain direction he would detect a new and large planet.
Betty B.NARRATOR
Le Verrier's information was based upon a mathematical calculation.
Betty B.NARRATOR
Seated in his study, with no instruments but pen and paper, he had slowly figured out the history of a world as yet unseen.
Betty B.NARRATOR
Tiny discrepancies existed in the observed motions of Herschel's planet Uranus.
Betty B.NARRATOR
No man had explained their cause.
Betty B.NARRATOR
To Le Verrier's acute understanding they slowly shaped themselves into the possible effects of attraction emanating from some unknown planet exterior to Uranus.
Betty B.NARRATOR
Was it conceivable that these slight tremulous imperfections in the motion of a planet could be explained in this way? Le Verrier was able to say confidently yes.
speaker_2HOST
Right.
speaker_2HOST
So two mathematicians, John Couch Adams and Urbain Le Verrier, worked independently and basically decided to trust Newton's math completely.
speaker_2HOST
They calculated that an undiscovered planet of a specific mass in a specific location would perfectly account for Uranus's weird behavior.
speaker_3HOST
Yes.
Alex McColganHOST
Neptune is the only planet found through mathematical prediction.
Alex McColganHOST
It happened in 1846, thanks to Urbain Jean Joseph Le Verrier, a French astronomer and mathematician.
Alex McColganHOST
Le Verrier had been examining the rotation of the then seven planets when he noticed that something was off about Uranus.
Alex McColganHOST
It didn't seem to be moving in line with the theories of gravity proposed by Newtonian physics.
Alex McColganHOST
Le Verrier reasoned that the only explanation for this was that there must be a planet out beyond the orbit of Uranus that was perturbing its motion to account for this discrepancy.
Alex McColganHOST
He did some maths, and then declared that his eighth planet must exist at an exact point in the night sky.
Alex McColganHOST
The incredible thing was, after hearing his prediction, Le Verrier's friend, Johann Gottfried Galle, got out a telescope, searched in that location, and sure enough, discovered the planet Neptune in a single hour.
Alex McColganHOST
It was almost exactly where Le Verrier had predicted that it would be.
speaker_9NARRATOR
Discovery of New Planets.
speaker_9NARRATOR
Herschel, Piazzi, Adams, and Leverrier.
speaker_9NARRATOR
It would be very interesting, but quite impossible in these pages, to discuss all the exquisite researches of the mathematical astronomers, and to inspire a reverence for the names connected with these researches, which for 200 years have been establishing the universality of Newton's law.
speaker_9NARRATOR
The lunar and planetary theories, the beautiful theory of Jupiter's satellites, the figure of the Earth and the tides, were mathematically treated by Maclaurin, d'Alembert, Legendre, Clerot, Euler, Lagrange, Laplace, Walmsley, Bailey, Lalande, Delambre, Mayer, Hansen, Burchard, Binet, Damousseau, Plana, Poisson, Gauss, Bessel, Bovard, Airy, Ivory, Delaunay, Leverrier, Adams, and others of later date.
speaker_9NARRATOR
By passing over these important developments, it is possible to trace some of the steps in the crowning triumph of the Newtonian theory, by which the planet Neptune was added to the known members of the solar system, by the independent researches of Professor J.C. Adams and of Monsieur Leverrier in 1846.
speaker_9NARRATOR
It will be best to introduce this subject by relating how the 18th century increased the number of known planets, which was then only six, including the Earth.
speaker_9NARRATOR
On March 13, 1781, Sir William Herschel was as usual engaged on examining some small stars, and, noticing that one of them appeared to be larger than the fixed stars, suspected that it might be a comet.
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speaker_9NARRATOR
All of those who showered congratulations upon the discoverers regarded these discoveries in the light of rewards for patient and continuous labors, the very highest rewards that could be desired.
speaker_3NARRATOR
Now, there was a difficulty in the movement of the planet Mercury which could not be solved.
speaker_3NARRATOR
Even after all the disturbances caused by the attraction of other planets had been taken into account there remained an inexplicable phenomenon, that is, an extremely slow turning of the ellipses described by Mercury on its own plane; Le Verrier had found that it amounted to forty-three seconds a century.
speaker_3NARRATOR
Einstein found that, according to his formulas, this movement must really amount to just that much.
speaker_3NARRATOR
Thus with a single blow he solved one of the greatest puzzles of astronomy.
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