¯\(°_o)/¯

-Luu

oh you're alive i see

-pj

That's awesome dude. I too still entertain the thought of becoming an astronaut. By the way, a Master's in physics doesn't get you much more than a Bachelor's does. There are always exceptions to the rule, but generally if you're not trying to be a professional researcher in physics, a Bachelor's is fine. A Master's basically just says that you did well enough in undergrad to get accepted to a grad school, and typically a requirement for a Master's is just like passing enough classes and exams, not even requiring a thesis.

PART 5
It is with great pleasure that I reflect on these things. Evolutionary Biology has had its own Brahes, Keplers, and Newtons, but I won't go so far as to draw any more parallels. One day, I certainly hope that humans will look back on our disbelief of our biological history with the same sympathy that we can look back on the people of Copernicus's day and forgive them for sticking with the accepted, yet incorrect, model.

THE END ;D

PART 4
Evolutionary Biology has undergone something similar in the past 150 years. And Charles Darwin is the Nicholas Copernicus of evolutionary biology. He's the original compiler and promoter of a unified concept that differs from the previous belief which was almost universally accepted. And as we gain a deeper understanding biology, geology, genetics, etc, etc, etc. we see the same pattern that the heliocentric theory went through many centuries ago. The old model just doesn't work anymore in the face of the accurate data we are now able to generate and observe.

PART 3
In all of science we're looking for a balance between data and theory. So Tycho Brahe's data combined with Kepler's theory gave us workable planetary laws that were backed up by physical observation. The point of all this is that when we start out with almost no understanding of the universe at all, we immediately jump to the conclusion that the sun orbits the earth. It appears obvious to anyone at first glance. However, as we gain a more complete description of our environment and as we gain the technological ability to make more and more accurate measurements we discover that the old, accepted models no longer work. They just don't hold up if we are to seriously interrogate the universe to discover its secrets. So we modify our model. We modify and modify until we hone in on something that is more or less the truth. Going from Copernicus to Tycho and Johannes to Isaac we refine our understanding to be more and more accurate.

PART 2
This view is universally accepted today.

Isaac Newton - For all intents and purposes, this man invented calculus and modern physics. Why did he do all this? Because someone once asked him WHY the planets orbit the sun in ellipses as opposed to any other shape. After decades of research, theorizing, comparing against data and with a little help from an apple tree was able to arrive at the answer. Gravitation is responsible for the orbital trajectories of the heavenly bodies.

PART 1
OMG, Kepler. Kepler Kepler Kepler. I've been doing a TON of thinking about him lately.

Basically, I've been drawing this parallel between the heliocentric theory and evolutionary biology.
In terms of the history of the heliocentric theory it pretty much goes like this:

Nicholas Copernicus - For all intents and purposes invented the heliocentric theory. Unified what was known at that time to produce a general model that astonishingly resembles our current view.

Tycho Brahe - Was a master at collecting astronomical data and had the resources to generate large quantities of data that was highly accurate for his time.

Johannes Kepler - Was a master theoretician that eventually was able to use Tycho Brahe's data to compare several different theories of our solar system's mechanics to select the one that fit best. This resulted in his theory that the planets travel in elliptical orbits around the sun (as well as his eponymous laws of planetary motion). This view is universally accep

Oh wow, I had no idea you were interested in physics as a major. That's awesome, and if you have any questions I'd love to help out :]

TD ;B