Kepler’s laws

 

 

Kepler’s Platonic solid model of the Solar system from Mysterium Cosmographicum (1596)

 

«In the 16th century, the German astronomer Johannes Kepler attempted to find a relation between the five known planets at that time (excluding the Earth) and the five Platonic solids. In Mysterium Cosmographicum, published in 1596, Kepler laid out a model of the solar system in which the five solids were set inside one another and separated by a series of inscribed and circumscribed spheres. The six spheres each corresponded to one of the planets (Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn). The solids were ordered with the innermost being the octahedron, followed by the icosahedron, dodecahedron, tetrahedron, and finally the cube. In this way the structure of the solar system and the distance relationships between the planets was dictated by the Platonic solids. In the end, Kepler’s original idea had to be abandoned, but out of his research came the discovery of the Kepler solids, the realization that the orbits of planets are not circles, and Kepler’s laws of planetary motion for which he is now famous.»

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Platonic_solid