Cosmos · 3D
Kepler’s Cosmic Mystery
Mysterium Cosmographicum, 1596
Young Kepler’s dream: the five Platonic solids nested between the orbits of the six known planets, each held between an inner and outer sphere.
- Solids
- 5
- Planets
- 6
- Year
- 1596
Turn it in your hands, strike it to hear the chord of its edges, slice it with a plane.
Facts
- Order from outside: cube, tetrahedron, dodecahedron, icosahedron, octahedron.
- Each solid touches the sphere outside at its corners and the sphere inside at its face centres.
- The fit was surprisingly close, within about 10% for most planets.
- Kepler later abandoned it for his laws of elliptical orbits, which were right.
History and meaning
Kepler believed he had glimpsed God’s geometric plan for the heavens. The model was wrong, but the search led him to the true laws of planetary motion.
