Freedom of Science

In the time of Copernicus the astronomical database was so out of shape and corrupted that some of that observations in it were made by Hipparchus a millennium ago. One of the heavy users of the database was the Catholic church. They used the database to compute religious holidays. The Church realized that unless the database was updated they were in danger of celebrating Christmas with Easter. By this practical necessity the database issue became a priority for the European political and religious rulers.

Today the astronomical database is free of political and religious elements. An independent institution, JPL, continuously improves the database by mathematical methods. New observations are fitted to database by numerical integration. The database is freely available online. It is both available and legible. Finally the priestly class who hid the database for the benefit of the rulers are gone. Where did they go? They are now working in physics.

ShareThis