Christiaan+Huygens

=Christiaan Huygens=
 * "The World is my Fatherland, Science is my Religion"**

Christiaan Huygens was "one of the most brilliant minds in history." (1) He was born on April 14th, 1629 in Den Haag, Holland to a wealthy diplomatic family. He received the best education one could have in that era because of his father's vast wealth. He originally focused his studies in law and mathematics, but after a short stint in politics he turned to science. Rene Descartes associated with Christiaan's grandfather and took an interest in Christiaan. He was amazed at his ability to grasp geometry so well. He was heavily influenced by Rene Descartes and taught him of the “mechanistic” philosophy of nature, and came to believe that all natural phenomena would one day be explained by science. He had a wide variety of interests that included Astronomy, Math, Physics, Horology, and Writing. Even though he accomplished so much, he didn’t receive that much fame because he was alive in the same era as Galileo died and Newton’s ascent. He died in his hometown of Den Haag on June 8th, 1695. He gave all of his manuscripts to the University of Leiden and left all of his property to his brother since he never married. The European Space Agency has honored Christiaan Huygens by naming a space probe for him that was sent to explore Titan which was launched in 1997.

//__Notable Contributions__//
Huygens was constantly involved with areas of mathematics. He helped to further develop calculus to what it is today. Huygens wrote the first book on the probability theory entitled //De Ratiociniis in Ludo Aleae// (On Reasoning in Games and Chance), in 1657 with the encouragement of Blaise Pascal himself.(4) Huygens created what would become the second law of motion in quadratic form which Sir Isaac Newton reformulated and generalized. He also created the formula for centripital force in 1659. Descartes' law of elastic collision of two objects was observed by Christiaan to be wrong. He pointed out the problems and formulated the correct laws. A significant theory that Huygens proposed was his famous wave theory which he included in his //Treatise on Light// in 1678. He figured that light was made up of a series of waves or vibrations. Christian Huygens deduced the laws of reflection and refraction, explained the phenomenon of double refraction, and gave a construction for the extraordinary ray in biaxial crystals; while he found by experiment the chief phenomena of polarization. (5) Huygens made a significant contribution to of all things, clockwork. He invented accurate clocks for naval navigation and pendulum clocks in 1656, both were revolutionary for the time. He isn't known to have built any clocks himself, but that was left to Salomon Coster in The Hague. He also invented and patented the creation of the pocket watch in 1675. Also around that time Huygens developed the balance wheel and spring assembly, which are still found in some of today's wrist watches.(5) A surprising piece of knowledge about Huygens is that he had the first idea of the internal combustion engine in 1673. His idea was to have the engine be powered through gunpowder, however he never successfully built a functional example.



//__Contributions to Astronomy__//
Even as a child, Huygens loved to observe the night sky. His greatest contribution was his observations of Saturn's Rings. Saturn had been recognized for centuries, dating back to the ancient Greeks and Romans. Galileo was the first to observe the planet through a telescope in 1610. When Galileo observed Saturn, he noticed what looked like two little ears on both sides of the planet, that he thought were two spheres. (2) Christiaan Huygens was the first to describe Saturn's rings as a flat, circular disk, and the concept of a ringed planet first entered the human imagination. (3) He stated that the rings were not part of the planet, as some people thought may be the case. He drew a diagram of what he observed, which he included as part of his book "Systema Saturnium". Along with observing Saturn, Christiaan discovered and observed the largest moon of Saturn, Titan, which is primarily composed of water ice and rocky material. Titan was also believed to be the largest moon in our solar system at that time.(7) Titan wasn't given a name at the time of its discovery. As more moons were discovered around Saturn, Huygens simply referred to Titan as "my moon". In 1659, Huygens was the first person to describe a feature on the surface of Mars. His drawing is believed to be that of Syrtis Major which he described as a bog. Syrtis Major is a dark spot on Mars that is located between the northern lowlands and the southern highlands.(6) He estimated that Mars was 60% the size of Earth by using a telescope with a micrometer in the eyepiece. He determined the angular size of Mars based on the micrometer measurements; estimated the distance from Earth to Mars; Used geometry to estimate the true size of Mars from the size as measured in his eyepiece.(6) Huygens estimated that the Martian Day is 24 hours by watching the rotation of the Syrtis Major.(6) A few years later in 1672, Huygens drew another picture of Mars which is believed to be the southern polar cap. He also thought that dark spots on Jupiter were polar ice caps just like on Mars. Huygens also observed and made the first sketches of the Orion Nebula in 1655. He was able to divide the Nebula into separate stars. The middle of the Orion Nebula, which is the brightest, is named the Huygens Region.

//__Advancement of Telescopes and Extraterrestrial Life__//
Christiaan spent a lot of time with microscopes studying small life forms and many microscopic objects. Huygens made his own telescopes which included grinding his own lenses with the help of his father, Constantijn, and his brother of the same name. The lenses and telescopes he made helped see objects that were further with better clarity. When Huygens observed Saturn's rings he used his own 50 power refracting telescope. He continuously tried to tweak telescopes to increase their magnifying ability. At that time, it was known that with their longer focallengths, longer telescopes allowed for better magnification. Huygens took this idea to an extreme by creating a refraction telescope that was 23 feet long. He also created an aerial telescope that was 120 feet long. He used aerial telescopes because he felt a typical telescope was to limiting because of all the metal tubing. The eyepiece that Huygens created for telescopes was revolutionary for the time. He used two lenses that were curved on one side, facing away from the human eye, with a gap in between them to allow for air. This allowed for the person looking through to have a relaxed eye. However, these lenses aren't used that much anymore because they are useful only for longer telescopes such as those used in Huygens' time. They are only used today in some telescopes because the lenses are cheap to make. With the increased power of his telescopes, he was able to observe and calculate the difference in equatorial and polar diameters of Jupiter. He also proposed that Jupiter was made up of many layers of clouds.

Huygens believed in extraterrestrial life and wrote a book before his death in 1695 entitled //Cosmotheoros.// He believed that any extraterrestrial life would be similar to life here on Earth. To have other planets with life, he believed would have to be set around water in liquid form because it is the most essential part of life. Huygens questioned if there was life on Mars and Jupiter because there were dark and bright spots which he figured were areas of water and ice, and that each planet had water in various properties.(8) When asked to describe how the other life forms would be, he thought that any other life forms would be nearly identical to life forms on Earth in terms of biological composition.(8)

**//__Bibliography__//** 1. McGrath, Kimberely A, and Bridget Travers. __World of Invention__. Thomas Gale, 1999. __Book Rags__. . 2."Saturn." __ThinkQuest.__ 30 Jul. 2010. . 3.Showalter, Mark R. "From Galileo to Cassini - 400 Years of Saturn's Rings." __Life at the SETI Institutue.__ 23 Jul. 2010. 30 Jul. 2010. . 4."The Beginning ." 30 Jul. 2010. . 5.Bellis, Mary. "Christiaan Huygens." __About.com.__ 30 Jul. 2010. . 6.Plaxco, Jim. "Mars Timeline of Discovery." __Explore Mars.__ 31 Jul. 2010. . 7.http://www.surveyor.in-berlin.de/himmel/Bios/Huygens-e.html. 8.Johar, Huzefa. "Nothing But The Facts - Christiaan Huygens." __Bright Hub.__ 27 Sep. 2009. 31 Jul. 2010. .