Forgotten Da Vinci Experiments Show the Genius Was Oh So Close to Understanding Gravity
upstart writes:
In 1907, Albert Einstein presented the world with a startling truth about our universe. Gravity, he realized, isn't quite as strange and mysterious as it feels.
Rather, it's kind of the same thing as acceleration -- a force we're very used to thinking about on the regular. He called it the equivalence principle, and soon, this eye-opening concept would blossom into the mind-bending theory of general relativity. The rest, as they say, is history.
On Monday, however, engineers with the California Institute of Technology revealed a fascinating new plot point to the story of humanity's gravitational musings -- and it has to do with none other than the renaissance genius himself, Leonardo da Vinci.
As it turns out, not only was da Vinci painting stunning masterpieces in the late 15th and early 16th century like the Last Supper and the Mona Lisa, but was also conducting gravity experiments of his own. For years, he'd been scribbling down equations and drawings about the elusive force that anchors us to Earth, written in old Italian in notebooks such as the recently released Codex Arundel.
He even did it in his signature mirrored penmanship, the researchers say, which simply refers to da Vinci's tendency to write everything backward for secrecy.
What's especially striking about these inscriptions is how da Vinci seems to have been on the right track.
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