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Chinese and American Indian astronomers observe the Crab supernova explosion
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First known written description of the use of lodestone as a compass
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Nicholas Copernicus first states his heliocentric theory in Commentariolus
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Nicholas Copernicus publishes De Revolutionibus de Orbium Coelestium (On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres)
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Tycho Brahe observes the supernova that appears in Cassiopeia
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Tycho Brahe uses parallax to prove that comets are distant entities and not atmospheric phenomena
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Galileo Galilei uses balls rolling on inclined planes to show that different weights fall with the same constant acceleration
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Johannes Kepler states his first two empirical laws of planetary motion
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Christian Huygens builds the first highly accurate pendulum clock
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Isaac Newton deduces the inverse-square gravitational force law from the acceleration of the moon
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Isaac Newton invents his calculus
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Ole Romer uses the orbital mechanics of Jupiter's moons to estimate the speed of light
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Christian Huygens states his principle of wavefront sources
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Joseph Priestly proposes an electrical inverse-square law
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John Michell suggests that some objects might be so massive that not even light could escape
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Count Rumford has the idea that heat is a form of energy
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Henry Cavendish measures the gravitational constant and determines the mass of the Earth
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Alessandro Volta announces his invention of the electric battery
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Lord Kelvin discovers the absolute zero point of temperature
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James Maxwell states that light is an electromagnetic phenomenon
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Lord Kelvin formally states the second law of thermodynamics
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Albert Einstein completes his theory of special relativity
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James Chadwick discovers the neutron
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Wolfgang Pauli proposes the existence of neutrinos to account for an apparent violation of energy conservation in certain nuclear reactions