Kepler and the regular solids



Ordering of the five planetary orbits in terms of the nesting of the five regular solids. This hypothesis formed the center piece of Kepler's 1596 The secret of the universe ( Mysterium cosmographicum ). Despites rather poor agreement between this model and observations, Kepler would cling to this idea to the end of his life. He issues a second edition of the book in 1621.

-Written and last revised 20 December 1997 by paulchar@ucar.edu.

Copyright 1997, NCAR.