If you thought seeing the forest for the trees was a problem…

…imagine sitting in a forest of stars. With these brilliant gaseous orbs filling the sky as far as the eye can see, wouldn’t their infinite illumination create a perpetual daylight?

But wait! That’s exactly the predicament in which we find ourselves! Or so thought Heinrich Wilhelm Matthäus Olbers (1758 – 1840) in 1826. Actually, he probably thought of this before then and likely until he died, but suffice it to say, it was in the year 1826 that Olbers is on the record for postulating that, whatever direction you look in, there’s bound to be a star, no matter how far away it might be. And if there’s a star there, then there’s starlight there, too. And if every point in the heavens contains a star, we must see such radiance where ever and when ever we look. Ergo, darkness cannot exist.

But we do have darkness! What gives? Now, old Olbers was certainly not some sort of nineteenth century nut case. In fact, many see him as an accomplished astronomer, having discovered two asteroids and five comets. He also carries among his credits the invention of Olbers’ Method, where he introduced a much easier way to calculate the orbits of comets. So, how did Olbers explain his Paradox? He hypothesized the sky appeared dark due to the existence of interstellar clouds of dust that shielded our fragile Earth from the constant bombardment of the bright lumens.

Today we have a much better explanation. It turns out the German scientist did not know the universe is expanding. (He wasn’t alone. The rest of mankind did not become aware of this until a century later when Edwin Hubble correctly interpreted his visual observations – and came up with Hubble’s Law as a result – as evidence the universe is slowly exploding.) Well, once you take expansion into effect, it’s only a hop, skip and a jump to conclude not only is far away starlight dimming, but it’s also shifting towards the red end of the spectrum (and, eventually, off the visible chart all together).

What holds in a nonexpanding universe falls asunder in an expansionary universe. It’s all Einstein’s fault. But, more on that later…

A light bulb goes off in your head. An apple bops you in the head. Whatever the cause, theories involve the head. More specifically, they involve the imagination. Theories, of course, entail more than solving mathematical equations. Theories often require the first birth of said equations from the mysterious ether of ideas. (Ether? Well, not all theories succeed.)

Each of these nominations below required its author to make a novel intuitive leap. Some of those leaps landed on firm ground. Other fell into the void of history. Regardless, they each represent a stepping stone to further discovery.

The Original Nominations

The following candidates were nominated under the Theories category. Highlighted candidates have a separate description page already posted to this site. To view any highlighted nominees, place your cursor anywhere over the text of the nominee and click (pop-ups must be enabled on your browser):

Geocentric – Ptolemaic View (circa 100AD)
Heliocentric – Copernican Revolution (1543) – On the Revolutions of the Celestial Spheres (De Revolutionibus Orbium Coelestium)
Kepler’s Laws of Planetary Motion (1609) – The New Astronomy (Astronomia Nova) and (1619) – Harmonies of the World (Harmonices Mundi)
Galilean Mechanics (1632) – The Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems (Dialogo Sopra i Due Massimi Sistemi del Mondo)
Newton’s Laws [Universal Law of Gravitation; Escape Velocity] (1687) – The Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy (Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica)
Titius-Bode Law (1772)
Black Holes (1783)
Kant-Laplace Nebular Hypothesis (1796)
Doppler Effect (1842) – On the Coloured Light of Double Stars and Certain Other Stars of the Heavens
Olbers’ Paradox (1823/1826)
Electromagnetic Field Theory (1864)
Relativity (1905/1915)
Hertzsprung-Russell Diagram (circa 1910)
Big Bang Theory (1927-1931: Lemaître)
Hubble’s Law (1929)
Thermonuclear Fusion (1938: Hans Bethe)
Steady State Theory (1948)
“Dirty Snowball” Comet Theory (1949: Fred Lawrence Whipple (1906-2004))

Not all the nominees made the top 100. Still, we’ve tried to include a short write-up on each of them. Any nominee that finished in the top 100 greatest images and imaginations in astronomy and space exploration will have its rank listed in the upper left hand corner of the specific page devoted to that nominee.