History
The term "interplanetary" appears to have been first used in print in 1691 by the scientist Robert Boyle: "The air is different from the æther (or vacuum) in the... interplanetary spaces" Boyle Hist. Air.
The notion that space is considered to be a vacuum filled with an "aether", or just a cold, dark vacuum continued up until the 1950s (see below).
In 1898, American astronomer Charles Augustus Young wrote: "Inter-planetary space is a vacuum, far more perfect than anything we can produce by artificial means..." (The Elements of Astronomy, Charles Augustus Young, 1898).
And Akasofu recounted that: "The view that interplanetary space is a vacuum into which the Sun intermittently emitted corpuscular streams was changed radically by Ludwig Biermann (1951, 1953) who proposed on the basis of comet tails, that the Sun continuously blows its atmosphere out in all directions at supersonic speed" (Syun-Ichi Akasofu, Exploring the Secrets of the Aurora, 2002)
Tufts University Professor of astronomy, Kenneth R. Lang, writing in 2000 noted, "Half a century ago, most people visualized our planet as a solitary sphere traveling in a cold, dark vacuum of space around the Sun".
Read more about this topic: Interplanetary Medium
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“It is true that this man was nothing but an elemental force in motion, directed and rendered more effective by extreme cunning and by a relentless tactical clairvoyance .... Hitler was history in its purest form.”
—Albert Camus (1913–1960)
“There is nothing truer than myth: history, in its attempt to “realize” myth, distorts it, stops halfway; when history claims to have “succeeded” this is nothing but humbug and mystification. Everything we dream is “realizable.” Reality does not have to be: it is simply what it is.”
—Eugène Ionesco (b. 1912)