Ways of Knowing

The first in a 9-part series dedicated to deep, intentional listening. Episodes of "The Listening Experience" will be released about every four months.

There's a lot to hear in outer space if you change the way you listen.

The story of how gravitational waves were finally discovered and how we are making sense of them.

Some of the most iconic images we have of the universe closely resemble 19th-century landscape paintings of the American West. A big part of the reason has to do with how scientists interpreted visual data from telescopes like Hubble.

With the telescopes of the 20th century, astronomers began to see a universe that just so happened to resemble the cosmos as described by a 13th century Italian poet…Dante Alighieri.

An observational error in the 19th century leads to a belief that there is an advanced alien civilization on Mars...which leads to a boom in astronomy investment, research, and actual discoveries, including the first sighting of Pluto.

"Somnium" is considered one of the first pieces of science fiction. The short story, written in 1608, recounts a trip up to the moon. There are magical beings, aliens, drugs, and a perspective of the stars that would fundamentally change how people understood the solar system.

Near the end of the 11th century CE, there was a crisis in China’s Song Dynasty. The imperial calendars were filled with errors. To fix them, the imperial court would have to reform one of the most essential institutions in the empire: The Bureau of Astronomy.

In the 9th century CE, Mayan astronomers were able to calculate the period of Venus down to the minute. They were only able to achieve this unrivaled accuracy because they had developed one of the most important mathematical concepts in human history, the zero.

In the 6th Century BCE, Ancient Greeks began thinking about the cosmos in a fundamentally new way. Their novel approach led them to believe the things they saw in the night sky were not ethereal, but solid bodies—balls of fire or rock that may even have inhabitants of their own.