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The Astronomicum Caesareum (1540) by the German mathematician, astronomer and cartographer Petrus Apianus was used by the privileged – including the Holy Roman emperor Charles V, who commissioned it, and the Tudor king Henry VIII – to find guidance, knowledge and fate in the stars. Produced over eight years at Apianus’s printing press in Bavaria, it was also extraordinarily beautiful, with hand-coloured illustrations, rotating paper dials and silk threads helping to steer its owner’s astrological forecast. Taking viewers on a guided tour of one of the original copies of the Astronomicum Caesareum, this short from the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City explores the book’s elegance, intricacy and function. Through this, the video conveys the prevalence of astrology in the 16th century, and how the book emerged in an uncertain world in which long-held beliefs – including geocentrism – were being upended.
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Biology
Flicker through the eclectic beauty and biological diversity of 2,400 leaves
3 minutes
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Metaphysics
Bertrand Russell wanted to kill off causation. Can contemporary philosophy rescue it?
8 minutes
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Ethics
How many monkeys is it worth sacrificing to save a human life?
6 minutes
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History of science
Bat-people on the Moon – what a famed 1835 hoax reveals about misinformation today
8 minutes
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Human rights and justice
Thirty years after one teenager shot another, is it time to forgive?
28 minutes
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Biotechnology
What it’s like to wear a prosthetic that ‘feels’
6 minutes
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Chemistry
A square inch in a Petri dish becomes a grand stage for chemical transformations
4 minutes
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Medicine
What is it like to be a paramedic, navigating human emergency?
17 minutes
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Physics
The tangled tale of how physicists built a groundbreaking wormhole in a lab
17 minutes