The legend of Leonardo da Vinci continues to grow. The artistic and scientific value of the work that this genius, who was born in Anchiano (Florence) in the middle of the 15th century, bequeathed to us is indisputable. And six centuries after his passing from this world, the scholars of his writings continue to discover in them a knowledge that is considered a priori. seems out of reach any person in the Middle Ages, no matter how knowledgeable.

But it is not. Leonardo refuses to be taken to the dovecotes with his peers. We’ve long known that his creativity knows no bounds, and the discovery by a team of engineers from the prestigious California Institute of Technology, Caltech, confirms this axiom even more strongly. And these researchers realized that their understanding of gravity was several centuries ahead of their time. Points to Leonardo.

Da Vinci’s texts continue to amaze us

It is surprising at this point that there are still discoveries to be made in the writings of Leonardo da Vinci. Mysteries hidden between his strokes and still waiting to be solved. But yes, it’s clear that we don’t know everything about the Florentine genius. These Caltech researchers, like other scientists before them, studied meticulously. arundel codexIt is a collection of handwritten texts addressed to various scientific disciplines, such as mathematics or physics, by Leonardo between 1480 and 1518.

Right now any of us can study this codex for free because it has been digitized and is available on the website of the British Library, the institution that maintains it. That’s exactly how Caltech engineers did it. In any case, the important thing is that they discovered that Leonardo designed and conducted several experiments that allowed him to form a fairly accurate idea of ​​the nature of gravity.

In fact, according to these technicians, their tests, gravity is a form of acceleration, which indicates that Leonardo correctly intuited the characteristics of the physical phenomenon he wanted to examine. And it has come a long way, especially when we bear in mind how primitive the resources at its disposal are. So much so that, despite not having advanced measuring instruments, he was able to predict the universal gravitational constant with 97% accuracy, according to Caltech researchers.

The Arundel Codex is full of illustrations and diagrams. Leonardo used these to accurately describe his experiments.

The experiment that Leonardo designed to perform such an accurate calculation in a time without sophisticated measuring instruments radiates ingenuity. And Caltech researchers copied that. In fact, this is what allowed them to evaluate him and put on the table once again how clever the Florentine sage was. And da Vinci came up with the idea of ​​moving a jug along a trajectory parallel to the ground in order to gradually pour a substance that would allow him, if velocity, to observe with the maximum possible precision. fixed or not (you can see the outline of this experiment in the cover image of this article).

It seems Leonardo doesn’t specify what substance he used in this experiment in his texts, but Caltech engineers suspect he must have used water or sand. In any case, he concludes in his notes that the spillage did not settle at a constant rate, but rather rather. is subject to acceleration. He even noticed that matter did not undergo horizontal acceleration when not under the influence of the experimenter, which led him to the conclusion that vertical acceleration could only be caused by gravity. Clever, isn’t he?

To put the relevance of Leonardo da Vinci’s discovery into perspective, we are interested in considering that he died in 1519 and that Galileo Galilei, who made important contributions to the field, elaborated his theories in 1604. He lived in the second half of the 17th century and the first thirty years of the 18th century. There is not the slightest doubt: Leonardo was truly ahead of his time.

Cover photo: Caltech

More information: Caltech | MIT Press Direct | British Library