One of Firestein's most interesting points was his discussion of "mechanisms" across different fields. In fields like mechanical engineering, it's usually very easy to see why something works, while the "why" in chemistry and biology often takes years to discover. Firestein seems to imply around 29:20 that astronomy is one of the "easy" fields, which I don't quite understand - all the events we're discussing happened billions of years ago. I'd love to know more of his perspective about mechanisms in astronomy, and why it's comparatively easy or hard.
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