8 Responses. > 1  the Moon takes an elliptical path around the Earth. The planets make nearly elliptical orbits around the Sun, close enough for reasonable approximations, but the Moonâs Orbit around the Earth is sufficiently influenced by the Sun that it follows a path detectably different from an ellipse.
Quick Answer. In 1896, French scientist Antoine Henri Becquerel discovered radioactivity which was an early contribution to atomic theory. He discovered this phenomenon while experimenting with uranium and a photographic plate. Continue Reading.
1 Nuclear energy was first discovered accidentally by French physicist Henri Becquerel in 1896, when he found that photographic plates stored in the dark near uranium were blackened like X-ray plates, which had been just recently discovered at the time.