At the beginning of the month physicist and popular science writer, Paul Halpern posted the following tweet:

Kepler’s remarkable Somnium, one of the 1st sci-fi stories, later used as evidence in his mother’s witchcraft trial: ‪

Now knowing a thing or two about Kepler’s Johannes and his more than bizarre life, I’ve even written a post on the witchcraft trial, I tweeted back:

It wasn’t used as evidence in his mother’s trial

Now Paul is a conscientious historian of science who likes to check his facts and so he tweeted back, in turn:

Here’s my source: ‪ ‪@APSphysics

The American Physical Society is an honourable organisation and one would expect them to get their facts right and here is what they have to say about Somnium:

Kepler also tried his hand at more fanciful writing, penning an allegory called Somnium (The Dream) in 1611 — arguably…