I'm not convinced that the author is as knowldegeable as he thinks he is.<p>quote:
"We might expect to see some stars growing brighter throughout the spring on account of Earth approaching them, and then growing dimmer throughout the fall. There is a name for this sort of effect: parallax. But no one could see any parallax."<p>Dimmer and brighter through relative motion is parallax now?
Thanks for posting. Great article. A word of caution about Kepler's discovery of elliptical orbits. We usually encounter this topic in physics textbooks who illustrate the ellipticity of planetary orbits with highly eccentric ellipses of probably 0.7 or more ecentricity. But, as an example, the eccentricity of Venus' orbit is 0.0068! So if you draw such an ellipse on letter size (or A4) paper you cannot tell it apart from a circle.
This article doesn't understand the word "star". We use it to mean a particular class of object, things like our sun. For Copernicus a "star" was anything other than the known planets. The term "fixed stars" is needed to differentiate between what we call stars and all the other moving things that today we call comets, shooting stars. The "fixes stars" included galaxies, nebula, and all the other non-star things that seem fixed to the celestial sphere. May of these were indeed as large as a "universe". Galaxies are big enough to be so described.<p>Star also often mean a sign, symbol or temporary object. The "star" in the Christmas story was likely an alignment of planets. Such stars could appear and disappear on a nightly basis. Before criticizing the ideas in old texts we need to make sure we understand the actual words.
<i>>Copernicans like Thomas Digges, Christoph Rothmann, and Philips Lansbergen, spoke of the giant stars in terms of God’s power, or God’s palace, or the palace of the Angels, or even God’s own warriors. [...] The anti-Copernicans were unpersuaded.</i><p>If you aren't the guy to be in some way off put by the way science and religion were rubbing together in this instance or by the sort of historical baggage implied in it, then this is perhaps one of the funniest things -- as in genuinely <i>funny</i> -- about Early Modern science and philosophy. That's what I think, at least. Everyone kept invoking <i>God</i> as if that were an argument, but whenever tables turned and people went through the same motions on the listening side they just went <i>"... yeah, nah, I don't think so."</i>
That's interesting about the "giant star" hypothesis. I never knew that, and it makes sense based on what Kepler knew at the time.<p>Today, we know that the apparent size of stars is an illusion due to diffraction. In principle, even if stars actually were infinitesimal points of light, they would still appear as disks in optical instruments. Smaller apertures (like our eyes) make the disks larger. Only in recent decades with special techniques can we resolve the actual apparent size of a star.
All you need to do to kill someone's belief in the Big Bang theory is tell the entirety of it. You know, a little more than just the very beginning.<p>Once you get to point out that a part of the theory says that a solar system sized ball of "fire" suddenly expanded to the size of our galaxy in <2 seconds for no reason whatsoever (ie. inflation, or should we say "the second inflation", and yes seriously, that was a pure coincidence according to the accepted-but-don't-ask theory) people start going "what ?". And then go on to explain why it's utterly impossible for space to be 3 dimensional, or for gravity to exist (the standard model argument against gravity) or for gravity to not exist (relativity, as well as obvious experience).<p>And this is probably the right reaction. There's more, like why weren't the electrical, gravitational, magnetic, ... forces between matter and antimatter in that small ball enough to do lots of things. Create a black hole, for instance. Annihilate for instance.<p>I mean there's answers for these questions, but I assure you, whilst they work in the equations (sort-of), they will not reduce the WTF-rate.<p>Just because this is the best theory we have does not mean it's a particularly sensible one. I mean it is, it's just a matter of perspective. When it comes to "intuitive", I contend the actual big bang theory scores pretty damn bad.
I wanted to read the article, but unfortunately it requires me to activate cookies or to subscribe.<p>I was about to create an exception for nautil.us but I had a Wait-Why-Should-I moment. Now I find that request unacceptable, really. They're blocking my access to some article because<p>"Nautilus uses cookies to manage your digital subscription and show you your reading progress. It's just not the same without them."<p>Yes, it is. It is <i>exactly</i> the same. If nautil.us can't go without a cookie, I can go without reading their articles.
>That dynamism stands in contrast to the usual tales we are told about the birth of science, stories portraying the debates around the Copernican theory as occasions when <i>science was suppressed by powerful, entrenched establishments</i>. Stories of scientific suppression, rather than scientific dynamism, have not served science well.<p>Well, this doesn't make sense. Galileo was executed by the Inquisition, an institution inside the Catholic Church. The church was not interested in debating rival scientific theories. They only debated heliocentric theory and their own earth-centric dogma. Once they identified the heliocentric model to be against their dogma they supressed and punished anyone who advocated heliocentric notions. But this does not mean the church was ignorant of astronomy. The church was the main supporter of astronomy because of their interest in maintaining an accurate calendar. Christoph Scheiner mentioned in the article was a Jesuite astronomer respected by Galieleo and the two corresponded.<p>The title of the article must have been decided by an editor who did not read the article. He wanted to write something like “The popular stories we are told about the <i>beginning</i> of scientific thinking have been wrong.” The word “creation” is totally wrong. Astronomy was not created in the 17th century.