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The Solar System : How Our Understanding Has Changed

Good Essays

INT 1 Task 1

Beth Warner

Western Governors University

Part 1 – Solar System: How Our understanding Has Changed
Example 1: First Thoughts
During the first millennium B.C. scientists realized that astronomy had to become more scientific. Middle Eastern and Chinese cultures started studying the Sun, stars and the planets more closely in an attempt to learn more about our position in the universe.. Star positions also became important tools in understanding directions, and helping with navigation. One philosopher stated in 434 B.C. that the Sun was a ball of fire 60 kilometres in diameter, hovering 6500 kilometres above Earth’s surface. Around 130 B.C., Ptolemy wrote Almagest, which was a huge collection of astronomical data which included mathematical models, information about eclipses, and planetary and stellar positions and movements. It remained a major go to book for astronomy for hundreds of years, and was not seriously challenged until Copernicus disputed the geocentric model of the solar system in the 1500’s

Example 2: Changing Technology

• By the 16th century, astronomers began to note irregularities in the accepted model of the solar system. In the early 1500s, Nicolaus Copernicus noted that the planets had slight discrepancies between their observed and presumed positions. Copernicus thought that the Sun was

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