
The popular creation story of astronomy is wrong - dustfinger
http://nautil.us/issue/60/searches/the-popular-creation-story-of-astronomy-is-wrong
======
gcthomas
I'm not convinced that the author is as knowldegeable as he thinks he is.

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."

Dimmer and brighter through relative motion is parallax now?

~~~
danielvf
Article is totally wrong about parallax. It’s relative apparently motion,
nothing to do with brightness.

~~~
btilly
I have no idea why anyone would vote this correct statement down. See
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stellar_parallax](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stellar_parallax)
for verification.

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nyc111
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.

~~~
acqq
That the modern illustrations are wrong doesn't diminish what Brache correctly
measured and Kepler carefully figured out by his calculations.

~~~
nyc111
I agree. It's not their fault. What interests me is this: If the eccentricity
of planetary orbits is so small, I wonder if we can still uphold the
circularity of orbits, but place the sun slightly off center? Will this
geometry save the observations?

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dhimes
This is not about the birth of the universe, but rather the birth of the
science of Astronomy.

~~~
ItsMe000001
In particular (you can take this as a TL;DR summary), it is about the myth
that some people were stupid (for example, to oppose ideas of Kepler or
Galileo), while others were smart. They were _all_ pretty smart, and the
opposition to new ideas actually had math and data (that were available at the
time!) on its side. Kepler's model, for example, required a believe in
gigantic stars (all starts are the size of Betelgeuse or even larger), based
on data available at the time, which today we know was wrong. Somewhere else I
read about Galileo, as far as I remember apparently his telescope was pretty
bad and it wasn't that other astronomers refused to look through it, as our
modern myth about their "stupidity" goes, but that what could be seen was not
conclusive. I may be wrong about the last one, this is from what I read long
ago elsewhere, the Kepler theory is a main theme in the linked article though.

Another document:
[https://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/0903/0903.3429.pdf](https://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/0903/0903.3429.pdf)

> _How Marius Was Right and Galileo Was Wrong Even Though Galileo Was Right
> and Marius Was Wrong -- or, how telescopic observations in the early 17th
> century supported the Tychonic geocentric theory and how Simon Marius
> realized this._

Sometimes scientists who followed their instincts were right, and those who
followed the available facts/data were not. Sometimes. Or in other words:
Things are not that simple.

~~~
DanAndersen
"The Great Ptolemaic Smackdown" [0] also provides information to this effect.
Yes, as the link you provide mentions, there's an optical phenomenon known as
the Airy disk that suggests an incorrect apparent size of stars when looking
through such old telescopes. It wasn't until the 1800s that this phenomenon
was understood.

[0] [http://tofspot.blogspot.com/2013/08/the-great-ptolemaic-
smac...](http://tofspot.blogspot.com/2013/08/the-great-ptolemaic-
smackdown.html) (part 1)

~~~
acqq
And still, the whole "The Great Ptolemaic Smackdown" is based on false
arguments:

The author claims:

"the reaction at the time was "WTF? Which heresy are you talking about here?"

But the exact heresy was explicitly and very clearly stated both in the
sentence by the Inquisition:

[http://hti.osu.edu/sites/hti.osu.edu/files/documents_in_the_...](http://hti.osu.edu/sites/hti.osu.edu/files/documents_in_the_case_of_galileo.pdf)

"the above-mentioned Galileo, because of the things deduced in the trial and
confessed by you as above, have rendered yourself according to this Holy
Office vehemently suspected of _heresy_ , namely _of having held and believed
a doctrine which is false and contrary to the divine and Holy Scripture: that
the sun is the center of the world_ and does not move from east to west, and
the earth moves and is not the center of the world, and that one may hold and
defend as probable an opinion after it has been declared and defined contrary
to Holy Scripture."

And in Galileo's Abjuration:

[http://www.creatinghistory.com/galileo-galileis-
abjuration-2...](http://www.creatinghistory.com/galileo-galileis-
abjuration-22-june-1633/)

"after having been judicially instructed with injunction by the Holy Office to
abandon completely the false opinion _that the sun is the center of the world
and does not move and the earth is not the center of the world and moves_ ,
and not to hold defend, or teach this false doctrine in any way whatever,
orally or in writing; and after having been notified that this doctrine is
contrary to Holy Scripture; I wrote and published a book in which I treat of
this already condemned doctrine and adduce very effective reasons in its
favor, without refuting them in any way"

The premise of the whole series by that author is also wrong, approximately,
that because the parallax wasn't observed until around 1750 Galileo couldn't
prove in 1633 that the Earth is not standing still, therefore the Church was
right and it wasn't a matter of faith but a personal thing. It's obviously a
completely invalid argument.

~~~
ItsMe000001
It's an invalid argument only after you twisted it very severely to fit your
preconceptions. I see a lot of carefully selected random out of context
quotes.

~~~
acqq
"carefully selected random out of context quotes" is exactly what the
"smackdown" makes: its avoid mentioning the truth:

\- the clearly written sentence

\- clearly written statement by Galileo

\- the fact that the rotation of the Earth around the Sun was obvious to
anybody who actually "did the math" and compared with the observations, even
at that time

\- the fact of how long both Galileo's and Copernicus' books remained banned
by the Church afterwards

and instead claims that "missing parallax observation" made right for the
Church to claim "heresy." No it doesn't and that particular detail was never
relevant. Even now we don't know what's beyond the limit of our observations,
but because of that we don't punish the scientists who make the best models
for what we actually observe.

So yes, the Church was very wrong, and there are very clear written documents.
Including that both Galileo's and Copernicus books remained on the Church's
list of banned books for the next centuries!

The guy writing "smackdown" seems to be in a search for anything to prove
actions of the Church "acceptable" by intentionally avoiding the major facts:
yes the Church considered exactly even teaching or writing about the
heliocentric world a real heresy. And it acted according to that not only in
one point of time but through the centuries, obviously not because "Galileo
had a bad personal problem with the Pope of that moment" or anything else that
the "smackdown" guy wants to pass as a "good reason". The "smackdown" guy
should be smackdowned and recognized as effectively a liar.

I know a lot of people "want to believe him" and that link to his page is
resent around, but it doesn't make it true.

~~~
ItsMe000001
You are extremely manipulative and selective and use a lot of brute force to
come to the conclusions you like to have from the start.

------
sandworm101
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.

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.

------
tpeo
_> 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._

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 _funny_ \-- about Early Modern science and philosophy. That's
what I think, at least. Everyone kept invoking _God_ as if that were an
argument, but whenever tables turned and people went through the same motions
on the listening side they just went _"... yeah, nah, I don't think so."_

~~~
DoofusOfDeath
Seems to me that their invocations of God _were_ parts of logical arguments.
It's just that those arguments were extremely sloppy.

------
drjesusphd
That's interesting about the "giant star" hypothesis. I never knew that, and
it makes sense based on what Kepler knew at the time.

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.

~~~
eesmith
"Only in recent decades with special techniques can we resolve the actual
apparent size of a star."

More specifically, the first was Betelgeuse in 1920.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betelgeuse#Diameter](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betelgeuse#Diameter)

------
candiodari
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.

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).

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.

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.

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.

------
imh
I love this kind of story about the history of science and understanding. Does
anyone have pointers to other good ones? Or even better books of them?

~~~
dwaltrip
The Magic Furnace is a great book about the history of how we came to
understand atoms and where they come from. It shows a lot of the missteps and
twisty turns along the way.

I also love learning about how scientific understanding actually developed
over time. It's a messy, fascinating process.

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chicob
I wanted to read the article, but unfortunately it requires me to activate
cookies or to subscribe.

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

"Nautilus uses cookies to manage your digital subscription and show you your
reading progress. It's just not the same without them."

Yes, it is. It is _exactly_ the same. If nautil.us can't go without a cookie,
I can go without reading their articles.

~~~
dlisboa
Without cookies they can't log you in so if you have a paid subscription it'd
not work.

From what I see they also store on cookies where you've stopped so if you
return to the article it's on the same point.

In that sense it's not the same experience without them.

And it's not unimaginable that they track how many articles you've read a
month so they can show you a modal to interest you in a subscription.

I can see how you'd not want to be tracked as a visiting user, but even then
it's not really sensible to complain when the other option (paying for the
content) requires you to activate cookies anyway.

Honestly, I don't think it's reasonable to expect (or find it odd) that
websites need cookies to function inside a browser in this day and age.

~~~
chicob
I think that they have the right to ask for whatever they want to ask, just as
much as I have the right not to concede them what they're asking.

I know I need to activate cookies in order to login. I do have a lot of cookie
exceptions. But in my opinion, this is not one of thoses cases.

One does not require cookies to read HN, for instance. Or many other websites.

If they use cookies as a base for their business model - which is perfectly
acceptable - at least they could have the decency of saying so clearly. I
dislike being treated as too ignorant to understand, and the "user experience"
card is getting old.

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jankotek
It is just semantics, related to philosophy, but not astronomy. Planets do not
even orbit around sun, but center of gravity which is outside of sun.

~~~
24gttghh
>Planets do not even orbit around sun, but center of gravity which is outside
of sun.

That's...semantics also. The barycenter (center of mass, not gravity) of the
solar system can very much be within Sol's limb. For all intents and purposes
the planets _do_ orbit the highest center of mass which is within or at least
very close to the surface of Sol.

------
nyc111
>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 _science was suppressed by powerful, entrenched
establishments_. Stories of scientific suppression, rather than scientific
dynamism, have not served science well.

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.

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 _beginning_ of scientific thinking have been wrong.” The word
“creation” is totally wrong. Astronomy was not created in the 17th century.

~~~
6Typos
> Galileo was executed by the Inquisition,

Was only arrested at home, for 10 years (but wrongly convicted)

> Once they identified the heliocentric model to be against their dogma they
> supressed and punished anyone who advocated heliocentric notions

I recommend reading [0], particularly:

> as in astrology the theory of eccentrics and epicycles is considered as
> established, because thereby the sensible appearances of the heavenly
> movements can be explained; not, however, as if this proof were sufficient,
> forasmuch as some other theory might explain them.

So, the Ptolemaic model was used because it fit the observations well enough.

On the other hand, the Copernicus work was (indirectly) used in the
construction of the Gregorian calendar.

Furthermore, when Copernicus introduced is theory in 1543, the book was
dedicated to the Pope.

The Galileo affair was made by enemies of Galileo who used the Inquisition to
prosecute him. That was wrong, but it was certainly not the whole Catholic
Church.

[0] Summa Theologica, I, q.32, a.1 ad.2

Link:
[http://dhspriory.org/thomas/summa/FP/FP032.html#FPQ32OUTP1](http://dhspriory.org/thomas/summa/FP/FP032.html#FPQ32OUTP1)
(under reply to objection 2)

[edit: formatting]

~~~
nyc111
>> Galileo was _executed_ by the Inquisition,

> Was only arrested at home, for 10 years (but wrongly convicted)

My mistake obviously. I was trying to say “Galileo was _tried_ by the
Inquisition. The point was that the Church had jurisdiction over academia and
had the power to enforce its dogmas by force if necessary.

