Question

Samos was a greek living about 300 bc. what scientific model did he develop? who developed the same idea nearly 2000 years later? why is this considered a period of non-progressive science.

Answer 1

Aristarchus of Samos as an ancient Greek astronomer and mathematician who presented the first known heliocentric model that placed the Sun at the center of the known universe with the Earth revolving around it. He was influenced by Philolaus of Croton, but Aristarchus identified the "central fire" with the Sun, and he put the other planets in their correct order of distance around the Sun.

He also said that the stars were distant suns that remained unmoved and that the size of the universe was much larger than his contemporaries believed.This Sun-centred view of the universe is often referred to as “heliocentric”. The Aristarchus’ hypothesis also had a number of additional interesting implications far beyond just a Sun-centred planetary system and a rotating Earth.

After 2000 years, Nicolai Copernicus developed a model similar to the model developed by Samos.The Earth-centered Universe of Aristotle and Ptolemy held sway on Western thinking for almost 2000 years. Then, in the 16th century a "new" (but remember Aristarchus) idea was proposed by the Polish astronomer Nicolai Copernicus.

Copernicus proposed that the Sun, not the Earth, was the center of the Solar System. Such a model is called a heliocentric system. In this new ordering the Earth is just another planet (the third outward from the Sun), and the Moon is in orbit around the Earth, not the Sun. The stars are distant objects that do not revolve around the Sun. Instead, the Earth is assumed to rotate once in 24 hours, causing the stars to appear to revolve around the Earth in the opposite direction.

3 incorrect ideas held back the development of modern astronomy (1) the assumption that the Earth was the center of the Universe, (2) the assumption of uniform circular motion in the heavens, and (3) the assumption that objects in the heavens were made from a perfect, unchanging substance not found on the Earth.

These discovery periods were considered as a period of non- progressive science.Because, Samos calculated that the Sun was nineteen times further away from Earth than the Moon. However, he made a mistake in his calculations: he took the angle as 87 degrees while the correct angle is 89 ° 50'. Thus, the actual distance is 390 times and not nineteen times, as proposed by Aristarchus.

Copernicus thought that the planets orbited the Sun, and that the Moon orbited Earth. The Sun, in the center of the universe, did not move, nor did the stars.

Copernicus was correct about some things, but wrong about others. The Sun is not in the center of the universe, and it does move, as do the stars. Also Copernicus thought that the orbits of the planets were circular, but we now know they are elliptical.

These faulty assumptions made by them paved to consider this period as a period of non progressive science.