Starship Asterisk*

dpackage wrote:
I wonder how much sooner in the development of human knowledge we would have accepted a helio-centric view if the moon didn't always show the same face to the earth.

• 1) the enormous distances to the stars making
  orbital parallax unmeasurable even for Tycho
  
  2) the bible:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heliocentrism wrote:
<<In 1539, Martin Luther said: "There is talk of a new astrologer who wants to prove that the earth moves and goes around instead of the sky, the sun, the moon, just as if somebody were moving in a carriage or ship might hold that he was sitting still and at rest while the earth and the trees walked and moved. But that is how things are nowadays: when a man wishes to be clever he must . . . invent something special, and the way he does it must needs be the best! The fool wants to turn the whole art of astronomy upside-down. However, as Holy Scripture tells us, so did Joshua bid the sun to stand still and not the earth.">>

neufer wrote:

dpackage wrote:I wonder how much sooner in the development of human knowledge we would have accepted a helio-centric view if the moon didn't always show the same face to the earth.

Probably not by much.

The main hangups were:

• 1) the enormous distances to the stars making
  orbital parallax unmeasurable even for Tycho
  
  2) the bible:

rstevenson wrote:

neufer wrote:

dpackage wrote:
I wonder how much sooner in the development of human knowledge we would have accepted a helio-centric view if the moon didn't always show the same face to the earth.

Probably not by much.

The main hangups were:

• 1) the enormous distances to the stars making
  orbital parallax unmeasurable even for Tycho
  
  2) the bible:

I suspect the Bible would not have been a great impediment for Chinese, Indian and Arab astronomers, pre-Jesuit incursion. Or were you taking "human knowledge" as a synonym for Christian knowledge?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aristarchus_of_Samos wrote:
<<Aristarchus of Samos (Ἀρίσταρχος; c. 310 – c. 230 BC) was an ancient Greek astronomer and mathematician who presented the first known 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 he identified the "central fire" with the Sun, and put the other planets in their correct order of distance around the Sun. His astronomical ideas were often rejected in favor of the geocentric theories of Aristotle and Ptolemy.

Though the original text has been lost, a reference in Archimedes' book The Sand Reckoner (Archimedis Syracusani Arenarius & Dimensio Circuli) describes another work by Aristarchus in which he advanced the heliocentric model as an alternative hypothesis. Archimedes wrote: You (King Gelon) are aware the 'universe' is the name given by most astronomers to the sphere the center of which is the center of the Earth, while its radius is equal to the straight line between the center of the Sun and the center of the Earth. This is the common account as you have heard from astronomers. But Aristarchus has brought out a book consisting of certain hypotheses, wherein it appears, as a consequence of the assumptions made, that the universe is many times greater than the 'universe' just mentioned. His hypotheses are that the fixed stars and the Sun remain unmoved, that the Earth revolves about the Sun on the circumference of a circle, the Sun lying in the middle of the Floor, and that the sphere of the fixed stars, situated about the same center as the Sun, is so great that the circle in which he supposes the Earth to revolve bears such a proportion to the distance of the fixed stars as the center of the sphere bears to its surface. —The Sand Reckoner

Aristarchus thus believed the stars to be very far away, and that in consequence there was no observable parallax, that is, a movement of the stars relative to each other as the Earth moves around the Sun. The stars are much farther away than was generally assumed in ancient times; and since stellar parallax is only detectable with telescopes, his speculation although accurate was unprovable at the time. The geocentric model was consistent with planetary parallax and was assumed to be the reason why no stellar parallax was observed. Rejection of the heliocentric view was common, as the following passage from Plutarch suggests (On the Apparent Face in the Orb of the Moon): Cleanthes (a contemporary of Aristarchus and head of the Stoics) thought it was the duty of the Greeks to indict Aristarchus on the charge of impiety for putting in motion the hearth of the universe ... supposing the heaven to remain at rest and the earth to revolve in an oblique circle, while it rotates, at the same time, about its own axis. —Tassoul, Concise History of Solar and Stellar Physics

The only other astronomer of antiquity who is known by name and who is known to have supported Aristarchus' heliocentric model was Seleucus of Seleucia, a Hellenistic astronomer who lived a century after Aristarchus. The heliocentric theory was successfully revived nearly 1800 years later by Copernicus, after which Johannes Kepler described planetary motions with greater accuracy (Kepler's laws) and Isaac Newton gave the theoretical explanation based on laws of gravitational attraction and dynamics.>>

dpackage wrote:I wonder how much sooner in the development of human knowledge we would have accepted a helio-centric view if the moon didn't always show the same face to the earth.

Nitpicker wrote:

dpackage wrote:
I wonder how much sooner in the development of human knowledge we would have accepted a helio-centric view if the moon didn't always show the same face to the earth.

I am curious as to why the appearance of a spinning (not tidally locked) Moon would make a heliocentric view more acceptable. Whether it is locked or not, it is still orbiting the Earth. If it weren't for the other planets in the Solar System, we might still prefer to think of both the Sun and the Moon as orbiting the Earth, as that is exactly what the Sun and Moon appear to do, without any funny retrograde motion to confound us.

geckzilla wrote:
The moon is apparently 3 dimensional because of the phases, though. The tidal locking perhaps reinforced the idea that planets were held in place by magical invisible spheres which revolved around Earth along with the planets. Anyone watching the moon would also find it plainly obvious that it got its own invisible sphere separate from the stars, too. Man, what was Flammarion's artist thinking when he made that engraving?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camille_Flammarion wrote:
<<Nicolas Camille Flammarion (26 February 1842 – 3 June 1925) was a French astronomer and author. He was a prolific author of more than fifty titles, including popular science works about astronomy, several notable early science fiction novels, and works on psychical research and related topics. He also published the magazine L'Astronomie, starting in 1882. He maintained a private observatory at Juvisy-sur-Orge, France.

Flammarion was influenced by Jean Reynaud (1806–1863) and his Terre at ciel (1854), which described a religious system based on the transmigration of souls believed to be reconcilable with both Christianity and pluralism. He was convinced that souls after the physical death pass from planet to planet, progressively improving at each new incarnation.

In Real and Imaginary Worlds (1864) and Lumen (1887), he "describes a range of exotic species, including sentient plants which combine the processes of digestion and respiration. Man he considered to be a “citizen of the sky,” others worlds “studios of human work, schools where the expanding soul progressively learns and develops, assimilating gradually the knowledge to which its aspirations tend, approaching thus evermore the end of its destiny.” The "Flammarion engraving" first appeared in Flammarion’s 1888 edition of L’Atmosphère. In 1907, he wrote that he believed that dwellers on Mars had tried to communicate with the Earth in the past. He also believed in 1907 that a seven-tailed comet was heading toward Earth.

His psychical studies also influenced some of his science fiction, where he would write about his beliefs in a cosmic version of metempsychosis. In "Lumen", a human character meets the soul of an alien, able to cross the universe faster than light, that has been reincarnated on many different worlds, each with their own gallery of organisms and their evolutionary history. Other than that, his writing about other worlds adhered fairly closely to then current ideas in evolutionary theory and astronomy. Among other things, he believed that all planets went through more or less the same stages of development, but at different rates depending on their sizes.

The fusion of science, science fiction and the spiritual influenced other readers as well; "With great commercial success he blended scientific speculation with science fiction to propagate modern myths such as the notion that “superior” extraterrestrial species reside on numerous planets, and that the human soul evolves through cosmic reincarnation. Flammarion’s influence was great, not just on the popular thought of his day, but also on later writers with similar interests and convictions." Both George Griffith and Edgar Rice Burroughs are referring to him in their writing. Arthur Conan Doyle's The Poison Belt, published 1913, also have a lot in common with Flammarion's worries about that the tail of Haileys' comet would be poisonous for earth life.>>

geckzilla wrote:Man, what was Flammarion's artist thinking when he made that engraving?

Nitpicker wrote:
I cannot find evidence for it, but I do like to imagine that, since the first ideas and results of Aristarchus, Erastothenes and Hipparchus (whose eponymous lunar craters scribe an arc past so many other great names), heliocentrism lived on quietly but continuously, in a tiny minority of bright minds throughout the ages, who perhaps all looked to the heavens as a welcome respite from the Earthly problems thrust upon them by the rest of humanity.

http://www.nauticom.net/www/planet/files/EclipseHistory-FearToFascination.html wrote:

[b][color=#0000FF]Hi & Ho, Royal Astronomers[/color][/b]

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October 22, 2134 B.C. — Hi and Ho, The Royal Astronomers

<<Predicting an eclipse was a duty of ancient Chinese astronomers. The earliest written record of a total solar eclipse comes from China. In 2134 B.C. two royal astronomers, Hi and Ho, knew that an eclipse was due. According to legend, on the day of the eclipse they were too drunk to perform the rites of chanting, beating drums and shooting arrows at the dragon that was devouring the Sun. When the eclipse took place the emperor — also known as the 'Son of the Sky'— was caught unprepared. Advance notice was required to dispatch the archers to frighten the dragon consuming the sun. The emperor ordered Hi and Ho beheaded for their sins.>>

• Here lie the bodies of Ho and Hi,
  Whose fate, though sad, is risible;
  Being slain because they could not spy
  Th' eclipse which was invisible.

http://sunearthday.nasa.gov/2009eclipse/ancienteclipses.php wrote:
<<It is impossible to read ancient Chinese astronomical history without encountering the sad plight of court astrologers Hsi and Ho. To them is attributed the earliest mention of a total solar eclipse among all ancient records before 2000 B.C. Not even the civilization of Ancient Egypt, for which the sun was the chief deity, Ra, were total solar eclipses recorded on any extant monument, despite a civilization with a written record as far back as ca 3,500 BC.

Hsi and Ho were believed to have been two astrologers who served the Emperor Chung K'ang around 2134 B.C. On October 22 of that year, a total solar eclipse occurred and it was recorded in the ancient Chinese document Shu Ching, that 'the Sun and Moon did not meet harmoniously'. By some accounts, the two astrologers were negligent in their duties and did not foretell the event for the Emperor. They were summarily beheaded for their negligence of duty.

Some archeologists dispute that these may have been actual individuals by those names, but that the names may have been those of minor solar deities, making the story an allegory for a ritual that takes place when something goes wrong in the heavens, or that the people were real but that the names were their titles (e.g. 'Ho' the Second Brother). Even the date of the eclipse is merely an educated guess given that there were several eclipses visible around that time of the century from China. Nevertheless, it is a popular and oft-cited story even in modern times, and supports the view that total solar eclipses were noted in China for thousands of years before they were an understood phenomenon involving the moon's motion.>>

Beyond wrote:
Hi Ho heads, away

Ah, so that's where William Tell got the inspiration for his overture.