Astronomy 2021A/B Lecture Notes - Lecture 2: Eyewitness Testimony, Semi-Major And Semi-Minor Axes, Scientific Modelling

• School: Western University
• Department: Astronomy
• Course: Astronomy 2021A/B
• Professor: Alyssa Gilbert

Document Summary

January 11th, 2016 - science of life in the universe. 2. 1 the ancient debate about life beyond earth. More than 2300 years ago, scholars of ancient greece were already engaged in a lively debate about the possibility of life beyond earth. Our ancestors looked at the sky and attributed what they saw to the arbitrary actions of mythological beings. Chinese, 5000 years ago, kept detailed records of astronomical observations. Babylonians, 2500 years ago, predicted eclipses with great success. First to move human understanding from mythological to rational. First person to address the question what is the universe made of without resorting to supernatural explanations. Universe consisted of water and that earth was a flat disk on an infinite ocean. Other opinions from plato and aristotle but not to the capacity of modern science because previously relied on intuition and observation rather than experimental tests. Developed a tradition of trying to understand nature without resorting to supernatural explanations.