Astronomy 2021A/B Chapter Notes - Chapter 2: Spherical Earth, Semi-Major And Semi-Minor Axes, Anaximander

• School: Western University
• Department: Astronomy
• Course: Astronomy 2021A/B
• Professor: Stanimir Metchev

Document Summary

2 the science of life in the universe. 2. 1 the ancient debate about life beyond earth. How did attempts to understand the sky star us on the road to science. The sun rises in the east and sets in the west. The greeks paved the way for modern science: first, they developed a tradition of trying to understand nature without resorting to supernatural explanations. Greek created models which are a conceptual representation whose purpose is to explain and predict observed phenomena: may not fully all observations of nature. Student of thales, anaximander suggested heavens form a complete sphere the celestial sphere around earth: realized surface of earth is curved, but incorrectly suggested it as a cylinder. Pythagoras adopted a spherical earth due to idea of perfection. Aristotle observed earth"s curved shadow on moon during lunar eclipse as evidence of spherical earth. In conlcusion greeks adopted geocentric model of universe with spherical earth at center.