Major Contributors to Astronomy Tycho Brahe is known for his accurate and comprehensive astronomical and planetary observations.Tycho Brahe was a Danish nobleman that made vital contributions to astronomy by inventing instruments to observe the sky before the invention or the telescope. In ancient times, Greeks believed that the sky was unchanging and that the stars they saw in the sky had been there since the beginning of time. On November 11, 1572 Tycho saw a star in Cassiopeia that he had never seen before. After a seeing of observations, he realized it was a supernova, which is a death of a massive star. His observations of planetary motion, mostly that of Mars, gave important data for astronomers to come, like Kepler.
The work of Lomonosov and Bernoulli in this field led him to conclude that the atmosphere on the Earth and on other planets must be considerably more transparent than he had thought. Euler took a very active role in the observation of the movement of Venus across the face of the sun, despite the fact that at this time he was nearly blind. He had already lost one eye in the course of an experiment on light diffraction in 1738, and an eye disease and botched operation in 1771 led to an almost total loss of
Uniformitarianism vs. Catastrophism Uniformitarianism and catastrophism are the two theories that are said to shape the Earth’s surface. Before James Hutton wrote his book about uniformitarianism, called Theory of the Earth, in 1788, nobody even considered that something other than catastrophism shaped the Earth’s surface. This was because they could see catastrophic change but they could not see gradual change. After Hutton published his book, people started to debate that the Earth was a lot older than they previously thought. Charles Lyell, a British geologist, reintroduced the idea of uniformitarianism when he published a series of books called Principles of Geology.
Cooks first journey was in 1768 and his objective was to observe the plant Venus as it passed between the earth and the sun – this observation would help astronomers to calculate the distance of the sun from earth, he also hoped to find the southern continent. He visited Tahiti where he made observations of Venus, the Society Islands and New Zealand. He mapped most of the two main islands of New Zealand. His second expidition was to either discover the southern hemisphere or prove that it didnt exist. He went below 70 deg latitude that was the farthest any European had ever
But can it be accomplished? The Mayans have made numerous predictions based on the stars and alignment of the sun in relation to the rest of the skies. But their most controversial prediction strikes a huge argument among scientists. Is their prediction that the end of the world on December 21st, 2012 true? Is this even possible that they could predict something so catastrophic?
The author: Charles Krauthmmer is a political scientist, psychiatrist, journalist, and speech writer. Krauthmmer was the winner of the first 250,000 Bradley Prize, awarded to individuals of extraordinary talent who made contributions of excellence in their field. He is also the author of cutting edges: making sense of the eighties. 3. The purpose: I believe that the author wrote this article because he wants to notify the reader that us humans have left the moon behind.
In particular, the phases of Venus, which showed it to circle the sun, and the observation of moons orbiting Jupiter contradicted the geocentric model where the orbit of all celestial bodies was centered on the Earth. For Galileo, saying that the Earth went around the Sun contradicted the teachings of the Catholic Church. Some in the Church believed that his observations were correct; many members of the Church believed that he must be wrong. His observations contradicted the Bible. An example used was a passage in Joshua where God causes the Sun to stand still and lengthen the day.
This account of reality is by far most sophisticated of all those ventured by the Presocratics, and it even comes alarmingly close to anticipating the modern scientific view of ultimate reality. The only two known Presocratic atomists were Leucippus and his student Democritus. Unfortunately, we know very little about Leucippus, the founder of atomic theory. Even his place of birth is in dispute, given variously as Miletus, Abdera, and Elea. What we do know with moderate certainty is that Leucippus studied with members of the school of Elea at some point in his life.
Scientists were working with theories of the speed of light and the “stuff” of the cosmos or ether (Ruswick, lecture 23). Scientists were trying to figure out how light moved through the universe, most thought of it as a particle moving through a medium (Ruswick, lecture 23). If light was a particle moving through ether than it should have had a variable speed as the earth was also moving (Ruswick, lecture 23). The Michelson and Morley experiment proved that the speed of light was constant; this disproved an ether (Ruswick, lecture 23). But fear of throwing away old theories for new led to the rejection of Michelson and Morley’s experiment not the ether theory (Ruswick, lecture 23).
Many people in the Elizabethan Era thought God put us in the center of the universe because they had the i-am-so-important personality which clearly explaining why everything revolved around them, Imagine that! :) Theories of the Elizabethan Era previously seen as fact in the science community are now mere science fiction, however, such theories are the ones who have paved the way to our modern society.This goes to show that we all can make a faux pas once in a while but someone take and make it true. :) The Elizabethan Era was an age of exploration, it was one of the greatest outbreaks for the study of Astronomy even though it was a controversial subject. Astronomy is simply one of the many sciences studied by physics and chemistry looking into the chemical properties and behavior of its celestial bodies(Alchin).This era contained some of the most famous scientist know today from Nicolaus Copernicus to Isaac Newton. These scientists are very important to the modern science community because they are the ones that vastly changed our views of space.