Scientists and their

Contribution to our Current

Understanding of the Earth
Topic 6
 You know, because you've been told, that the
Earth revolves around the Sun. You also probably know
that planets other than our own have moons, and the
way to test to see whether or not something is true is
by experimenting.
Thousands of years ago, these things were not widely known. The
heavens above were anyone's guess, and the way things were was just
the way the gods had made them. It was felt there was no need to
truly understand them or put them in any kind of order.

The Greek scholars changed much of that. They were famous for their
schools of higher knowledge, which were rather different than ours.
Students would gather around a teacher, perhaps in a beautiful grove,
and ask questions and discuss among themselves what might be the
answers and the best ways to figure out those answers. Many of
today's colleges still aspire to this way of learning.
Early Astronomers:
Ptolemy, Aristotle,
Copernicus, and Galileo
Ptolemy
 Ptolemy was an astronomer and mathematician. He believed
that the Earth was the center of the Universe.
The word for earth in Greek is geo, so we call this idea a
"geocentric" theory. Even starting with this incorrect theory, he was
able to combine what he saw of the stars' movements with
mathematics, especially geometry, to predict the movements of the
planets.
 He set up a model of the solar system in which the sun,
stars, and other planets revolve around the Earth.
 It was known as the Ptolemaic system
Astronomical treatise
Aristotle
 He is sometimes called the grandfather of science. He studied
under the great philosopher Plato and later started his own school,
the Lyceum at Athens.
He, too, believed in a geocentric Universe and that the planets
and stars were perfect spheres though Earth itself was not. He further
thought that the movements of the planets and stars must be circular
since they were perfect and if the motions were circular, then they
could go on forever.
 Today, we know that none of this is the case, but Aristotle was
so respected that these wrong answers were taught for a very long
time. Aristotle, outside of astronomy, was a champion observer. He
was one of the first to study plants, animals, and people in a scientific
way, and he did believe in experimenting whenever possible and
developed logical ways of thinking. This is a critical legacy for all the
scientists who followed after him.
Copernicus
 Well over a thousand years later, Nicolaus Copernicus came up
with a radical way of looking at the Universe. His heliocentric system
put the Sun (helio) at the center of our system.
He was not the first to have this theory. Earlier starwatchers
had believed the same, but it was Copernicus who brought it to the
world of the Renaissance and used his own observations of the
movements of the planets to back up his idea.
Galileo
Born in Pisa, Italy approximately 100 years after Copernicus,
Galileo became a brilliant student with an amazing genius
for invention and observation. He had his own ideas on how
motion really worked, as opposed to what Aristotle had
taught, and devised a telescope that could enlarge objects
up to 20 times.
 Made the first telescope in 1609
 Discovered the four primary moons of Jupiter
Anaxagoras

 Born in 500 BCE

 Greek philosopher of nature
 In the physical sciences, Anaxagoras was the first to give the correct
explanation of eclipses, and was both famous and notorious for his
scientific theories, including his claims that the sun is a mass of red-
hot metal, that the moon is earthy, and that the stars are fiery
stones.
Edwin Hubble
Fun fact: He helped Einstein

Discovering that our galaxy wasn’t alone was just the

beginning for Hubble. He continued measuring distances and
velocities in deep space, finding that the further apart galaxies are
from each other, the faster they move away from one another.
His findings, published in 1929, led to the widely accepted
notion that the universe is expanding. Albert Einstein personally
thanked Hubble for the support his findings gave to his theory of
relativity.
Hubble’s Law signals that the farther away another galaxy is, the faster
it is moving away from us.
Edmond Halley
 Edmond (or Edmund) Halley was an English scientist who is
best known for predicting the orbit of the comet that was later named
after him. Though he is remembered foremost as an astronomer, he
also made significant discoveries in the fields of geophysics,
mathematics, meteorology and physics.
Halley is best known for computing the orbit of the
comet named after him: Halley's Comet.
Kepler
 Kepler played a key role in the scientific revolution that occurred in the 17th century, contributing a
number of scientific breakthroughs including his famous laws of planetary motion.
 The three laws of planetary motion devised by Kepler are:
1. The orbit of every planet is an ellipse with the sun at a focus.
2. A line joining a planet and the sun sweeps out equal areas during equal intervals of time.
3. The square of the orbital period of a planet is directly proportional to the cube of the semi-major axis
of its orbit.
 Kepler was interested in astronomy from an early age, this interest was further piqued when he witnessed
both a comet in 1577 as well as a lunar eclipse in 1580.
Hipparchus
 Hipparchus (190-120 B.C., Greek) is widely considered to be the
greatest astronomer of ancient times. He compiled the first known
star catalog to organize astronomical objects, and also came up with
a scale to define the brightnesses of stars.
A version of this magnitude system is still used today. He
measured the distance from the Earth to the Moon to be 29.5 Earth
diameters (we know today that the real value is 30 Earth diameters).
Perhaps his greatest discovery was the precession, or wobble, of the
Earth's axis, which is caused by the gravitational pull of the Sun and
Moon.
Pythagoras
 Pythagoras (569-475 B.C., Ionian) was a mathematician who
put forward the idea that the universe is made of crystal spheres that
encircle the Earth. According to him, the Sun, the Moon, the planets,
and the stars travel in separate spheres. When the spheres touch each
other, a 'music of the spheres' can be heard.