Bad Astronomy: Misconceptions and Misuses Revealed, from ...

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PPPPPP
When the Universe
Throws You a Curve:
Misunderstanding the
Beginning of It All
A
stronomy sometimes has a way of making people feel small.
For most of our history we humans have been pretty selfimportant.
We believe that the gods pay special attention to us,
even intervening in our daily affairs. We claim territory for ourselves,
and ignore what goes on outside those borders. Why, we’ve
even said the whole universe revolves around us!
But the universe is under no obligation to listen to our petty
boasts. Not only are we not at the center, but also there really isn’t
a center at all. To see why, we need to look into the past a bit,
back into our own history.
For thousands of years it was thought that the Earth was the
center of the universe and the heavens spun around us. Certainly,
observations support that belief. If you go outside and look up for
even a few minutes, you’ll see that the whole sky is moving. But
you don’t feel any movement, so clearly the Earth is fixed, and the
sky moves.
Even today, when we know better, we still talk as though this
is the way things are: our vocabulary reflects the geocentric universe.
“The Sun rose at 6:30 this morning” is less accurate that
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