#epicycles

[whats-in-a-sentence]

Matching the observations of the wandering stars – the planets – of the night sky with the idea that the Earth was at the centre of the solar system required extremely complex models. In the case of Venus, combining the Earth at the centre with the observations meant that Venus had a circular orbit around a point midway between the Earth and the Sun, so-called epicycles, with all the other planets having similar complicated orbits around various points scattered around the solar system. Placing the Sun at the centre of the solar system, with the planets arranged in their familiar order, with Moon orbiting the Earth, gave a much simpler system.

"Human Universe" - Professor Brian Cox and Andrew Cohen

[rangi42]

If you are angry that I cannot eliminate the oval path, how much more ought you to be angry with the spirals [epicycles], which I abolished. […] This is like being punished for leaving behind one barrow full of shit although I have cleaned the rest of the Augean stables.

Johann Kepler

[low-sugar-eye-candy]

[arriving-at-new-equilibrium]

Like the perceptron, the Copernican astronomical model is experiencing a revival enabled by massive increases in computing power.

[rox-and-prose]

Ptolemy: "The sun moves around the earth!"

Ptolemy:"there is a theory that the earth moves around the sun"

Ptolemy:"but it makes the math wonky so we won't use it"

Ptolemy:"anyways, let's move on to our lesson about epicycles"

[low-sugar-eye-candy]

Fireflies in the Night

[low-sugar-eye-candy]

Unstable Orbits

[low-sugar-eye-candy]