Planet is a word that comes from Latin which in turn comes from Greek, whose meaning is wandering, homeless. Since ancient times, man has observed the stars, realizing that they moved with respect to the fixed stars. In the morning its movement was just the opposite of the movement of the sun, from west to east. The earth was considered the center of the known universe and everything revolved around it. Aristarchus of Samos was the first person to propose a heliocentric System, in which the sun is the center of the known universe and the rest of the planets are the ones that move around it, let’s learn more about his life and his studies, which is why we have titled this article Aristarchus of Samos and the Wandering Planets.
Aristarchus of Samos and the Wandering Planets | Biography
Aristarchus He was born in the year 310 BC in the city of Samos, Greece and died in Alexandria, present-day Egypt, in the year 230 BC.. Aristrarch devoted most of his life to study of the starslearning through observation the movements and displacements of these.
Aristarchus spent much of his life in Alexandria. partly because he was one of the many scholars who used to consult documentation and exchange views with other scholars who frequented the great library of alexandria. Center of classical culture that not only had works of incalculable value, medical treatises and studies of all sciences, but also served as a cmeeting hall of all scholars from both Asia and Europe.
Little is preserved of his work since many of his documents were lost in the different fires that the great Library suffered. have been preserved «On the magnitude and distance of the Sun and the Moon»but we also have the citations and references they make to Aristarchus both Plutarch as Archimedes.
Aristarchus of Samos and the Wandering Planets | Sun
Aristarchus established through argument that When the Moon is in its first or last quarter, both the Sun, the Moon and the Earth are at a right angle. With these data, he calculated that the angle opposite the long leg was 87º. But these calculations were wrongalthough the geometric concept was correct, the observational data were not, so he estimated that the Sun it was 20 times farther from the Moon, when the correct thing would be 400 times.
He calculated that the angle when the moon was in one of the quarters, and this was 90º, while the distance between the Earth and the Sun was much greater than the distance between the Moon and the Earth, Thus the size of the sun should be much larger.
These calculations that led to Aristarchus of Samos to the conclusion that If the Sun was much larger than the earth, is could not be the center of the known universeas was believed until then (geocentrism), perhaps the Sun was the center of the known universe, while the Earth and the rest of the planets revolved around the Sun.
Aristarchus of Samos and the Wandering Planets | Heliocentrism
The geocentric system They based their theory, as we have mentioned, on the Earth as the center of everything, if we threw any object into the air, it would end up back on Earth. The Earth attracts all objects and that is the reason why all the planets revolve around the Earth. The composition of the center of the earth, according to Aristotle, great defender of the theory geocentric, was composed of four elements, earth, air, fire and water.
in front of the fixed spheres where both the planets and and the stars that revolved around the earth, other planets also appeared as Mars or Venus, whose trajectory was completely different to that of the rest. These planets described wandering paths with forward and backward movements, something that clashed squarely with Aristotelian theories, where the movements and shapes that make up the universe are always perfect circles.
Other theories prior to Aristarchus tried to solve this problem that arose. A possible solution was pronounced Heraclides, the explanation was that the planets revolved around the Sun and this, in turn, around the Earth. Thus, without abandoning the idea of the earth as the center of the universe, he explained the different trajectories of the planets.
Nevertheless Aristarchus realized that stars could be motionless due to distancebeing so far away, the movement of certain stars with respect to others is not observed as the earth moves around the sun.
The fact that all the work of Aristarchus was lost in the fires and looting that Alexandria suffered, practically made his studies remain in oblivion if it were not for certain mentions like those of Archimedes who wrote.
According to Archimedes Aristarchus is known to have held that the Sun was the one that remained still and motionless and that it was the Earth that revolved in circumference around the Sun.
The goecentric theory endured over time seventeen hundred more years until Copernicus, The model that Aristarchus had defended, the heliocentric model, began to be considered as a possible and feasible theory.
Aristarchus of Samos and the Wandering Planets | The critics
But this theory that the earth was not the center of the universe was not accepted it didn’t seem like a sane idea but crazy. Heavy bodies, as Aristotle said, move towards the center of the Earth, as we can verify by throwing any object in the air and seeing how all bodies are attracted towards the center of the Earth.
Scientists of the time thought that if it was the Earth that revolved around the Sun, the position of the stars would change, as observed from different locations in Earth’s orbit. So that according to aristotlein the course of 1 year, a displacement of the fixed stars would be seen, but this data could never be verified, because among other things it was wrong, since it could only be explained by two possible options:
- The Earth does not revolve around the Sun
- If the Earth revolves around the Sun, but since the stars are so far away, the movement is negligible.
The second being the correct option, but telescopes would still have to be developed to verify this theory.
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