Big Bang. Simon Singh
natural to assume that it was the heavenly bodies that moved relative to a static Earth, not vice versa. Consequently, the ancient astronomers developed a view of the world in which the Earth was a central static globe with the universe revolving around it.
Table 1
The measurements made by Eratosthenes, Aristarchus and Anaxagoras were inaccurate, so the table below corrects previously quoted figures by providing modern values for the various distances and diameters.
| Earth’s circumference | 40,100 km = 4.01 × 104 km |
| Earth’s diameter | 12,750 km = 1.275 × 104 km |
| Moon’s diameter | 3,480 km = 3.48 × 103 km |
| Sun’s diameter | 1,390,000 km = 1.39 × 106 km |
| Earth-Moon distance | 384,000 km = 3.84 × 105 km |
| Earth-Sun distance | 150,000,000 km = 1.50 × 108 km |
This table also serves as an introduction to exponential notation, a way of expressing very large numbers — and in cosmology there are some very, very large numbers:
| 101 means 10 | = 10 |
| 102 means 10 × 10 | =100 |
| 103 means 10 × 10 × 10 | =1,000 |
| 104 means 10 × 10 × 10 | =10,000 etc. |
The Earth’s circumference, for example, can be expressed as: 40,100 km = 4.01 × 10,000 km = 4.01 × 104km.
Exponential notation is an excellent way of concisely expressing numbers that would otherwise be full of zeros. Another way to think of 10N is as 1 followed by N zeros, so that 103 is 1 followed by three zeros, which is 1,000.
Exponential notation is also used for writing very small numbers:
| 10-1 means 1 ÷ 10 | =0.1 |
| 10-2 means 1 ÷ (10 × 10) | = 0.01 |
| 10-3 means 1 ÷ (10 × 10 × 10) | = 0.001 |
| 10-4 means 1 ÷ (10 × 10 × 10 × 10) | = 0.0001 etc. |
In reality, it is of course the Earth that moves around the Sun, and not the Sun moving around the Earth, but nobody considered this possibility until Philolaus of Croton entered the debate. A pupil of the Pythagorean school in the fifth century BC, he was the first to suggest that the Earth orbited the Sun, not vice versa. In the following century, Heracleides of Pontus built on Philolaus’ ideas, even though his friends thought he was crazy, nicknaming him Paradoxolog, ‘the maker of paradoxes’. And the final touches to this vision of the universe were added by Aristarchus, who was born in 310 BC, the same year that Heracleides died.
Although Aristarchus contributed to measuring the distance to the Sun, this was a minor accomplishment compared with his stunningly accurate overview of the universe. He was trying to dislodge the instinctive (though incorrect) picture of the universe, in which the Earth is at the centre of everything, as shown in Figure 6(a). In contrast, Aristarchus’ less obvious (though correct) picture has the Earth dashing around a more dominant Sun, as shown in Figure 6(b). Aristarchus was also right when he stated that the Earth spins on its own axis every 24 hours, which explained why each day we face towards the Sun and each night we face away from it.
Aristarchus was a highly respected philosopher, and his ideas on astronomy were well known. Indeed, his belief in a Sun-centred universe was documented by Archimedes, who wrote: ‘He hypothesises that the fixed stars and the Sun remain unmoved; that the Earth is borne around the Sun on the circumference of a circle.’ Yet philosophers completely abandoned this largely accurate vision of the Solar System, and the idea of a Sun-centred world disappeared for the next fifteen hundred years. The ancient Greeks were supposed to be smart, so why did they reject Aristarchus’ insightful world-view and stick to an Earth-centred universe?
Figure 6 Diagram (a) shows the classical and incorrect Earth-centred model of the universe, in which the Moon, Sun and other planets orbit the Earth. Even the thousands of stars orbit the Earth. Diagram (b) shows Aristarchus’ Sun-centred view of the universe, with only the Moon orbiting the Earth. In this case, the stars form a static backdrop to the universe.
Egocentric attitudes may have been a contributory factor behind the dominance of the geocentric world-view, but there were other reasons for preferring an Earth-centred universe to Aristarchus’ Sun-centred universe. One basic problem with the Sun-centred world-view was that it appeared to be simply ridiculous. It just seemed so utterly obvious that the Sun revolved round a static Earth, and not the other way round. In short, a Sun-centred universe ran counter to. Good scientists, however, should not be swayed by common sense, because it sometimes has little to do with the underlying scientific truth. Albert Einstein condemned common sense, declaring it to be ‘the collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteen’.
Another reason why the Greeks rejected Aristarchus’ Solar System was its apparent failure to stand up to scientific scrutiny. Aristarchus had built a model of the universe that was supposed to match reality, but it was not clear that his model was accurate. Did the Earth really orbit the Sun? Critics pointed to three apparent flaws in Aristarchus’ Sun-centred model.
First, the Greeks expected that if the Earth moved then we would feel a constant wind blowing against us, and we would be swept off our feet as the ground raced from under us. However, we feel no such constant wind, and neither is the ground tugged away, so the Greeks concluded that the Earth must be stationary. Of course, the Earth does move, and the reason that we are oblivious to our fantastic velocity through space is that everything on the Earth moves with it, including us, the atmosphere and the ground. The Greeks failed to appreciate this argument.
The second problematic point was that a moving Earth was incompatible with the Greek understanding of gravity. As mentioned earlier, the traditional view was that everything tended to move towards the centre of the universe, and the Earth was already at the centre, so it did not move. This theory made perfect sense, because it explained that apples fell from trees and headed towards the centre of the Earth because they were being attracted to the centre of the universe. But if the Sun were at the centre of the universe, then why would objects fall towards the Earth? Instead, apples should not fall down from trees, but should be sucked up towards the Sun — indeed, everything on Earth should fall towards the Sun. Today we have a clearer understanding of gravity, which makes a Sun-centred Solar System much more sensible. The modern theory of gravity describes how objects close to the massive Earth are attracted to the Earth, and in turn the planets are held in orbit by the attraction of the even more massive Sun. Once again, however, this explanation was beyond the limited scientific framework of the Greeks.
The third reason why philosophers rejected Aristarchus’ Sun-centred universe was the apparent lack of any shift in the positions of the stars. If the Earth were travelling huge distances around the Sun, then we would see the universe from different positions during the course of the year. Our changing vantage point should mean a changing perspective on the universe, and the stars