( Sorry, this has nothing to do with tango. But I want to set the record straight. )
> The difference here is that astronomy is a topic where there is a clear > objective truth. No, there is no such thing! The choice of a central object around which other objects revolve is simply the one of a convenience. The Earth does not rotate around the Sun. In Newton's mechanics, they both rotate against their combined center of masses. Remember that the Sun rotates around the center of galaxy and our galaxy rotates in the universe. Ptolemy's model was well developed. By Copernicus' time, it contained sets of 3-4 nested circles and could predict all planet movements with high precision. I read somewhere that adding a couple more sets of circles would make it so precise you could send spaceships to the Moon and back using it! When Copernicus introduced his views, his system wasn't developed enough. He had nested circles as well, but a single man couldn't beat in precision the system that was developed over the centuries. As a result, initially Copernicus' system was worse for predicting planet movements than Ptolemy's. Only after Kepler replaced the circles with ellipses it started to beat Ptolemy's in elegance and precision. Now get back to tango, Sergey _______________________________________________ Tango-L mailing list [email protected] http://mailman.mit.edu/mailman/listinfo/tango-l
