Parallax effects are a surprisingly good reason to reject heliocentrism. Wrong, of course, but it does seem to fail the sniff test—and about all the Greeks had to work with were sniff tests of varying sophistication.
Although now I kind of wonder how Aristarchus’ critics explained his observations.
That was long, but very good. People underestimate the ancient Greeks—it’s awesome to see the whole set of calculations laid out. (This reminds me guiltily of a post I keep meaning to write doing something similar for Atomism.)
Terry Tao has a really cool presentation on that topic: The Cosmic Distance Ladder.
Parallax effects are a surprisingly good reason to reject heliocentrism. Wrong, of course, but it does seem to fail the sniff test—and about all the Greeks had to work with were sniff tests of varying sophistication.
Although now I kind of wonder how Aristarchus’ critics explained his observations.
That was long, but very good. People underestimate the ancient Greeks—it’s awesome to see the whole set of calculations laid out. (This reminds me guiltily of a post I keep meaning to write doing something similar for Atomism.)