Aristotle's Model Of The Universe Research Paper

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Preliminary Physics Assessment Task 1

Christos Toras

MODELS OF THE UNIVERSE - TIMELINE

From the time of Aristotle up until the time of Newton there were five models of what humans thought of the universe. The astronomers who developed these models were Aristotle, Ptolemy, Copernicus, Tycho Brahe, Kepler, Galileo and Newton.
Aristotle’s model of the universe was a geocentric universe. This meant that the Earth was at the centre of the universe and that all stars were on a celestial sphere. A celestial sphere is an imaginary sphere which acts as a dome around the Earth from which you can see the stars and the universe. Although Aristotle’s model was good for its time it could not explain retrograde motion of the planets. Retrograde motion is
Ptolemy’s model of the universe was still a geocentric one but it included epicycles in order to explain retrograde motion which Aristotle’s model could not explain. Ptolemy was able to determine that not only did the planets orbit around the sun on a deferent but they also orbited themselves on what he called an n epicycle.
Copernicus model was a heliocentric one, placing the sun stationary in the centre and also had everything revolving around it in circles. He developed his model in secret as so not to anger the church. Before he died in 1543 he published his ideas, and as expected his ideas were labelled as sins against the church.
During the 1500’s however the Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe meticulously studied and plotted the night sky with great accuracy. As telescopes were not invented yet he developed his own tools for measuring astronomy. His methods were so detailed and were within an accuracy of 0.5 arc minutes. His model was a combination of both geocentric and hel...

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...at the Gods of Olympus created everything including the universe and therefore the creation of the Universe had no explanation. In the article by Surendra Singh, Ph.D. , Professor of Biology, Et al they claim that “ In ancient times, nature had been explained as the actions of the gods. The early Greek philosophers questioned the role of the gods as the cause of events and by the fifth century B.C. “. This proves that religion at the time influenced Aristotle’s model greatly.

In conclusion, there are many advances in technology in the 21st century. After Aristitole and the other astronomers, many technological advances were made, such as the use of the telescope in order to be able to see further into the known universe. Aristotles model of the universe created a solid foundation of the universe to other astronomers in order for them to create their own models.

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