Aristarchus

Aristarchus

    Did you know that earth orbits the sun? Yes, of course you knew that, but do you know who first discovered that earth orbits the sun? Aristarchus, born in about 310 BC, was one of the least known scientists that discovered something amazing. This is about his discoveries.

    

    Back in 300-200 BC the Ancient Greeks thought that Earth was at the center of everything and the sun, the moon and all the other planets orbit it. But Aristarchus though otherwise. He believed that earth orbits the sun and so did the other planets as well. He even wrote a book about the Earth’s orbit but sadly was lost in the sands of time. We suspect he used the concept of parallax to expand the universe enormously. In doing so he showed us that the stars out in space are a lot farther away from earth than we last thought. In addition to believing that earth orbits the sun, he believed that earth spins on an axis also. His theories were entirely correct but weren’t very popular.

    The ancient greeks weren't on Aristarchus’ side at all. In fact, just like a lot of other Renaissance scientists, they wanted him prosecuted for his apparent “crimes”.  They thought this theory was offensive to their gods and they wanted him dead. Despite these shall we call them “popularity probs” Aristarchus didn’t stop. He made even more discoveries like for example, he found out that the sun was much larger than earth observing the earth’s shadow on the moon during a lunar eclipse. His discoveries were a breakthrough in science but like all things his life came to an end in about 230 BC.

    Just because little was known about Aristarchus doesn’t mean he was one of the failure scientists. With his keen eye and spectacular deductions he was able to find out all of this. Now I bet you’re sitting there saying, “Well, he could’ve done all this with some technology and stuff.” If you are that pearson sitting there I say to you that YOU have not been paying attention in history class. I also say that he didn’t have anything near what we have today (technology wise) and was still able to discover something incredible. All I have now is one simple question to ask to you. Can you be an AriSTARchus?     

I got my sources from http://www.famousscientists.org/aristarchus/