What Am I Looking At – Part V

“Copernicus”

     by Aaron Clevenson

 

This is the fifth in a series of interviews with famous astronomers of the ages.  Our ultimate goal is to trace our understandings of the physical universe.  This month we are going to talk to Copernicus, the man who is given the credit for realizing that the sun was the center of the Universe, not the Earth..

 

NORTHSTAR:  Tell us a little about yourself.

COPERNICUS:  My name is Copernicus.  Well actually, I was born as Mikolai Kopernik.  I was born in northern Poland in 1473.  I am not much of an observer, but I like to read, and explore alternatives.  I actually created a solar observatory.  I am able to project the solar disk onto a series of graph lines on the wall of my study.

NORTHSTAR:  What makes you think that the sun is the center of everything?

COPERNICUS:  Well the more I understand, the more that I see the model devised by Ptolemy just doesn’t fit the real Universe.  Its predictions are often off by hours and even days.  There had to be a better, less complex answer.

NORTHSTAR:  How did you come by this idea?

COPERNICUS:  Well I realized when I was still quite young, that this complex model proposed by Ptolemy couldn’t be correct.  In my many readings I came across a mention of Aristarchus of Samos in Plutarch’s Morals.  Aristarchus, although he did not have the mathematical ability to prove it, had a feeling that the sun was the center of the Universe.  This was after all 1700 years ago.  He even thought that the heavens were stationary, and the Earth rotated on its axis.

NORTHSTAR:  So how does your theory meet the data?

COPERNICUS:  Quite well and far superior to Ptolemy’s model.  Unfortunately, to maintain Plato’s sense of beauty, and still fit the data into my model, I am still requires to have epicycles in the orbits of the planets.  I have also had to move the center of their orbits slightly off from the center of the Earth.  I have published my work in De Revolutionibus.  I have included many observations, with much new data.  I have been able to define the relative orbits of all of the planets, but since we have found no way to determine even our own true orbital distance, I am not able to determine their absolute values.  I also note that the actual size of the Universe is indeterminate, and may even be infinite.  None of these theories are very popular.

NORTHSTAR:  Thank you Copernicus for this truly novel way of looking at the Universe.