The philosopher was exiled because he thought the Moon was just a stone

2,500 years ago, Anaxagoras asserted that the Moon reflected light from the Sun. Since then, he has explained the phases of the Moon, eclipse and eclipse.

The Moon's northernmost is the Anaxagoras crater, named after the Greek philosopher who lived in the fifth century BC. Anaxagoras is one of the first to assume that the Moon is a block of rock. The material escaping from Anaxagoras volcanic activity stretches 900km long to another crater rim, Plato.

Like Plato, Anaxagoras is a scholar living and working in Athens. However Plato was strongly influenced by Pythagoras. He studied the mystery of the universe based on geometry, including perfect circular orbits. However, Plato has no observations and tests.

As for Anaxagoras, who died during the time of Plato's birth, he has a knack for astronomy and fields that require careful observation and calculation to find solutions to the mysteries of the universe. .

'The moon is illuminated by the Sun'

During his time in Athens, Anaxagoras had basic discoveries about the Moon. His belief, though he had appeared before, was not widely accepted in the ancient world: the Moon and the Sun were not gods, they were only objects.This seemingly harmless thought then made him subject to exile .

Reassembling the picture of the life of early philosophers like Anaxagoras was a major challenge for historians when he was thought to write only a book, but also lost.

Anaxagoras is credited with being one of the first to identify the Moon as a rock.(Photo: Eduard Lebiedzki).

Modern scholars have only a few notes describing the life of Anaxagoras, short quotes from lectures or summaries of his ideas cited in the works of later generation scholars such as Plato and Aristotle. .

Persistently observing, Anaxagoras believed that the Moon was a rock, not too different from Earth . He even described mountains on the Moon's surface. In addition, he thought the Sun was a burning sphere.

'The moon is illuminated by the Sun , ' said Anaxagoras. He was not the first to recognize that moonlight was due to reflecting light from the Sun , but he used it to accurately explain the natural phenomena that came from it such as eclipses, eclipses and phases of Moon.

Born in the city of Clazomenae in the eastern Greek region of Ionia, Anaxagoras grew up in the Ionian Enlightenment (Ionian Enlightenment), a knowledge revolution that began around 600 BC.

When he was young, he saw the alliance of Athens and Sparta against the Persian Empire. Moving to Athens, Anaxagoras and his contemporaries brought philosophy to budding Athens democracy.

While many Greek philosophers of the sixth and pre-century centuries conceived that the world was made up of basic elements such as water, air, fire and earth, Anaxagoras judged that the world must be made of nothingness. Prime.

He used this statement to resolve the conflict regarding the nature of existence between materialists in eastern Ionia, and the western Italian idealist philosopher group like Pythagoras and his supporters.

Daniel Graham, a professor of philosophy at Brigham Young University is one of the few experts on Anaxagoras. Graham said that Italian-based philosophers, such as Parmenides, particularly influenced Anaxagoras and his ideas about astronomy.

'Anaxagoras has taken the problem of light into a geometric story, creating astronomical models not only predicting the phases of the Moon, but also explaining how eclipses and eclipses occur , ' Graham said.

Anaxagoras crater is near the north pole of the Moon, taken with the Lunar Orbiter 4 spacecraft in 1967. (Photo: NASA).

Anaxagoras recognizes the Moon phase as the result of different parts of the celestial body illuminated by the Sun when viewed from Earth . He also knew that the Moon was occasionally darkened by the Moon, the Sun and the Earth, aligned with the Moon, and the Moon was behind the Earth's shadow - what we now call a lunar eclipse.

When the three celestial bodies align with the Moon in the middle, the sky will darken during the day. This phenomenon is also described by Anaxagoras as the solar eclipse.

Anaxagoras is also concerned about the formation of the Moon, the mystery that remains a challenge to today's scientists. He hypothesized that the Moon was a rock that separated from the early Earth, the premise for the hypothesis of physicist George Darwin, son Charles Darwin, introduced 23 centuries later.

Called "Fission theory , " George Darwin argued that the Moon, which is part of the Earth, is swept into space by the rapid rotation of the Earth, leaving the concave part of the Pacific Ocean. (Today, many astronomers believe that a Mars-sized object has crashed into the early Earth, causing the material to be thrown into our natural satellite.)

Lonely star between times

These statements made Anaxagoras far ahead of previous thinkers, turning him into a man against the concept of the Moon, the Sun as contemporary gods.

This thought should have been welcomed at Athens democracy, but Anaxagoras was a teacher and friend of Pericles, a influential politician.

In power for more than 30 years, Pericles led Athens in the Peloponnesian war against Sparta. During the war years, politicians confronted Pericles, claiming he was too aggressive and arrogant.

Unable to turn over the leader of Athens, Pericles' enemies target his friends. Anaxagoras was arrested, subjected to trial and sentenced to death, on the grounds of breaking the rules when propagating ideas about the Moon and the Sun.

Full Moon eclipse on 8/10/2014, taken from California, USA.(Photo: Alfredo Garcia).

'In Athens democracy, court cases are criminal allegations given by citizens in the city. Without a lawyer, all court cases are basically political trials , 'Graham said.

'They often use religion and morality to justify but the purpose is only to directly attack a few celebrities, or indirectly through their friends and relatives. Attacking Pericles directly was difficult when he was so famous, so his enemies were aimed at the weakest point. As a foreigner with unorthodox ideas, a friend and scientific advisor of Pericles, Anaxagoras became a clear target , 'Graham said.

Pericles prevented the execution by political status, but Anaxagoras was still exiled in Lampacus on the edge of Hellespont, now in Turkey. His ideas still circulate today. To recognize this contribution, after about 2,400 years, a spaceship observed the crater on the Moon and it was named after him, Anaxagoras.