The universe in human thinking through the ages

Find out how human knowledge of the universe has changed in each historical period.

From the very beginning, people often looked up at the sky and wondered: 'Which stars originated in the beginning, what were those dark dark universes still hidden?'.

Over time, we gradually have the exploration of the planet where we live, about the universe that surrounds us. Here are the milestones, images that have an unimaginable influence on world astronomy history.

Spherical Earth image.

The German poet and writer - Hildegard von Bingen (1078-1179) is known to have a vision. Not only did she stand up to medieval gender equality rights, she was also one of the first to believe in the spherical Earth theory. Above is a picture depicting her 4 Spring, Summer, Fall and Winter seasons based on the theory and published in 1179, after her death.

In fact, from the sixth century BC, Greek philosophers gave a view of the spherical shape of the Earth and Pythagoras was one of the pioneers. By the eighth century, this spherical shape of Earth was officially confirmed.

Cities on Earth.

The painting shows a drawing of an unusual Earth that appeared in the fifteenth century. Accordingly, the Earth is described as a weightless sphere covered by cities.

This is one of the first genre fiction works to be born in astronomy. This painting is taken from the French translation of the Encyclopedia De Proprietatibus Rerum written by Bartholomaeus Anglicus.

Earth orbits the sun.

The picture depicts the rotation of the Earth around the Sun annually composed by H. Nicollet. This work is from the book "Atlas classique et Universel de Geographie Ancienne et Moderne".

Looking at the picture, we can clearly see the changes in the weather, such as the North Pole facing the Sun in the summer but obscured in the winter.

These theories are based on the solar system built by astronomer Copernicus (1473-1543), in which the Earth and other planets revolve around the Sun in the universe.

The virtual sun picture.

Since ancient times, people have been aware of one of the most amazing phenomena in the sky: the virtual sun. Simply understood, it is the phenomenon of the Sun creating surrounding halo by optical refraction, making people feel there are up to three Suns at the same time.

Aristotle scientist (384-322 BC) described this phenomenon as follows: 'There are two fake Suns growing up with the real Sun and only disappearing when the sunset passes.'

Researcher Augsburger Wunderzeichenbuch drew the perspective of this phenomenon with the caption note: "In 1533, the three Suns had very strong and dazzling light as if burning the surrounding clouds, shedding light on them. Münster city makes the houses and the whole city flare up ".

Comet

As one of two important works on the study of comets in the seventeenth century, the book "Theater of Comets" by the Polish astronomer - Stanisław Lubieniecki recorded more than 400 events, starting from the Kinh period. Old Testament to the end of the 17th century.

Comet in 1664-1665 has orbits flying through the constellation and is the brightest Comet at that time. Since then, European astronomers have begun to draw attention to this phenomenon, interested in orbit, its origin and nature.

This event ushered in a new development in space research when Aristotle's view of comets occurring only in the atmosphere was proved to be inaccurate.

Real Moon phenomenon.

Interesting descriptions of the Moon first appeared in 1874 in an illustrated book entitled "The Moon: a Planet, a World, a Satellite" by James Nasmyth and James Carpenter. same author.

To complete this feat, Nasmyth spent a lot of money. He even relied on a series of photos collected to build plaster models to simulate the Moon's surface.

Above is a picture depicting the real Moon scene when viewed from outer space, lithographed from the original book.

The earth is square and stands still.

Excerpted from the large journal of Hot Springs town, the Earth map of Professor Orlando Ferguson in 1893 rejected the 'Sphere Theory' that existed hundreds of years ago.

Instead, the professor proposed a flat world of 4 opposite torus corners. As scientists say, this is a picture created when you dip a donut into wet cement and lift it.

In this model, the Sun, Moon and stars are all located on wands derived from the poles. This is considered a very unique compromise between scientific knowledge and biblical geography. But in fact, this map is not so famous at that time.

Moon simulation image

If you wonder what the Moon's surface looks like, this 1977 map is the answer.

On the upper right, bright red is the Oceanus Procellarum basin - the largest dark area of ​​the Moon (an area of ​​an ocean but arid).

Meanwhile, the green area represents the grooves or peaks in the center. The remaining colored areas are flatter volcanoes.

Simulation of sunspot

Using a supercomputer at the National Center for Meteorological Research (NCAR), Matthias Rempel and his colleagues have described the complete sunspot model in 2009.

This is a photo selected from the 3D model system created by IBM supercomputer (processing one trillion calculations per second). This sunspot model has opened up a new direction in solar system research when detecting special matter fibers around the dark part of the image.