Why can't the earth be the center of the universe?

According to geocentrism, as you know, instead of the earth and the other planets of the solar system revolving around the sun - as the heliocentric model dictates - our world would be at the center of the universe, and all the existing stars in it they would revolve around us.

In fact, geocentrism was the first cosmological model to be developed; During antiquity, almost no one objected to this idea. Who began to disagree with this story of the Earth being the center of everything was the Greek Aristarchus of Samos, and it was thanks to Copernicus that heliocentrism began to become popular - after dividing opinions with the scientific community and the Church in the 16th century and causing Lots of confusion.

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However, when we find ourselves here on Earth, roaming the immensity of its surface, the truth is that there is no reason to think that our planet is moving around the sun - or will you say you feel our world spinning? It's not worth answering that question after drinking both, huh!

Likewise, when we look up, is it so hard to imagine that it is the things we see in the sky that are moving instead of us? From this point of view, geocentrism does not seem so incoherent, so much so - believe me! There are still fervent supporters of this theory, like a pair of Spanish mathematicians we talk about here.

Why does geocentrism not hold up?

According to the folks at Ask a Mathematician / Ask a Physicist, there are several ways to show that heliocentrism makes much more sense than the previous model. According to the site, several physical phenomena make it clear that geocentric theory is full of "holes, " and just look at Foucault's Pendulum, which swings as if the earth were spinning beneath it; its movement corresponds to the trajectory of the stars we see in the sky.

Besides, we only have to do as Copernicus did there in the 16th century, that is, to examine the way the planets behave. If Earth were in the center of the Solar System, our neighbors' orbits would be beyond crazy. Not to mention that, assuming the Earth is at the center of the universe, where would the force come from that would keep not only all the planets spinning around us, but incredibly big stars like the sun as well?

On the other hand, with the sun at the center of the solar system, everything makes more sense, and the orbits of the other planets, including ours, become elliptical. As if observing with our own eyes - or rather with telescopes - were little, Isaac Newton, a century and a half after Copernicus described the heliocentric model, proved all that Polish had proposed.

Newton's Laws

You must remember studying about Newton's Laws, right? Basically, the first of these, the “Principle of Inertia, ” dictates that a stationary object will stay that way until a force is applied to it and takes it out of it. The law also states that if an object is in motion, it will continue to move in the same direction and speed until a force is applied to it.

The second law, the “Fundamental Principle of Dynamics, ” states that acceleration is produced when a force acts on a mass - and that the larger the mass of an object, the greater the force required to accelerate it. Finally, the third law, the "Principle of Action and Reaction, " states that for every action there is a reaction, and that reaction is of equal magnitude but applied in the opposite direction to the action.

Newton further formulated the "Law of Universal Gravitation, " which stipulates that between two or more bodies there will always be a force of attraction (the famous gravity), which is directly proportional to the product of their masses and inversely proportional to the square of their distances - and always directed in the direction and direction of their centers.

And the heliocentric model?

Newton's Laws allow a host of astrophysical phenomena to be explained, such as comet trajectories, tidal existence, equinox precedence, and why planetary orbits are as they are.

The laws also explain why the hot gases of the stars stick together rather than dissipate throughout the universe and the planets remain in their orbits. In addition, they clarify why we do not feel - directly - the Earth moving.

But how?

According to Ask a Mathematician / Ask a Physicist, position and speed are completely subjective ideas. This means that, physically speaking, there are no ways to determine where we are or how fast we move through any kind of experiment.

The folks at the site explained that, of course, we can see other bodies passing us as we move, but even so, we can only measure our relative velocity with respect to these objects. On the other hand, acceleration is not subjective and can easily be measured.

So while we are not able to feel that the earth is moving, it is not only moving but does so in circles - and traveling in circles requires acceleration. Do you know the momentum we feel when we speed up or brake the car, or when we turn a corner or start spinning? So this is the acceleration.

Tides

The occurrence of tides also serves to support the heliocentric model, for if the earth were completely still in space - and there was no acceleration - we would not have lunar and solar tides.

Starting with the Sun, as our planet is (relatively) spherical in shape, there will always be a strip of Earth that will be - about 6, 400 kilometers - closer to our star and spinning a little slower than the poles. Thus, the sun has more attraction in the regions covered by ocean masses that are in this range of the planet, generating high tide. At the same time, the areas on the opposite side are at low tide.

The same thing happens between the moon and the earth - resulting in even more intense tides. However, as far as the perception of motion is concerned, although our planet does not move as much as the satellite, the small circles made by Earth serve to counterbalance the large circles made by the Moon.

In turn, the motion of the satellite generates a centrifugal force strong enough to balance the force of attraction coming from our planet - and the small circles made by the Earth compensate for the attraction that the moon exerts on us.

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According to Ask a Mathematician / Ask a Physicist, if the geocentric model were correct, scientists would have to find a way of explaining why Newton's universal laws worked perfectly here on Earth, but not elsewhere. of the universe. In addition, we would only have a single lunar and solar tide per day instead of two.