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Astronomy

Bachelor in science

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8 views4 pages

Astronomy

Bachelor in science

Uploaded by

kshitizwagle633
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Learning English: A Communication Approach

First Chapter: Astronomy


Our picture of the universe

Ancient belief: It was believed that the world is a flat plate supported on the back
of a giant tortoise standing on an infinite tower of tortoises.
Queries about the universe:
1. Where did the universe come from?
2. Where is it going?
3. Did the universe have a beginning if so what happened before then?
4. What is the nature of time?
5. Will it ever come to an end?
Philosopher Aristotle, in his book On the Heavens, talked about two arguments for
believing that the earth was a round sphere rather than a flat plate. First, he realized
that eclipses of the moon were caused by the earth coming between the sun and the
moon. The earth’s shadow on the moon was always round, which would be true
only if the earth was spherical. Second, the Greeks knew from their travels that the
North Star appeared lower in the sky when viewed in the south than it did in more
northerly regions.
Aristotle thought that the Earth was stationary and that the sun, the moon, the
planets, and the stars moved in circular orbits about the earth.
Ptolemy: Ptolemy, in the second century AD into a complete cosmological model.
The Earth stood at the center, surrounded by eight spheres that carried the moon,
the sun, the stars, and the five planets known at the time: Mercury, Venus, Mars,
Jupiter, and Saturn.
Nicholas Copernicus: In 1514 he proposed a simpler model that the Sun was
stationary at the center and that the Earth and the planets moved in circular orbits
around the sun.
Two astronomers - the German, Johannes Kepler and the Italian, Galileo Galilei
stated publicly to support the Copernicus theory, although the orbit it predicted did
not quite match the ones observed. At the same time, Kepler had modified
Copernicus's theory, suggesting that the planets move not in circles but ellipses.
The predictions now finally matched the observations, but Kepler could not
reconcile them with his idea that the planets were made to orbit the sun by
magnetic forces.
Sir Issac Newton: In 1687, Sir Issac Newton published his Philosophiae Naturalis
Principia Mathematica, in which he not only put forward a theory of how bodies
move in space and time but also developed the complicated mathematics needed to
analyze those motions. Furthermore, Newton postulated a law of universal
gravitation according to which each body in the universe was attracted toward
every other body by a stronger force, the more massive the bodies and the closer
they were to each other. It was the same force that caused objects to fall to the
ground.
Hubble’s observations suggested that there was a time, called the Big Bang when
the universe was finitely small and infinitely dense. Under such conditions, all the
laws of science, and therefore all ability to predict the future, would break down.
One can imagine that God created the universe literally at any time in the past.
To talk about the nature of the universe and to discuss questions such as whether it
has a beginning or an end, you have to be clear about what a scientific theory is
hidden inside it.
A theory is a good theory if it satisfies two requirements: it must accurately
describe a large class of observations based on a few models of a few arbitrary
elements, and it must make definite predictions about the results of future
observations.
The eventual goal of science is to provide a single theory that describes the whole
universe. However, the approach most scientists follow is to separate the problem
into two parts. First, there are the laws that tell us how the universe changes with
time. Second, there is the question of the initial state of the universe. Some people
feel that science should be concerned with only the first part; they regard the
question of the initial situation as a matter of metaphysics or religion. They would
say that God, being omnipotent, could have started the universe off any way he
wanted.
Today scientists describe the universe in terms of two basic partial theories – the
general theory of relativity and quantum mechanics, the great intellectual
achievements of the first half of this century. The general theory of relativity
describes the force of gravity and the large-scale structure of the universe that is,
the structure on scales from only a few miles to as large as a million ( 1 with 24n
zeros after it ) miles, the size of the observable universe. Quantum mechanics, on
the other hand, deals with phenomena on extremely small scales, such as the
millionth of a millionth of an inch. Now, if you believe that the universe is not
arbitrary, but is governed by definite laws, you ultimately have to combine the
partial theories into a complete unified theory that will describe everything in the
Universe. Today we are still eager to know why we are here and where we came
from. Humanity’s deepest desire for knowledge is justification enough for our
continuing quest. And our goal is nothing less than a complete description of the
universe we live in.

1. Read the given text and answer the following questions briefly.
Read the text in the book
a) What was Nicholas Copernicus's view about the movement of the sun and the
earth?
b) How were Johannes Kepler and Galileo’s ideas about the sun and the planetary
motion similar and different from the Copernicus theory?
c) What did Galileo’s findings imply about the heavenly bodies and the earth?
2) Write a paragraph on Aristotle’s model of the universe and how was it opposed
by Galileo’s model? (5)[TU 2O71/2075]

List the antonym words:


Perfect
Stationary
Partial
Superior
Major
Believing
Definite
Complicated
Expanding
Finite
Similar
Accurately
Practical
General
single

The End

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