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Things you think of while walking, looking up at the moon.
Do you think that if the moon was spinning, people could have figured out that THEY were spinning too, making the stars and planets much easier to figure out?
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How fast would the moon spin in this scenario?
Because if it were slow enough that its changes happened at about the same pace as the wax-wane cycles, I don't know that it would've sped up figuring out astronomy any. After all, the entire night sky spins around us. It's hard to see for most of us these days, with light pollution, (I miss the stars) but seeing a constellation slowly move across the sky was a common sight for most of history.
If the moon spun so fast that the motion were noticeable in, say, an hour, it's possible people might have figured out it was spinning and not just changing its expression (as it were). But more likely, they would've created dozens of myths about the ever-shifting lunar face.
And then jabbed each other with pointy things to figure out whose myth was best.
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F##% the moon, what if the earth spun around! Can you imagine what that would do to the tides!!
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*debeverages*
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How fast would the moon spin in this scenario?
About earth speed? Or well, spinning around 3 times to 1 rotation seems to be the fastest it goes in the solar system.
After all, the entire night sky spins around us.
Well that's the problem. Thats what it LOOKS like its doing but its not. The stars would have to move a few million times the speed of light to do that. or be MUCH closer and smaller than they are.
Apparently the ideas been around since at least the 4th century, it just doesn't seem to have caught on widely.
And then jabbed each other with pointy things to figure out whose myth was best.
well that was inevitable...
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And then jabbed each other with pointy things to figure out whose myth was best.well that was inevitable...
Inevitable? Or the best part...?
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Inevitable? Or the best part...?And then jabbed each other with pointy things to figure out whose myth was best.well that was inevitable...
whys that an or question?
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I guess that depends on what you're stabbing someone with and if they're comfortable with it.
I guess you have to ask yourself, what came first, the egg? Or the egg's need for attention.
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Und if ze egg vere shpinning, vould ve have discovered psychoanalyzis sooner?
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Back to the thread topic though... I've now been thinking more about this. While I think that MOST people (myself included) probably wouldn't use a visible moon-spin to make the imaginative leap to the Earth spinning, there's a chance it might have sparked an idea in a very clever person. But I'm not sure any earlier than the 1600s.
(I spent a lot of time studying the proto-science and math of the 1500-1600s in grad school. There was a LOT more going on than just the straightforward observational jump offered by the telescope--it really was a perfect storm of mutually reinforcing good ideas and observations).
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In any case, the principal idea behind a geocentric system was that heavenly objects moved while the earth remained still. I am not sure that direct observation of a heavenly body spinning would have changed anything.
But I think it was Kepler who finally made a convincing case for a heliocentric theory, as the idea that all of the planets as well as the earth orbited the sun in mildly elliptical orbits provided the most elegant model that correctly explained the motions of the planets. The Copernican theory with perfectly circular orbits was off by just enough from actual observations to prevent it from gaining general acceptance without Kepler's refinement.
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OP's hypothesis is absurd. I went outside yesterday, hooked up a gas engine via a belt to a merry-go-round, climbed aboard when the moon rose, and started the engine. I stared at the moon while I spun around at high speed until I blacked out.
When I woke up, I still didn't know nothing about no celestial mechanics. I can't even figure out how I ended up in this tree.
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I think that was the engine the Count and I played checkers with the gears for before reassembling it backwards.
Did you get a launch height reading? Y'know, for science.
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Or a depth of the trench before bouncing off the rock and then into the tree?
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It's difficult taking questions from all eight of you shouting at once while the ground continues to tilt to and fro so suddenly.
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You are all weirdoes. Uch.
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I think the FE phenomenon is more a product of the complexity of modern science. Science can tell us things that make no sense to our every day experience. The world is so complex now that people are rejecting authority they don't like or can't understand.
One of the hardest things in regards to the OP is understanding how motion works. Like the above, the idea that an object will keep moving unless acted upon makes no sense to how we experience day to day reality. We live in a deep gravity well with lots of friction, but if you don't know that is a special set of circumstances, it might seem obvious that things only move when continuously acted upon.
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I think the FE phenomenon is more a product of the complexity of modern science. Science can tell us things that make no sense to our every day experience. The world is so complex now that people are rejecting authority they don't like or can't understand.
I mean, that's hardly new.
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The FE phenomenon isn't really new either, it started roughly 150 years ago when a guy's complaint essentially boiled down to science investigating things too complicated for non-specialists to understand. I forget the guys name at the moment. And the phenomenon isn't new, but I would say that due to how advertising works on the internet it is being enhanced.
A talk about parasocial relationships and online radicalization in the attention economy.
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You spin me right round baby right round like a record baby right round round round.