Earth Myths, Busted!

Earth Myths, Busted! — page 1 — Busted Christopher Columbus Proved the Earth Is Round Ancient and medieval thinkers sailed in 1492 Aristotle was one of studied the shape of the earth They those early thinkers He was alive argued whether the earth was round in the fourth century BCE In his or flat Then Christopher Columbus writing he theorized the world was sailed west to get to India round His evidence was the earth's A common myth is that his voyage shadow on the moon During a lunar proved the world was round eclipse Earth's shadow was round not square However people knew Earth was round well before Columbus Other ancient experiments helped determine the world was round Some scientists based their theories Columbus was the first European to sail around the world on the stars Certain constellations were visible only in certain locations On a flat Earth the stars would be in the same place It would not matter where a person stood But people in Egypt saw different stars than those who lived farther north Ancient thinkers concluded the earth must have a curved shape That curve blocked

Earth Myths, Busted! — page 2 — out certain stars depending on where someone stood The stars scientists observed in the night sky helped them understand the Some ancient thinkers were sure the world was round They proposed earth was round sailing to India They did not have a fear of sailing off the edge of a flat world NOT FLAT BUT NOT ROUND 24 898 Number of miles 40 070 km around Earth's circumference The earth is not actually perfectly round Earth is shaped like an ellipsoid It is bigger around the middle than at the top The earth's fast spinning causes the bulge at the middle The earth is not a perfect ellipsoid though Mountains and deep trenches make the surface a bumpy irregular shape Christopher Columbus was not the first to prove the world is round Ancient thinkers theorized the earth was round These thinkers used stars and the moon as evidence of a round Earth

Earth Myths, Busted! — page 3 — Busted The Earth is the Center of the Universe Ancient thinkers knew cosmic universe Geocentric means Earth objects were moving They observed centered the movement in the night sky This idea held for centuries But then Some of these bright points would mathematicians started to question eventually be identified as planets its accuracy The geocentric model Both seemed to be revolving around should have been able to predict a the earth Earth it seemed was planet's location at any time But the the center of it all These cultures model was not working that way believed in a geocentric model of the MOBILLO This drawing GENY shows Earth as the center of the

Earth Myths, Busted! — page 4 — 365 25 COPERNICUS WAS Days in a year and the reason a leap day is added to February every four years NOT FIRST Copernicus was not the first scientist to come up with the heliocentric model Ancient Greek thinker Aristarchus also said the Scientists used to think the earth was stationary They also thought the earth was the center of the universe Earth really revolves around the sun earth rotated around the sun But his ideas were widely dismissed The theory of gravity had not yet been developed Without knowledge of gravity people believed things would fall off of it Therefore Earth must be Scientists began to look for other ways the universe might be constructed In 1543 stationary and at the center astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus proposed a new theory He theorized the sun was the curious about Jupiter It looked like center of the universe The planets the giant planet had moons revolved around the sun In this new Galileo's finding was extremely heliocentric model all the math important It showed objects in the worked Scientists could predict the universe revolved around something location of the planets other than Earth This gave weight to the heliocentric model Scientists Copernicus's theory was met with a lot of doubt It took further proof began to question whether Earth to convince people Galileo Galilei was the center of everything Years later scientists discovered other was born shortly after Copernicus published his theory Galileo used stars in other solar systems Our a telescope to study other planets Sun was not the center of the He looked for clues to support universe either Copernicus He observed something

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