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If we constructed the laws of physics merely by observing the planets we could have concluded that a mass rotated around an axis will move in epicycles, which i
by narrator 16y ago
If we constructed the laws of physics merely by observing the planets we could have concluded that a mass rotated around an axis will move in epicycles, which is how the pre-Copernican astronomers explained the movements of Mars. Astronomy is merely the application of experimentally determined physics here on earth to the movement of celestial bodies.
- nagrom 16y agoYou're missing an awful lot of astronomy if you think that orbital mechanics is the sum total of astronomical knowledge. There's no earth-bound laboratory that can create the hundreds of Teslas magnetic fields found in the sun; there's no earthbound laboratory where one can see high-mass effects like gravitational lensing; there's no earth bound laboratory that can explain or even observe the existence/absence of dark matter. Astronomy is much, much more than dynamics.