3 ms·

> Copernicus’s model didn’t fit the data as well as Ptolemy’s epicycles. But the math was so elegant that it led to a better model I think the evolution here i

> Copernicus’s model didn’t fit the data as well as Ptolemy’s epicycles. But the math was so elegant that it led to a better model I think the evolution here is really fascinating. Copernicus was correct in that he put the Sun, not the Earth, at the centre of the solar system, but was wrong in that he assumed the planetary orbits were circular. It wasn't until Kepler showed that the orbits were elliptical, with varying speeds, that the predicted positions better matched reality, and Newton's maths explained the effects (but not the mechanisms) of gravity.

throw0101a 5y ago
> It wasn't until Kepler showed that the orbits were elliptical, with varying speeds, that the predicted positions better matched reality, and Newton's maths explained the effects (but not the mechanisms) of gravity. And while all of them had nice/elegant math, none had empirical evidence that anything of what they said matched reality. Things came close with Bradley and stellar aberration in ~1728: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Bradley https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Bradley Giuseppi Calandrelli finally directly measures parallax in α-Lyrae in 1806.