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Epicycles aren't wrong. In fact, the Copernican model of the solar system is less correct than the Ptolemaic epicycle model that was being used because Coperni
by bsder 4y ago
Epicycles aren't wrong. In fact, the Copernican model of the solar system is less correct than the Ptolemaic epicycle model that was being used because Copernicus still viewed orbits as circular.
More to the point, since epicycles are just a Fourier decomposition, they're actually perfectly correct. The problem, though, is that they are a nightmare to compute with unless you have a modern computer.
Once Kepler decided to use an ellipse to model solar orbits; however, things were vastly easier to compute. At that point, the epicycle model got swiftly pushed aside.
- throwawaymaths 4y agoEpicycles aren't wrong, they're not even wrong. You could model an orbit that looks like homer Simpson's face with epicycles, but the ancients weren't sophisticated enough to understand that. The problem is that the technique of epicycles this has diminishing explanatory power, as you add more free variables (how many epicycles you are "allowed" to have. The reason why LCDM gets called epicycles is that there is charitably one free parameter per galaxy (dm: bm ratio -- but actually more, because it's an arbitrary distribution)... So the fact that it has high explanatory power is unsurprising. And what's should be dismaying is the number of things it can't explain, given just how many free parameters you're allowed to have in a DM model.