What discoveries have changed humanity's understanding of the structure of the universe and the shape of the earth. Give examples of inventions that changed a person's life.
Humanity's understanding was changed forever when individuals made discoveries about the structure and shape of the Earth. These were the following discoveries: 1. The earth is not the center of the universe. Everything revolves around the Sun. This was proven by Copernicus, who lived in the 15th century. 2. The earth is round. Scientists such as Bruno, Galileo and Copernicus proved this. Columbus crossed the Atlantic Ocean. Inventions that changed the life of mankind: 1. Antibiotics and vaccines. It was their appearance that saved millions of lives. 2. The appearance of cars and airplanes. People began to move faster and travel a lot. 3. Invention of the microscope. In the 16th century, Jansen invented the microscope, which was a great boost to the study of biology. 4. Nuclear weapons. 5. Wheel. 6. Printing press. 7. Communication. 8. Light bulb. 9. Computer. 10. Internet.
Textbook for 7th grade
There was a time when man considered the Earth to be the center of the Universe (everything that exists is called the Universe).
Scientists then discovered that our Earth is one of several planets orbiting a huge, hot Sun: its diameter is more than 100 times the diameter of Earth.
For some time after this, the Sun was considered the center of the Universe, but it soon became clear that this was not the case. Astronomers (the so-called scientists who study cosmic bodies - planets and stars) have established that our Sun is just an ordinary star. There are hundreds of billions of similar stars in a colossal star system called the Galaxy.
From one edge of the Galaxy to the other, light travels for about one hundred thousand years, covering 300,000 kilometers every second.
But the huge Galaxy, as it turned out, is not the entire Universe. With the help of modern telescopes, scientists have discovered billions of similar star systems in the Universe (they are also called galaxies, but they write this word with a small letter). In Fig. 2.1 you see a photograph taken with a telescope of the galaxy closest to us.
Rice. 2.1. Andromeda Galaxy. It is similar in size and structure to our Galaxy. From the Andromeda Galaxy to us, light takes about two million years. (The bright stars in the photo belong to our Galaxy: they are much closer to us than the Andromeda Galaxy)
Having created remarkable instruments, scientists were able to comprehend not only the extremely large, but also the extremely small: they learned how atoms - the smallest particles that make up matter - are structured. And many mysteries of the world of stars (for example, why stars shine for billions of years) were solved precisely by studying the world of atoms.
Science
Thanks to scientists and simply gifted people who are accustomed to getting to the bottom of things, humanity is constantly faced with amazing discoveries. It just so happens that the most amazing of them are related to the structure of the world and man’s place in it. These discoveries at one time overturned the usual ideas about the essence of things. Knowledge, of course, is power, but perhaps happiness was precisely in ignorance? Humanity can be proud of many of the discoveries - they have brought at least some order to our world of chaos and confusion, explaining many mysterious and incomprehensible things. But many of the discoveries made are so shocking that common sense, at times, categorically refuses to accept them. What exactly discoveries are we talking about? Let me introduce 10 most significant of them, which really changed our understanding of the world around us and made us doubt.
1. The earth is not the center of the universe
It would seem that humanity has had 400 years to fully understand this idea, but it still continues to trouble some inquisitive minds. How is this possible? Turn your gaze to the night sky. People at all times have observed how the sun and stars appear from the east, cross the sky overnight from one horizon line to another, and disappear somewhere in the west. So it was, so it is and so it will be. This was the case at the turn of the 15th century. When suddenly someone appears Copernicus, and gives his explanation of this eternal process, according to which the earth and other planets rotate in their orbits around the sun, and not vice versa, as was believed for centuries. The scientist's contemporaries considered such assumptions to be "outright absurd." As I said Owen Gingerich of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, “it took a change of several generations for people to clearly understand this fact. Very few scientists at that time saw in these ideas a correct explanation of the structure of the world around us”.
Follower of Copernicus, Galileo, defending this idea of the structure of the world, he suffered, as they say, grief, almost more than Copernicus himself. Galileo decided to use his own invention, telescope, in order to prove that the Sun is the central celestial body of the solar system around which the Earth and other planets revolve (the so-called heliocentric theory of the structure of the world). Many of his contemporaries were so amazed by the stories of others about craters on the surface of what turned out to be a round moon, a large number of moons around Jupiter, that simply refused to look at outer space through this outlandish scientist's device! It seemed that Galileo posed an even more daring challenge to the Catholic Church and religious foundations. Holy Scripture stated that the Sun revolves around the Earth and "Holy Office" (Congregation of the Roman and Ecumenical Inquisition) found Galileo guilty of heresy for daring to say otherwise.
2. Germs are attacking us
Antibiotics and vaccines have saved millions of lives - that's a fact. Without these and other amazing medical discoveries, many of us would have died in early childhood from polio, mumps or smallpox. But some harmful microbes are developing faster than humanity is able to respond to this development in order to learn how to fight them.
The flu virus is mutating at such an incredible rate that vaccinations given last year actually useless against the current flu virus. Even in such seemingly sterile places as hospitals, there are a lot of staphylococcus bacteria, which are completely resistant to any antibiotics, and can easily turn into any infection dangerous to humans.
And at this time, new diseases appear that can be easily transmitted from animals to humans. What is it worth alone? ebola virus, mowing down great apes; or observed in Himalayan civets SARS coronavirus; hantavirus from rodents; bird flu from birds, pork from pigs, and so on, and so on... Even tuberculosis, a disease that once afflicted great musicians and writers, seems to be making a comeback in a new form, partly because the bacterium has developed immunity to existing antibiotics. And even now, in the 21st century, the risk of dying from tuberculosis is quite real.
3. There have been several mass extinctions on our planet in the past. It looks like we are now living in the era of another extinction
Paleontologists have identified five key events in the life of all life on our planet, when there was a mass extinction of most biological species, that is, extinction. The reasons, at least presumably, are the following - the fall of a large asteroid, volcanic eruptions, atmospheric changes.
Unlike the ideas of Copernicus, the theory of extinction took much less time to be accepted, at least in pseudo-scientific circles. Thomas Jefferson, the third president of the United States, also known as a paleontologist, once studying the bones of a mastodon discovered in Kentucky, came to the conclusion that these giants could well have survived to this day somewhere in the center of the continent. He even asked the participants of the first land expedition through the United States, from the Atlantic coast to the Pacific coast and back (the famous Lewis and Clark expedition, which began in 1803 and lasted three years), keep your eyes open while traveling.
In our time, we (biological species of planet Earth) are, as they say, in the heart of the sixth mass extinction. Of course, this extinction has been going on for more than one millennium. Mastodons could have been one of its first victims. As people moved from continent to continent, gradually settling them, these giant mammals, which had flourished on earth for millions of years, began to disappear. This also applies to mastodons in North America, and to giant kangaroo in Australia, and to dwarf elephants in Europe. Whatever the causes of the sixth wave of mass extinction, people are only accelerating this process by hunting, destroying the natural habitats of many species, moving species into unusual habitats (thus disturbing the balance of these regions) and creating (moderately or accidentally) new disease-causing diseases. bacteria.
4. Tasty things are usually harmful to the body.
Remember this phrase: everything that is tasty and pleasant is either harmful or sinful! IN 1948 in US cities Framingham and Massachusetts a special long-term study began, which involved more than 5000 inhabitants these cities. This study sought to identify a number of the main causes that lead to heart disease. This study is, in fact, truly unprecedented in its duration! And today the grandchildren of those who were once among the first volunteers are participating in it.
As a result, thanks to long and painstaking work, it was possible to find out that heart attack, diabetes, various types of cancer and other serious diseases are directly related to the amount of delicious and delicious food consumed. Now this news won’t surprise anyone! And then it turned out to be a real bomb! Still: steak, salty fries, eggs Benedict, layered cakes with whipped cream– these are all real slow killers of our health! Of course, many tasty things can also be useful - blueberries, pears, apples, nuts and even red wine(although the wine debate never seems to go away!). But we should take into account the fact that the food preferences of our ancestors were formed in conditions of poor food choice, when the only way out was hunting or collecting all sorts of tops, roots, and roots. It is no wonder that in a later period people, as they say, got their hands on food and ate everything - fried, salted, spicy, peppered. And they ate as much as was included. And a sedentary lifestyle for a decade in a row has not given people the opportunity to painlessly adapt to such an abundance of food.
5. E=mc²
Yes, yes, the energy of a body is equal to the mass of the body multiplied by the square of the speed of light in a vacuum. This principle, formulated Einstein still in 1905, is still one of the most important, famous and useful discoveries. And at the same time one of the most destructive. There’s really nothing to talk about here for a long time. Apart from all the benefits that this “simple” formula has brought to humanity, the power that is hidden in it is truly terrifying! After all, it is this formula that is inextricably linked with destructive power of atomic weapons. And in fact, you don’t really need large masses and bulky projectiles! A little plutonium - and it is quite possible to destroy a very large city!
6. Our mind does not obey us
Perhaps Sigmund Freud did not fully understand the details... But he clearly brought out the main idea - our behavior, superstitions, emotions and actions are driven by a huge number of third-party factors(we often don’t even suspect the existence of many of them). Well, here’s at least this example: you are in a great mood, optimistic, and in general everything is fine, although there seem to be not many reasons for this. This means that the weather outside is most likely wonderful. On sunny days, many people feel a surge of causeless happiness. Or another example - when we taste something, then we usually give preference to the first product(even if all subsequent samples taste absolutely identical). Or here’s another thing: the more often you see a person near you, the greater the chance that you will like him and you will get closer. This explains office romances, strong school and college friendships etc. The opposite statement is also true, embodied in folk wisdom: out of sight, out of mind! But here’s something new: our sense of smell is very often responsible for making decisions. There are countless such examples of irrational behavior!
We stay all our lives maximalists and constantly generalize something; we are always ready to interpret facts and information in the way we understand it, and not as it really is; we are very often upset and sometimes even enraged by certain absolutely insignificant details of what is happening. We very often rely on our memory, but sometimes we do not notice that the stories we retell are overgrown with more and more false facts. In fact, we do not remember, but for the most part inventing again!
Don't believe me? But listen! Like millions of other Americans, neuroscientist Karim Nader has very vivid and emotional memories of what happened in New York on September 11, 2001. But being an expert in the field of studying the properties of human memory, its flexibility and variability, he is in no hurry to bet on the accuracy of all the details that he remembers. And numerous tests have shown that those things that looked like vivid and absolutely clear memories they are not at all like that. And the majority of subjects always and everywhere show such results.
7. We came from monkeys
Perhaps, in light of the latest “discoveries” regularly published on the Internet, this theory already seems untenable to many. Offer yours! Believe me, once she was simply met with hostility and ridiculed! In fact, Darwin's theory of evolution, which explains the development of life on the planet by natural selection, at one time could not help but amaze everyone with its revolutionary nature: all that remained was to be in awe of the scale of geological time and silently, with admiration, to look at the myriads of living beings created by nature.
On the other hand, the ability to appreciate nature by looking at it is precisely what, it would seem, makes a person a special creature. Instead, people were asked to recognize that they are just one of the possible variations of what what does an ordinary ape turn into during the process of evolution?. We can boast as much as we want about our ability to think abstractly, claiming that no chimpanzee is capable of this, but we are physically weaker than, for example, gorillas; less agile in the forest than orangutans; and some have a worse character, sometimes, than the most evil primates! So what is there to be proud of?! The ability to see?
Charles Darwin was originally creationist, that is, he adhered to a theological worldview concept, but subsequently, thanks to many years of observations and scientific research, he changed his initial views on the world. And now 151 years old(exactly so many years ago the scientist published his great creation "Origin of Species"), heated debate continues around Darwin's theory. And although now pseudoscientists, hiding behind some pseudoscientific arguments, are trying to challenge this theory, no one has proposed a more viable version of the development of life on our planet. Well, maybe the version about aliens! In the meantime, all the discoveries made by mankind in biology, geology, genetics and paleontology (and even in chemistry and physics!) directly or indirectly confirm the correctness of Charles Darwin's theory of evolution.
8. All cultures in the world have gone through ritual human sacrifice at one time or another.
Let's say your hour of death is near, and you need to take with you on your last journey a sort of suitcase in which you can put everything that may be useful to you in the afterlife. What would you take? A couple of coins to pay the fare of the ferryman of departed souls for crossing the river of oblivion (remember Greek mythology and the ferryman Charona)? Or some item to remember worldly life?
But if you were Egyptian pharaoh, then you would have to take with you on your last journey your faithful servants, whom your other faithful servants would slaughter like cattle and lay next to your body in the tomb! In China, for example, when ruling persons died, their concubines went with them to the next world. The Aztecs went even further: they sacrificed tens of thousands of people in honor of the completion of the construction of the famous Great Pyramid of the Aztecs in Tenochtitlan. Did you know that the Mayans had their own special sacred game, which involved two teams playing with some kind of ball? So the losing team was solemnly... sacrificed to the Mayan gods!
Of course, now it’s difficult to figure out where in all these terrible stories there is truth and where there is fiction. But ritual sacrifices were described in the Bible, Greek mythology and Norwegian sagas. The Romans, the great conquerors, left numerous references in their chronicles to the tribes they conquered, where human sacrifices were commonplace. If we put together all the information that archaeologists have accumulated over the past centuries, we can say that custom of human sacrifice unites early (and later) cultures of many peoples of the world. But some people still ate them!
9. Humanity, through its activities, has changed the climate of the planet, at least until the end of this century
The mechanism that allows us to change the climate of our planet in a short time is not so complicated: it is necessary to burn many millions of tons of fuel. The byproduct of combustion, that is, carbon dioxide, is released into the atmosphere and retains heat in it, warming the surface of the planet. The consequences of this are already obvious: glaciers are melting faster than ever, plants are blooming earlier, and many species of flora and fauna no matter how paradoxical it sounds, are beginning to inhabit increasingly extreme latitudes and altitudes in order to be closer to the cold.
Even more worrying is the fact that carbon dioxide can remain in the atmosphere for centuries! We are just beginning to observe the effect of human activity that has changed the climate on the planet, and according to forecasts, our future seems very disappointing, if not catastrophic!
10. The universe consists of matter that we cannot even comprehend yet
Everything that we can more or less clearly imagine when we think about the universe is planets, stars, galaxies, stardust and even black holes– this is only 4 percent of everything that surrounds us! Everything else can be divided into two “dark” (literally and figuratively!) concepts: dark matter, occupying 23 percent of the space in the universe, and dark energy, which accounts for a whopping 73 percent.
Scientists, of course, have put forward many assumptions on this topic - very exotic and, of course, purely hypothetical - but it is unlikely that anyone is now able to fully imagine what it is... Cosmology specialist from the University of Chicago Michael S. Turner calls dark energy "the most incomprehensible mystery of the universe in the entire history of science".
Efforts to solve this mystery have forced an army of astronomers to rethink laws of physics and cosmology. Without a doubt, if this is ever done, the new discovery will eclipse in its significance even the discovery of Galileo... The discovery of the very fact of the existence of dark energy again forced people to ask the old question: what is the universe, which we call home?
But what astronomers know for sure, thanks to these dark spots, is that the universe is expanding. And it doesn’t just expand – it does it all faster and faster. It appears that the universe will eventually expand until it cools evenly and ceases to exist as we know it (or think we know it!). However, who will witness this??
The shape of the Earth - our home - has worried humanity for quite some time. Today, every schoolchild has no doubt that the planet is spherical. But it took a long time to get to this knowledge, going through church anathemas and the courts of the Inquisition. Today people are wondering who proved that the Earth is round. After all, not everyone liked history and geography lessons. Let's try to find the answer to this interesting question.
Many scientific works confirm our thoughts that before the famous Christopher Columbus, humanity believed that it lived on a flat Earth. However, this hypothesis does not stand up to criticism for two reasons.
Different peoples had their own ideas about the structure of the world and space. Before answering the question of who proved that the Earth is round, you should familiarize yourself with other versions. The earliest theories of worldbuilding claimed that the earth was flat (as people saw it). They explained the movement of the heavenly bodies (sun, moon, stars) by the fact that it was their planet that was the center of the Cosmos and the Universe.
In Ancient Egypt, the Earth was represented as a disk resting on four elephants. They, in turn, stood on a giant turtle floating in the sea. The one who discovered that the Earth is round has not yet been born, but the theory of the sages of Pharaoh could explain the causes of earthquakes and floods, the rising and setting of the sun.
The Greeks also had their own ideas about the world. In their understanding, the earth's disk was covered with celestial spheres, to which stars were tied by invisible threads. They considered the moon and the sun to be gods - Selene and Helios. Nevertheless, the books of Pannekoek and Dreyer contain the works of ancient Greek sages who contradicted the generally accepted views of that time. Eratosthenes and Aristotle were the ones who discovered that the Earth is round.
Arab teachings were also famous for their accurate knowledge of astronomy. The tables of star movements they created were so accurate that they even raised doubts about their authenticity. The Arabs, with their observations, pushed society to change its ideas about the structure of the world and the Universe.
I wonder what motivated the scientists when they denied the observations of the people around them? The one who proved that the Earth is round drew attention to the fact that if it were flat, then the luminaries would be visible in the sky at the same time for everyone. But in practice, everyone knew that many of the stars that were visible in the Nile Valley were impossible to see above Athens. A sunny day in the Greek capital is longer than, for example, in Alexandria (this is due to the curvature in the north-south and east-west directions).
The scientist who proved that the Earth is round noticed that an object, moving away while moving, leaves only its upper part visible (for example, on the shore, the masts of a ship are visible, not its hull). This is only logical if the planet is spherical and not flat. Plato also considered the fact that a ball is an ideal shape to be a compelling argument in favor of sphericity.
Today we have technical devices that allow us not only to observe celestial bodies, but also to rise into the sky and see our planet from the outside. Here's some more evidence that it's not flat. As you know, during the blue planet closes the night star with itself. And the shadow is round. And the various masses that make up the Earth tend downwards, giving it a spherical shape.
The Vatican admitted that the Earth is round rather late. Then, when it was impossible to deny the obvious. Early European writers initially rejected this theory as being contrary to Scripture. During the spread of Christianity, not only other religions and pagan cults succumbed to persecution. All scientists who conducted various experiments, made observations, but did not believe in one God, were considered heretics. At that time, manuscripts and entire libraries were destroyed, temples and statues, and objects of art were destroyed. The Holy Fathers believed that people do not need science, only Jesus Christ is the source of the greatest wisdom, and the holy books contain enough information for life. The geocentric theory of the structure of the world was also considered by the church to be incorrect and dangerous.
Kozma Indicopleustes described the Earth as a kind of box, at the bottom of which rested a stronghold inhabited by people. The sky served as a “lid”, but it was motionless. The moon, stars and sun moved like angels across the sky and hid behind a high mountain. Above this complex structure rested the Kingdom of Heaven.
An unknown geographer from Ravenna described our planet as a flat object surrounded by an ocean, an endless desert and mountains, behind which the sun, moon and stars are hidden. Isidore (Bishop of Seville) in 600 AD in his works did not exclude the spherical shape of the Earth. Bede the Venerable built on the work of Pliny and therefore stated that the Sun is larger than the Earth, that they are spherical, and that space is not geocentric.
So, returning to Columbus, it can be argued that his path was not based solely on intuition. Without wanting to diminish his merits, we can say that the knowledge of his era should have brought him to India. And society no longer rejected the spherical shape of our house.
The first idea about the Earth-sphere was expressed by the Greek philosopher Eratosthenes, who already measured the radius of the planet in the fourth century BC. The error in his calculations was only one percent! He tested his guesses in the sixteenth century, making his famous Who proved that the Earth is round? Theoretically, this was done by Galileo Galilei, who, by the way, was sure that it was she who was spinning around the sun, and not vice versa.
The idea of the shape of the Earth has changed throughout the development of mankind. The ancient peoples of the Earth imagined it to be flat. In Ancient Greece, during the time of Homer (IX-VIII centuries BC), the Earth was represented as a slightly convex disk, similar to a warrior’s shield, and it was believed that the land was washed by the ocean from everywhere.
In the time of Pythagoras (6th century BC) it was assumed that the Earth was a sphere, like other planets. The first evidence of the sphericity of the Earth belongs to the ancient Greek scientist Aristotle (IV century BC). To these he included observations of lunar eclipses, during which the shadow from the Earth falls on the surface of the Moon, always round; changing the appearance of the starry sky as you move along the meridian; expanding your horizon as you get taller.
Gradually, the idea of the Earth as a ball began to be based not on observations, but on precise calculations and measurements. The first to establish the size of the globe was the ancient Greek scientist Eratosthenes (III-II centuries BC). He measured the arc length of the 1° meridian and then, on this basis, determined the length of the entire Earth beyond the meridian (about 40,000 km).
During the Middle Ages, due to the dominance of religion in all spheres of life, many scientific ideas of ancient peoples about the Earth were denied. The doctrine of the sphericity of the Earth was generally rejected.
From the end of the 15th century. the revival of science begins. The period of Great Geographical Discoveries began. Christopher Columbus, in search of a western route to India, discovered the New World - America (one thousand four hundred and ninety-two p.). Vasco da Gama circumnavigated Africa and paved the sea route to India (+1497 p.).
The first to prove the sphericity of the Earth in practice was the Portuguese Ferdinand Magellan, whose expedition in 1519-1522. Carried out the first circumnavigation in history. Spain and Portugal are strong maritime countries of the 15th century. - In 1494. They concluded an agreement on dividing the sphere of influence. The dividing line ran approximately along the 46°N meridian. d. (Azores). To the west of this line, the lands, waters and possible further discoveries were considered Spanish, and to the east - Portuguese. The position of the dividing line near the East Asian coast, where the Moluccas, which were used by the Portuguese, are located, remained unclear. To determine the authenticity of the location of the islands in Spain, an expedition was formed under the leadership of Magellan. The journey began on September 20, 1519, and from the Spanish port of San Lucar, 5 ships and 265 people crossed the Atlantic in a southwestern direction and reached the eastern coast of South America. Then they sailed south along the mainland in search of a strait that leads to the west.
Magellan stopped for the winter in one of the bays. In October 1520, the expedition continued its journey. A few days later they found a passage to the west - a narrow strait, which was later named after Magellan. On November 28, 1520, the ships entered the open ocean and sailed north along the mainland, and then began to cross the ocean. The voyage across the ocean lasted 3 months and 20 days. In March 1521, the expedition reached the Mariana Islands, then the Philippine Islands. The journey was difficult, there was not enough food and water, almost everyone suffered from scurvy, 19 people died. The weather was good, so Magellan called the ocean Pacific.
In the Philippine Islands, Magellan was killed in a battle with local residents. Two ships reached the Moluccas Islands. Espinosa led one ship, Elcano the second. Espinosa went to Spain by the eastern route, his ship was captured by the Portuguese. Elcano's ship was returning to Spain via the western route, through the Indian and Atlantic oceans around the Cape of Good Hope. His ship entered San Lucar on September 6, 1522. Only 18 people and one ship returned from Magellan's expedition.
Magellan's expedition proved that most of the Earth's surface is occupied not by land, but by the ocean, and between America and Asia there is the Pacific Ocean. The unity of the World Ocean was established and the sphericity of the Earth was confirmed.
In connection with the development of knowledge about the nature of the Earth, the idea of its shape continued to improve. At the end of the 17th century. Based on Newton's work, the idea arose that as a result of rotation around its axis, the Earth should be flattened at the poles - that is, have the shape of a spheroid or ellipsoid. Indeed, the equatorial radius of the Earth is 21.4 km longer than the polar one.
Later, based on measurements of gravity, it was established that the figure of the Earth differs from the regular shape of a spheroid due to the heterogeneous structure of the subsoil, the uneven distribution of masses. A true geometric figure that corresponds to the shape of the Earth, called a geoid, its surface is everywhere perpendicular to the direction of gravity. The surface of the geoid coincides with the leveled surface of the World Ocean. The rise and fall of the geoid above the spheroid is ± 50 ... ± 100 m.
The true physical surface of the Earth with its mountains and depressions does not coincide with the surface of the geoid and recedes from it by several kilometers.
