why did magister reese think the planets circled the earth?
116508
Because you look up in the sky and they look like they are going around us?
716401
In classical times, educated people pretty much understood that the Earth is a sphere.\n\n"Eratosthenes (276 BC - 194 BC) estimated Earth's circumference around 240 BC. He had heard about a place in Egypt where the Sun was directly overhead at the summer solstice and used geometry to come up with a circumference of 250,000 stades. This estimate astonishes some modern writers, as it is within 2% of the modern value of the equatorial circumference, 40,075 kilometres. However, the length of a 'stade' is not precisely known; Eratosthenes' figure falls short if we do not use a fairly generous estimate for this length." (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spherical_Earth)
549175
Planets would only describe circular orbits if they were moving with the correct speed for their distance from the sun. Any slight disturbance to their motion, such as asteroid impact, would cause their motion to become elliptical. For instance if they lost energy (and speed) as a result of a collision they would be pulled closer to the sun as the result of its gravity. This would cause them to speed up and start moving away from the sun until their speed decreased so much that they were pulled towards the sun again. This is the elliptical motion of planets.\nUnless the solar system were intelligently designed it would be impossible (probability = 0) for any planet to be moving in a /perfect/ circle.
1047977
Have you stopped beating your wife yet? The way you pose the question is not sincere -- you've already interspersed conjecture. There ARE 4 corners to the earth when you look at the REAL earth from space. They are not sharp 90% angles, but nevertheless, the earth is not perfectly spherical. Check out DrDino.com and watch 28 hours of creation facts. There are far more holes in any other explanation for earth's beginning, just check them out. There were no clouds prior to the flood, it was a canopy of water. Similar, but not the same, Saturn has an ice halo around it. Earth had a complete canopy above it which regulated it temperature perfectly. Much thicker and integral than the ozone layer today. Upon God's judgment, God caused this canopy to colapse, forever altering the tropical paradise type atmosphere which allowed all manner of life to flourish, even at the poles. Animals with fresh produce still undigested have been found at the poles, frozen. Why? So God could be glorified thousands of years later when man would examine such evidence. Chances are God used a huge deep-space frozen comet or asteroid to knock the earth slightly out of a true orbit around the sun, the collision resulting in the collapse of the canopy AND cause the earth to tilt. If it were frozen nitrogen, it would quickly freeze even the largest of animals in the area the debris hit the earth. Keep in mind, God gives answers to the humble and the contrite in spirit, not to the proud.
699589
Kepler figured out the laws that describe planetary orbits.  This enabled much more accurate planetary positions (which Kepler published), and set the stage for Isaac Newton to explain that gravity  was the force that held the planets in their orbits.\n\nUp until Kepler, everyone was sure that planetary orbits must be some form of perfect circle. His discovery that they are actually elliptical was an important turning point in the history of science, away from the Aristotelian method of applying philosophical concepts to physical reality, and towards modern empirical science.
806334
It probably has orbited around uranus.
469675
Planets came from clouds of spinning gases that later solidified.   So they are pretty round, but not exactly spherical.  The earth is around 8,000 miles in diameter.  Black holes are proven.  They were proven using gravity experiments on nearby bodies and light experiments from stars "behind" them when viewed from earth.
205841
Not sure who was the 'first' but the Egyptian Ptolemy left records that show he knew the Earth was a sphere.  He even calculated its circumference fairly accurately.\n\nWhere he was incorrect, of course, was proposing a geocentric view of the universe with the Earth in the middle and fairly complicated system of orbits to describe the movement of the various visible astronomical bodies.  It wouldn't be until Copernicus over a thousand years later, until this particular view was corrected.
379517
This is because we see them as rotating so.Actually the earth rotates west to east on it's axis.That's why we see'em rotating east to west.
11086
oops... misread.\nNicolaus Copernicus proposed the sun-centric model.\nhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copernicus\n\nI think the geocentric model was assumed since the beginning of time.  Everybody saw the sun revolving around the earth.  It was obvious...
91267
You are referring to a concept in planetary astronomy call inclination of orbit.  The "disc" that the Earth revolves around the Sun on is called the ecliptic plane.\n\nTechnically speaking every other planet has some orbtial inclination or tilt of their disc.  But it is very small so the eight major planets are said to orbit in roughly the same plane (ecliptic).  \n\nPluto is different.  Its orbital inclination angle is about 18 degrees with respect to the ecliptic.  That's big compared to the other planets. \n\nNow the question is why are the eight major planets in the same plane?  Why is Pluto not?\n\nWhen the solar system formed it was originally a giant sphere of gas and dust and over time was gravitationally attracted into a compacted sphere.  When this happens systems need to conserve angular momentum.  This results in the sphere becoming flattened.  This flattened sphere now looks like a disc.  The disc is roughly the ecliptic plane. An analogy to this scenario is pizza dough being spun by a chef into a disc. \n\nPluto, it is believed, was probably originally part of this disc but later had an intereaction with another object which since changed its orbit.
214582
planet= wanderer , because they appear to move different form the stars, that showed fixed patterns.
689738
he Very Large Telescope (VLT) has caught a remarkable image of the planet Uranus circled by some of its moons.\n\nThe rings of the planet - which is 3,000 million kilometres away from Earth - are clearly displayed in the image.\n\nThe rings are almost undetectable from Earth in visible light.\n\nThe VLT is located at the European Southern Observatory's Paranal Observatory in Chile.\n\nThe image was obtained in the near-infrared, and includes seven of the planet's moons.\n\nVLT\nVLT is based at Paranal in Chile\nTwo of the moons in the picture, Puck and Portia, were only found in the 1980s as the Voyager probe prepared for its flyby of the planet.\n\nUranus, which is at a distance from the Earth equivalent to 20 times the distance between the Earth and Sun, was first spotted by William Herschel in 1781.
887549
Yes. Key example, the Copernican theories. He was the first to "theorize" that the Earth revolved around the sun, but the Catholic Church thought this to be a "conspiracy" against the Church. As we all know, Copernicus turned out to be correct, and his 99% theory beat out the Church's 1% conspiracy, to become 100% fact.
671341
So Johann Kepler was a German astronomer, living between 1571-1630. He was the one who introduced the three laws of planetary motion. He worked and studied about the (elliptical) oval orbit, planets, and eclipse. He rivaled against the old beliefs on how the heavenly bodies moved in perfect circles...Well, he was one of those who questioned the church's beliefs an teachings. He thought of new ideas, observed things, and experiemented. The church/pope/Catholic and Protestants went against him, too. But those who began to think out of the box probably admired him or something.
299749
I have done some research on this in the past. There is one answer i believe in.  They got tired of the up keep of there calender.  They also thought that there was going to be someone (a Mayan) that would be here and keep it going. There is nothing going to happen in the STARS.
583184
because it appeared that it was revolving around the earth, and not the other way around.  we seemed stationary, and the stars seemed to be the ones moving.