1473, Copernicus was born in a merchant family in Torun, Poland. Due to the early death of his parents, he was raised by his uncle who was a priest. /kloc-When he was 0/8 years old, he came to Krakow, then the capital of Poland, and studied at the University of Krakow. Influenced by the Italian Renaissance thought, Copernicus accepted the humanistic thought there, and at the same time became interested in astronomy and mathematics, and began to observe astronomical phenomena with astronomical instruments.

After graduating from Copernicus University, he returned to his hometown. In order to let Copernicus inherit the mantle and work in the Catholic church, my uncle sent him to study in Italy and study church law.

From 65438 to 0495, Copernicus came to Bologna University to study canon law. However, Copernicus was interested in astronomy. He used all his spare time to study astronomy and mathematics hard and insisted on observing astronomical phenomena. Later, Copernicus entered the University of Padua and Farah to study medicine and canon law, but he still insisted on the study of astronomy.

In Italy, Copernicus made friends with a group of astronomers, who often exchanged knowledge about the structure of celestial bodies. Coupled with Copernicus' own observation and research, he began to doubt the "geocentric theory". The theory of "the center of the earth" was put forward by Aristotle, an ancient Greek philosopher, and further systematized by Ptolemy, a Roman astronomer, in the 2nd century. ..

1506 Copernicus returned to the motherland and served as a priest in Fronburg Cathedral. Since then, he has obtained certain material security and plenty of time to engage in the scientific research he loves.

For the convenience of research, Copernicus deliberately chose the arched tower on the church wall as the dormitory and studio, set up a small observatory in it, and began to observe the celestial bodies with self-made simple instruments for 30 years. It was here that he wrote the masterpiece "On the Operation of Celestial Bodies" that shocked the world. Of the 27 observation cases, 25 were observed and recorded by him from this watchtower.

The Theory of Celestial Bodies has six volumes. In the book, Copernicus boldly put forward: "The sun is the center of the universe, and all the planets revolve around the sun;" The earth is not the center of the universe, but an ordinary planet orbiting the sun. " "People see the sun running from east to west every day because the earth rotates around day and night, not because the sun is moving. "

"The stars in the sky are constantly moving because the earth itself is spinning, not because the stars are spinning around the stationary earth." "Mars, Jupiter and other planets sometimes go straight and sometimes go backwards in the sky because they each revolve around the sun in their own orbits, not because they are mysterious." "The moon is a satellite of the earth. It goes around the earth once a month."

Copernicus also criticized Ptolemy's geostationary theory in this book. It is pointed out that when the earth is moving, people only feel that the whole universe is spinning, just as people feel that the land and the city are retreating on a ship. 1543 One day in May, when he got the book, he had been paralyzed in bed for more than a year. He only touched the cover of the book and closed his eyes with relief.

Extended data:

The development of Heliocentrism;

1. Copernicus proposed

From 65438 to 0499, Copernicus graduated from the University of Bologna in Italy and became a Catholic priest. At that time, people believed in the cosmological model founded by Ptolemy, a Greek scientist, more than 500 years ago. Ptolemy believed that the earth was the center of the universe and stood still. The sun, the moon, planets and stars all revolve around the earth, while the stars are far away from the earth and outside the huge space sphere. However, after careful observation, scientists found that the laws of planetary motion were inconsistent with Ptolemy's model of the universe.

Copernicus wanted to improve Ptolemy's measurement results with "modern" technology in order to cancel some small orbits. For nearly 20 years, Copernicus tirelessly measured the positions of the planets day and night, but the results obtained by his measurement were still not much different from Ptolemy's celestial operation mode.

After 20 years of observation, Copernicus found that only the annual change of the sun was not obvious. This means that the distance between the earth and the sun has never changed. If the earth is not the center of the universe, then the center of the universe is the sun. He immediately thought that if the sun is placed in the center of the universe, then the earth should revolve around the sun.

In this way, he can cancel all the small circular orbit modes and let all the known planets revolve directly around the sun.

For fear of being punished by the church, Copernicus did not dare to make his discovery public when he was alive. It was not until 1543 that this discovery was made public. Even at that time, Copernicus's discovery was constantly despised and ridiculed by churches, universities and other institutions and astronomers.

2. Aristakes advocates

Alistair (about 3 10 BC-about 230 BC) was the first astronomer who advocated Heliocentrism in human history, and also the greatest astronomer and mathematician in ancient Greece and human history.

He was born on the island of Samos in ancient Greece. He placed the sun at the center of the whole known universe, not the earth, and he was one of the earliest recorded advocates of Heliocentrism in human history. But in ancient Greece at that time, his cosmology and outstanding wisdom were not understood by people at that time, and were covered by the brilliance of Aristotle and Ptolemy. It was not until16th century (after about 1760) that Copernicus developed and perfected Aristakes's cosmology and theory.

Aristakes needs a sidereal moon to observe the shadow of the moon passing through the earth. So he estimated that the diameter of the earth is three times that of the moon. According to the 42,000km earth circumference calculated by Eratosthenes, he thinks that the moon circumference should be 14000km. In fact, the circumference of the moon is about 109 16 km.

Aristakes also thought that a major event should not revolve around a minor event, so he put forward the "Heliocentrism" (unfortunately, it was not accepted by contemporary people). He believes that on the one hand, the earth turns from west to east once a day, which leads to the scene of celestial bodies rising in the east and setting in the west. On the other hand, it orbits the sun once a year, as do planets such as water, gold, fire, wood and earth. He also believes that compared with the diameter of the earth's orbit around the sun, the stars are almost at infinity. Therefore, it is impossible to see the phenomenon of stellar parallax caused by the revolution of the earth.

Unfortunately, Aristakes's cosmology and theory were far ahead of the times at that time, so they could not be recognized by the general public. Kreanders asked the Greeks to sue Aristakes for blasphemy. After that, Aristakes's thoughts and theories disappeared like a precious ring thrown into the sea. Until Copernicus appeared.

3. Galileo's argument

Galileo believed Copernicus through mathematical logic. Galileo invented the astronomical telescope, which proved the correctness of Copernicus to some extent. However, in the academic discussion organized by the Roman Religious Office, Galileo did not defeat his opponent, which led to the final tragedy: at that time, "the earth goes around the sun" and "the sun goes around the earth" both had scientific evidence, and one defect of Galileo's theory was that scientists could not detect the phenomenon of "stellar parallax".

/kloc-in the 6th century, astronomer Tycho Brahe used the most sophisticated instrument at that time to detect whether there was a "star shift", but it seemed that the relative position and distance of the stars had not changed, so he did not accept the theory of the earth's rotation. However, Galileo guided the value of mathematical principles. He always believed in Heliocentrism.

References:

Baidu Encyclopedia-Heliocentrism