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Counter-Earth
The Counter-Earth is a hypothetical body of the Solar System that orbits on the other side of the solar system from Earth. A Counter-Earth or ''Antichthon'' ( el, Ἀντίχθων) was hypothesized by the pre-Socratic Greek philosopher Philolaus (c. 470 – c. 385 BC) to support his non-geocentric cosmology, in which all objects in the universe revolve around a "Central Fire" (unseen from Earth and distinct from the Sun which also revolves around it). In modern times a hypothetical planet always on the other side of the Sun from Earth has been called a "Counter-Earth", and has been a recurring theme in UFO claims, as well as in fiction (particularly science fiction). Greek Pythagorean universe An astronomical system positing that the Earth, Moon, Sun, planets and unseen "counter-earth" revolve around an unseen "Central Fire" was developed in the 5th century BC and attributed to the Pythagorean philosopher Philolaus. Philolaus' universe moved "the earth from the center of t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Fictional Planets Of The Solar System
The fictional portrayal of the Solar System has often included planets, moons, and other celestial objects which do not actually exist in reality. Some of these objects were, at one time, seriously considered as hypothetical planets which were either thought to have been observed, or were hypothesized to be orbiting the Sun in order to explain certain celestial phenomena. Often such objects continued to be used in literature long after the hypotheses upon which they were based had been abandoned. Other non-existent Solar System objects used in fiction have been proposed or hypothesized by persons with no scientific standing; yet others are purely fictional and were never intended as serious hypotheses about the structure of the Solar System. Vulcan Vulcan was a hypothetical planet supposed to revolve around the Sun inside the orbit of Mercury, invoked to explain certain irregularities in Mercury's orbit. The planet was proposed as a hypothesis in 1859, and abandoned not late ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Philolaus
Philolaus (; grc, Φιλόλαος, ''Philólaos''; ) was a Greek Pythagorean and pre-Socratic philosopher. He was born in a Greek colony in Italy and migrated to Greece. Philolaus has been called one of three most prominent figures in the Pythagorean tradition and the most outstanding figure in the Pythagorean school. Pythagoras developed a school of philosophy that was dominated by both mathematics and mysticism. Most of what is known today about the Pythagorean astronomical system is derived from Philolaus's views. He may have been the first to write about Pythagorean doctrine. According to August Böckh (1819), who cites Nicomachus, Philolaus was the successor of Pythagoras. He argued that at the foundation of everything is the part played by the limiting and limitless, which combine in a harmony. With his assertions that the Earth was not the center of the universe ( geocentrism), he is credited with the earliest known discussion of concepts in the development of helioc ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pythagoreanism
Pythagoreanism originated in the 6th century BC, based on and around the teachings and beliefs held by Pythagoras and his followers, the Pythagoreans. Pythagoras established the first Pythagorean community in the ancient Greek colony of Kroton, in modern Calabria (Italy). Early Pythagorean communities spread throughout Magna Graecia. Pythagoras' death and disputes about his teachings led to the development of two philosophical traditions within Pythagoreanism. The ''akousmatikoi'' were superseded in the 4th century BC as a significant mendicant school of philosophy by the Cynics. The ''mathēmatikoi'' philosophers were absorbed into the Platonic school in the 4th century BC. Following political instability in Magna Graecia, some Pythagorean philosophers fled to mainland Greece while others regrouped in Rhegium. By about 400 BC the majority of Pythagorean philosophers had left Italy. Pythagorean ideas exercised a marked influence on Plato and through him, on all of Western p ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Antichthon Symbol (fixed Width)
''Antichthon'' is the peer-reviewed academic journal of the Australasian Society for Classical Studies. The focus of the journal is ancient Greece and Rome, however, its scope is broadly defined so as to embrace the ancient Near East and the Mediterranean from the beginnings of civilisation to the Early Middle Ages The Early Middle Ages (or early medieval period), sometimes controversially referred to as the Dark Ages, is typically regarded by historians as lasting from the late 5th or early 6th century to the 10th century. They marked the start of the M .... External links * Classics journals Annual journals English-language journals Publications established in 1967 Cambridge University Press academic journals {{classics-journal-stub ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Greek Astronomy
Greek astronomy is astronomy written in the Greek language in classical antiquity. Greek astronomy is understood to include the Ancient Greek, Hellenistic, Greco-Roman, and Late Antiquity eras. It is not limited geographically to Greece or to ethnic Greeks, as the Greek language had become the language of scholarship throughout the Hellenistic world following the conquests of Alexander. This phase of Greek astronomy is also known as Hellenistic astronomy, while the pre-Hellenistic phase is known as Classical Greek astronomy. During the Hellenistic and Roman periods, much of the Greek and non-Greek astronomers working in the Greek tradition studied at the Museum and the Library of Alexandria in Ptolemaic Egypt. The development of astronomy by the Greek and notably Hellenistic astronomers is considered to be a major phase in the history of astronomy. Greek astronomy is characterized by seeking a geometrical model for celestial phenomena. Most of the names of the stars, plan ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Classical Element
Classical elements typically refer to earth, water, air, fire, and (later) aether which were proposed to explain the nature and complexity of all matter in terms of simpler substances. Ancient cultures in Greece, Tibet, and India had similar lists which sometimes referred, in local languages, to "air" as "wind" and the fifth element as "void". These different cultures and even individual philosophers had widely varying explanations concerning their attributes and how they related to observable phenomena as well as cosmology. Sometimes these theories overlapped with mythology and were personified in deities. Some of these interpretations included atomism (the idea of very small, indivisible portions of matter), but other interpretations considered the elements to be divisible into infinitely small pieces without changing their nature. While the classification of the material world in ancient Indian, Hellenistic Egypt, and ancient Greece into Air, Earth, Fire an ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pomponius Mela
Pomponius Mela, who wrote around AD 43, was the earliest Roman geographer. He was born in Tingentera (now Algeciras) and died AD 45. His short work (''De situ orbis libri III.'') remained in use nearly to the year 1500. It occupies less than one hundred pages of ordinary print, and is described by the ''Encyclopædia Britannica'' (1911) as "dry in style and deficient in method, but of pure Latinity, and occasionally relieved by pleasing word-pictures." Except for the geographical parts of Pliny's ''Historia naturalis'' (where Mela is cited as an important authority), the ''De situ orbis'' is the only formal treatise on the subject in Classical Latin. Biography Little is known of the author except his name and birthplace—the small town of Tingentera or Cingentera in southern Spain, on Algeciras Bay (Mela ii. 6, § 96; but the text is here corrupt). The date of his writing may be approximately fixed by his allusion (iii. 6 § 49) to a proposed British expedition of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Spherical Earth
Spherical Earth or Earth's curvature refers to the approximation of figure of the Earth as a sphere. The earliest documented mention of the concept dates from around the 5th century BC, when it appears in the writings of Greek philosophers. In the 3rd century BC, Hellenistic astronomy established the roughly spherical shape of Earth as a physical fact and calculated the Earth's circumference. This knowledge was gradually adopted throughout the Old World during Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages.Continuation into Roman and medieval thought: Reinhard Krüger:Materialien und Dokumente zur mittelalterlichen Erdkugeltheorie von der Spätantike bis zur Kolumbusfahrt (1492)Direct adoption by India: D. Pingree: "History of Mathematical Astronomy in India", ''Dictionary of Scientific Biography'', Vol. 15 (1978), pp. 533–633 (554f.); Glick, Thomas F., Livesey, Steven John, Wallis, Faith (eds.): "Medieval Science, Technology, and Medicine: An Encyclopedia", Routledge, New York 2 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Clime
The climes (singular ''clime''; also ''clima'', plural ''climata'', from Greek κλίμα ''klima'', plural κλίματα ''klimata'', meaning "inclination" or "slope") in classical Greco-Roman geography and astronomy were the divisions of the inhabited portion of the spherical Earth by geographic latitude. Starting with Aristotle (''Meteorology'' 2.5,362a32), the Earth was divided into five zones, assuming two ''frigid'' climes (the arctic and antarctic) around the poles, an uninhabitable ''torrid'' clime near the equator, and two ''temperate'' climes between the frigid and the torrid ones. Different lists of climata were in use in Hellenistic and Roman time. Claudius Ptolemy was the first ancient scientist known to have devised the so-called system of seven climes (Almagest 2.12) which, due to his authority, became one of the canonical elements of late antique, medieval European and Arab geography. In Medieval Europe, the climes for 15 and 18 hours of longest dayl ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Antipodes
In geography, the antipode () of any spot on Earth is the point on Earth's surface diametrically opposite to it. A pair of points ''antipodal'' () to each other are situated such that a straight line connecting the two would pass through Earth's center. Antipodal points are as far away from each other as possible. The North and South Poles are antipodes of each other. In the Northern Hemisphere, "the Antipodes" may refer to Australia and New Zealand, and Antipodeans to their inhabitants. Geographically, the antipodes of Britain and Ireland are in the Pacific Ocean, south of New Zealand. This gave rise to the name of the Antipodes Islands of New Zealand, which are close to the antipode of London. With the exception of a part of the Perth metropolitan area near Baldivis and Rockingham that is antipodal to Bermuda, the antipodes of Australia are in the North Atlantic Ocean, while parts of Spain, Portugal, France and Morocco are antipodal to New Zealand. Approxima ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Antichthones
Antichthones, in geography, are those peoples who inhabit the antipodes, regions on opposite sides of the Earth. The word is compounded of the Greek ''ὰντὶ'' ("opposed") and ''χθών'' ("earth"). Classical and Medieval Europe considered the Earth to be divided by the equator into two hemispheres, the northern and southern; those who inhabited one of these hemispheres were said to be antichthones to those of the other. This idea was expounded by Mela and other Classical authors, though Christian writers, who believed that all people on earth must be descended from Adam, denied the possibility that any southern land, if it existed, could be inhabited by humans. Augustine of Hippo, arguing from a position of scriptural inerrancy, wrote in his '' City of God'' "it is too absurd to say, that some men might have taken ship and traversed the whole wide ocean, and crossed from this side of the world to the other, and that thus even the inhabitants of that distant region are d ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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