SEEING IS BELIEVING

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“If I have seen further than other men, it is because I stood on the shoulders of giants.” —ISAAC NEWTON

Our quest to understand the universe we live in builds on the contributions of countless men and women through the ages. From prehistoric mythmakers to ancient Greek astronomers to modern-day physicists, astronomers, chemists, and philosophers—all have played roles in piecing together the structure and history of the universe that we call home. It's a remarkable tale that has seen the universe “expand” from a handful of wandering planets among a few thousand points of light to a seemingly limitless expanse of exotic objects scarcely dreamed of just a century ago.
Flat Earth illustration

       All of us begin our lives thinking like the ancient astronomers. The world we live on, save for the occasional hill or valley, appears flat, and the stars above certainly seem to revolve around our planet.

       Thinking that we are at the center of the universe becomes a natural assumption, though it’s our remarkable ability to reach beyond these obvious conclusions that has opened our eyes to the real universe. The idea that the earth’s surface was flat remained part of popular consciousness even at the time of Christopher Columbus, but the Greeks proved that the earth is round more than 4000 years ago. This first step away from the most simplistic view of the universe came thanks to the great philosopher Aristotle, who in the 4th century B.C. cited several arguments for why the Earth had to be a sphere.      

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Isaac Newton

Flat-Earth Universe

Eratosthenes

      He noticed that during every lunar eclipse (when the Earth passes between the Sun and Moon and its shadow falls on the Moon’s face), the Earth’s shadow appears round. Only a spherical Earth would always give rise to a circular shadow. Aristotle also noted that travelers heading north saw the stars located near the North Star climbing higher in the sky, while travelers to the south saw the same stars sinking lower. This makes sense only if the horizon itself changed as the travelers moved over a curved surface. Roughly 100 years later, Eratosthenes accurately measured the size of the Earth by noting how the position of the Sun in the sky changed with an observer’s location.
 

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