Tuesday, July 10, 2007

"Martians and Venusians and Lunarians, Oh My!

I have a lot of books on astronomy in my book collection. One I think is just the cats meow (I have a cat) was given to me by my Mother-In -Law called "Astronomy For Amateurs", published in 1903 by Camille Flammarion. In it you find some wild and crazy ideas about what we thought to be fact in astronomy at the time; for example with respect to life forms on Mars, and I quote: "Its astral life is more advanced and its humanity should be superior to our own."
With respect to life on the moon, "thanks to us, the inhabitants of the lunar hemisphere turned towards us are gratified by the sight of a splended nocturnal tourch." Wow what a classic read. Due to the advent of larger more powerful telescopes our knowledge of the cosmos has increased dramatically and we have put to rest a lot of the old theories and assumptions we once held as true. Some of my more current books such as Brian Greene's Elegant Universe or Stephen Hawking's Universe In A Nutshell show us the universe is an even more mysterious place than we could ever imagine. Dark Energy, Dark Matter and String Theory are exciting new frontiers to be explored and conquered in the years to come. I wonder what some blogger will say about our latest assumptions 100 years from now.

5 comments:

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EastPAWZ said...

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Bob Johnson said...

I would definetly move to another world, just not mars or the moon.lol tks for the feedback.

Morgan said...

I think when people look back to this point in time they will laugh at our silly ignorance of it all...sort of the way we snicker at those that debated the truthd of the Galileo's(sp,) & Copernicus's of the world. Even Newton with his Classic physics is a bit of roll your eyes at the concept.But at the time and until Einsti=eins theory that was the level of understanding.But it takes whatever comprehension we have at the time to lead to the fuller understanding we eventually evolve to. :)

Bob Johnson said...

mightymorgan your absolutley right!