EARTH 108 Lecture 1: Lecture 1.docx

• School: U of M
• Department: Earth and Environmental Sciences
• Course: EARTH 108
• Professor: Jie Li

Document Summary

Planets (from greek wanderer"): mercury messenger of the gods, very close to the sun, venus goddess of love, close to the sun and really bright, very harsh planet can"t survive there at all, mars god of war, relatively small, other side relative to the earth. Basic (& naked eye) observations: stars are fixed w/ respect to each other, all planets move through the ecliptic in the zodiac, sun and moon also move through the ecliptic, mercury and venus stay close to the sun, mars jupiter and saturn show retrograde motion (go forward stop go backwards and then go forwards again), moving more slowly b/c of retrograde, mars goes around every 2 yrs, jupiter and saturn ~ 1 yr. Problematic: earth is not the center of the universe rather un , scientific method ethnocentric clash with religion etc. about universe, scientific observations lead to a hypothesis, predictions from hypothesis can be tested.