The Major Theoretical Blunders That Held Back Progress In Modern Astronomy

KentuckyFC (1144503) writes "The history of astronomy is littered with ideas that once seemed incontrovertibly right and yet later proved to be bizarrely wrong. Not least among these are the ancient ideas that the Earth is flat and at the center of the universe. But there is no shortage of others from the modern era. Now one astronomer has compiled a list of examples of wrong-thinking that have significantly held back progress in astronomy. These include the idea put forward in 1909 that telescopes had reached optimal size and that little would be gained by making them any bigger. Then there was the NASA committee that concluded that an orbiting x-ray telescope would be of little value. This delayed the eventual launch of the first x-ray telescope by half a decade, which went on to discover the first black hole candidate among other things. And perhaps most spectacularly wrong was the idea that other solar systems must be like our own, with Jupiter-like planets orbiting at vast distances from their parent stars. This view probably delayed the discovery of the first exoplanet by 30 years. Indeed, when astronomers did find the first exo-Jupiter, the community failed to recognize it as a planet for six years. As Mark Twain once put it: 'It ain't what you don't know that gets you into trouble. It's what you know for sure that just ain't so.'"

Comments

Interesting facts

[advid.net]

Thanks for the story

You may also point the the original article (PDF version), there is an handful of examples more.

Earth is flat?

[BradMajors]

The scientific community never believed the earth was flat.

Error in first example

[calidoscope]

TFA had the 200 inch Hale telescope on a fictional geogrphical location, Mt. Palomar. The real name is Palomar Mountain. A minor detail, and very common error, but it is the same kind of error the author was complaining about.

To be fair on that geocentric point of view

[NotSoHeavyD3]

Tycho Brahe considered the idea that the Earth wasn't the center of the universe and actually moved. However when he tried to measure stellar parallax he found he couldn't. So given the evidence he had he either had to go with the Earth doesn't move or the stars are really far away.(Apparently he considered the simpler explanation to be the Earth doesn't move.)

Which astronomers believed in a flat earth

[Anonymous Coward]

I am curious about which astronomers espoused a flat earth considering that around 2,200 years ago the Greek scientist Eratosthenes not only espoused a spherical earth but calculated both the circumference and the axial tilt with great accuracy for his day. Certainly well before Eratosthenes it was realized that as a ship approached an island or a headland that the mountains, hills, etc. appeared before buildings in the harbor, etc. and that s a ship approached land the top of the mast would be seen first then more of it and then the ship itself. They also noticed that the moon appeared spherical and the earth's shadow on the moon during an eclipse appeared to be a shadow of a sphere.

The notion that learned people in the late 1490's thought that earth was flat was popularized by Alfred Lord Tennyson in his poem "Columbus".

So again, can anyone name an astronomer who thought the earth was flat?

Re:Which astronomers believed in a flat earth

[evilviper]

"In ancient China, the prevailing belief was that the Earth was flat and square, while the heavens were round, an assumption virtually unquestioned until the introduction of European astronomy in the 17th century."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Re:Religion

[Dcnjoe60]

nuff said

And yet the Vatican is one of the leading private funders of scientific research. Sometimes it is helpful to check facts before spouting bigotry.

Re:"affirmative action for diversity of ideas"?

[phantomfive]

Suppose one rejected idea in 1000 is actually a revolution in waiting. (I suspect that ratio is generous at best.) Now, suppose we publish one (or ten) rejected ideas in every issue of our journal. How many of those rejected ideas will turn out to be worthwhile? How long will people put up with the "alternative views" section of our journal before they just start skipping them?

I don't see this as a call to accept 'alternative views.' IIRC the first discovery of an exoplanet showed up in a scientific journal. The problem wasn't the radicalness of the idea (who doubted there were exoplanets?); the problem was that making unfounded assumptions about exoplanets prevented their discovery for years before the journal article was actually published.

The author's purpose in writing is to point out that when data is scarce, it is a mistake to assume you know the answer. How can you be sure that every solar system is like ours? It is a cognitive bias to assume you know the answer when data is scarce. The author is saying, "hey, look out! When data is scarce pay careful attention to not make assumptions!"