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

"affirmative action for diversity of ideas"?

[jeffb (2.718)]

Yes, The Academy laughed at your ideas. They also laughed at The Three Stooges.

Sometimes, reviewers reject radical ideas that turn out to be correct. Far more often, though, they reject radical ideas because they're demonstrably ridiculous. You might be the next unsung genius, with the crazy idea that will make all the pieces fall into place. It's far more likely that you're a crackpot.

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?

Re:"affirmative action for diversity of ideas"?

[pepty]

The first idea presented is awfully weak:

In an article on the future of astronomy published in 1908, he wrote: “It is more than doubtful whether a further increase in size is a great advantage.” His argument was that factors other than size had a much bigger influence on astronomical data, factors such as climate. “It seems as if we had nearly reached the limit of size of telescopes, and as if we must hope for the next improvement in some other direction,” he said. Loeb says Pickering’s views had a major impact on observational astronomy on the east coast compared to the west coast of the US. Just as Pickering was publishing his controversial idea, the 60-inch telescope at the Mount Wilson Observatory near Los Angeles, saw first light. And while astronomers in the east were arguing the toss about size, this telescope was gathering the data that would eventually make it one of the most productive in astronomical history. What’s more, at exactly that time, the Mount Wilson observatory received funding to build a 100-inch telescope and this was completed in 1917. And this was in turn superseded by the 200-inch telescope at nearby Mount Palomar in 1947 which remained the largest telescope in the world until 1993.

Pickering was right: a bigger telescope is not the answer when your site has poor climate, due to diminishing returns. Plus, from the article's own evidence, people kept building larger telescopes - they just put them in better places.

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!"

Intel agencies knew things before Nasa

[Anonymous Coward]

For example Los Alamos scientists figured out gamma ray bursts from stars, from anomalies in their earth watching satellites.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vela_(satellite)#Role_of_Vela_in_discovering_gamma-ray_bursts

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.

The more we learn...

[QuietLagoon]

... the more we realize what we do not know.

.
Isn't this what science is about? Discovery, exploration, learning.

Of course mistakes will be made along the way. The fact that we can look back and see those mistakes for what they are is a part of the scientific process.

This is a good thing.

Half a decade?

[CrimsonAvenger]

From TFS:

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

Who cares??? We slowed something down by a whole FIVE YEARS! It's not like this encompassed someone's entire career or anything. Or even most of someone's career.

Well, except for the guy who got run over by a truck during the five year delay. His career was pretty much ruined. Of course, being run over by a truck pretty much ruins your career even if there is an X-Ray telescope already in operation....

Re:Half a decade?

[Thanshin]

That was also my first reaction.

Beware thee who tries to compile a list of examples of wrong-thinking that have delayed an IT project for five years. For printing this book will consume all paper, all trees, and mean the end of life as we know it.

Re:How about all the rah-rah

[crdotson]

> For example, no one needs perfect ball bearings made in free-fall, the ones we make here are all good enough for all the jet engines in the world,
> and I thought 3D printing was going to be the next big thing, why do you need free-fall when you can position matter atom by atom?

And communications satellites! Talk about WORTHLESS!

SIGNIFICANT delays?

[CharlieG]

Gee, the telescope size limit. Guy proposes that they shouldn't be bigger - everyone on the west coast ignores him, build bigger. It may have held back a small group of astronomers, but...
X ray Observatory. It delayed things 5 WHOLE YEARS! GASP. Yes, I realize that the /. crowd is heavily biased to young males, but guys, it is to the point the average college student doesn't graduate in 5 years. I've got bottles of booze that I haven't had a drink out of older than that, and projects sitting on my workbench longer than that. One of my dad's HOBBY projects took 3 hours a night, every night for 8 years.. The only one I'd call at ALL significant is the 30 years

Earth is flat?

[BradMajors]

The scientific community never believed the earth was flat.

This Just In

[tinytim]

Is this author saying that when scientists have to prioritize limited personel, time, and money based on incomplete information they sometimes arrive at a suboptimal solution? Shameful.

They should probably wait until they know everything about what they'd like to study before they start studying it - that would really speed things up.

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.)

Re:To be fair on that geocentric point of view

[AthanasiusKircher]

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.)

Yep -- and scientists of his day didn't just make this decision arbitrarily. Parallax wasn't measured accurately until the 1800s, after over two centuries of looking for it. Other evidence that pointed to a stationary earth:

(1) A rotating earth should have Coriolis forces influencing trajectory of projectiles -- but they were not observed. (Again, not observed until the 1800s.)

(2) Stellar diameters appeared to be fixed. If the stars were just beyond the planets in distance (as they were assumed to be), they should appear to change diameter as the earth gets closer or farther from them. (Again, not explained properly until the 1800s.)

(3) Perhaps most importantly, the motion of the earth required propulsion, according to the physics of the time. The planets and the sun and moon were assumed to be in perpetual motion because of some "aetherial" matter property that was special to celestial bodies. Normal terrestrial matter, since the time of Aristotle, was observed to come to a natural state of rest (Newton's first law was not yet known). Forces acting at a distance, as was later postulated by Newton's theory of universal gravitation -- were considered mystical, "occult," and non-scientific. So there was really no easy mechanism to explain how the earth stayed in continous motion, according to the physics of the time.

So yeah, according to the science of the time, the simpler explanation was that the earth doesn't move.

(By the way, these were critical elements that later came up during the debates that Galileo had with other scientists of the day. He didn't really have good explanations for most of them, and it wasn't until really Newton's theory of gravity that the theoretical apparatus was really present to make the truth of heliocentrism viable within contemporary physics.)

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?

It's all a matter of perspective.

[DerekLyons]

It delayed things 5 WHOLE YEARS! GASP. Yes, I realize that the /. crowd is heavily biased to young males, but guys, it is to the point the average college student doesn't graduate in 5 years.

It's not so much that it's biased towards young males, it's that it's heavily biased towards people who have the attention span of the MTV generation and who don't really grasp delayed gratification. They grew up with instant availability of anything digital via the internet, and if it's a physical thing it's available quickly because two day shipping is now the norm.
 
That's a generalization of course, and there are exceptions... But I'm fifty and many people that I've met that are under about thirty five or so don't readily grasp timescales longer than a week or two. They know that such things exist, but they don't really think on that timescale.
 

I've got bottles of booze that I haven't had a drink out of older than that, and projects sitting on my workbench longer than that. One of my dad's HOBBY projects took 3 hours a night, every night for 8 years..

Indeed. I just made tentative travel plans for 2015 (high school reunion) and solid plans for 2016 (SSBN crew reunion)... Some of us from high school are already pondering as far out as 2021 (our 40th anniversary). I'm halfway through my six year plan to re-make my workshop. I just started a five year long project experimenting aging vodka with toasted and charred chips of various woods, and I just set down a batch of my custom whisky blend aimed at being ready for for the holiday season. Etc... etc...
 

The only one I'd call at ALL significant is the 30 years

Set against the scale of human history, thirty years is nothing. Five years is less than nothing.

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:scientific consensus!

[thrich81]

Here's the deal on 'scientific consensus' -- it's not always right, but it is the best guess at the time, supported by the majority of the evidence by smart people who know the subject. Anything else is more likely, not certainly, but more likely, to be wrong. You place your bets, you take your chances. If I need treatment for my cancer or degenerative disease, I'm going with the scientific consensus. If I'm designing a bridge or airplane that will carry passengers, I'm going with the scientific consensus. If I'm making a long term investment (in land in Florida as a random example), I'm going the scientific consensus. If I'm writing my own crackpot blog or political screed or investment scam newsletter, then maybe I don't go with the scientific consensus ...