who knows about planets and space stuff?

Question

Im getting into space and black holes and all that stuff as a hobbie so am new to all this and have been wondering how come we know so much about it all so quickly? I mean we have been around for squillions of years and assumabley so were the stars and thats how we know that they are really old from ancient poetry and paintings in caves...my question is if we have survived side by side for so long how come we have modern names for the planets ie pluto as he wasnt invented until the1920s

Answer 1

Telescopes and mathematics all helped develope our ideas about space and they have not been around for that long. Several hundred years only.

Answer 2

Hello Jenny -

Actually, we know the stars and galaxies are really old, not because we see them in cave paintings, but because we see them in the sky. The Andromeda Galaxy is 2.2 million light years away - so the light from that collection of stars left there 2.2 million years ago (give or take 100,000 years or so, depending on whether you are looking at the near side or the far side). Other galaxies that you can see with an average scope are as far away as 50 million light years away. You are looking back in time when you look out in space.

Also, the names for the planets are based on ancient gods and are therefore older than the knowledge of the planets that possess those names.

I agree, though. We have learned a great deal, especially within the last century. That just takes a lot of hard work.

Answer 3

It is mostly due to the improvement in the power of observation. Until telescopes were invented, all anyone could tell of stars and other heavenly objects is what an ordinary person could see with their own eyes. They could only make crude observations. Things is the night sky were more or less just points of light.

As technical science increased, it became possible to make more observations, better observations, and so on.

Thanks to the advent of computers, we have discovered by very fine measurements (observations) that there are planets around other stars without seeing those planets directly.

(This may also explain why most religions have no explanation for such an immense universe. Religions were invented for the most part before mankind started to get their hands on the observable truth.)

Answer 4

A great deal of what we know about astronomy now depends on modern technological developments. For example, Pluto (and Uranus and Neptune for that matter) cannot be seen without a telescope. Telescopes weren't invented until around 1600, so the outer planets couldn't possibly be discovered before that.
For another example, the theory predicting black holes depended a lot on computer modeling, and computers weren't readily available until the early 1950's.

Answer 5

Because for hundreds of years we have depended on Earth based telescopes to see the cosmos. Those scopes have always been hindered by numerous things like weather, atmosphere, etc.
With the development and deployment of the Hubble Space Telescope we have learned more about the cosmos in the short time it has been in orbit than we have discovered from the beginning of recorded astronomy to that point in time.
With that telescope we have been able to create models based on universal laws of physics based upon the wonders we have viewed through the HST.
With this new and constantly developing technology we have learned a great deal in an extremely short period of time. Weather used to be predicted based upon models of viewed weather patterns from one weather station to another. With the deployment of satellites weather prediction has become a little more precise, new, more accurate, models of weather patterns were developed with the information we gathered from both observations on land and observation from space. The same hold true with our universe.
Hope this helps answer your question.

Answer 6

The former planet now not a planet Pluto was not named after Mickey Mouse's dog. It was named for the the Roman god of the underworld. The planet was discovered in 1930.
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