What exactly are some good examples of scientific ideas, laws and regulations, , and so forth, in astronomy, that were the moment at predicting how research would come out just before they’d been even completed, which switched to false?
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4 responses to What are some examples of well-tested scientific explanations in astronomy, which are now false?
Steady State. Was the most popular for a whole generation (from the 1930s to roughly 1964).
Was popularized by the best astrophysicist at the time (Fred Hoyle).
Even though it turned out wrong, one still learns a lot about astrophysics just from reading about it.
The Big Bang theory for example. What you today call Big Bang theory, is not the original, but more something like the 8th revision of it. Many predictions of it failed, and had to be improved. For example, the Big Bang theory had not been able to explain, why we can see light from 13.6 billion light years away.
Nothing that’s been good at predicting things has ever turned out to be completely wrong – it predicted things, after all. It just needed revision. Newton was mostly right about gravity, just not in certain cases he had no knowledge of. We still use Newtonian theory for most things. Big bang theory has gone under revision, but the basic idea is still the same – singularity that expanded – because the original evidence is still there, the expanding and cooling universe. Theories will always be revised as more evidence emerges, but that doesn’t mean they were ‘false’ before that – just less complete.
Most primitive theories turn out to be incomplete or wrong. "Primitive" in this case only means "early". Two good examples were already mentioned (the original iteration of the Big Bang theory and Steady State theory). By the way, the name "Big Bang" was originally used as a criticism of the theory, a way of making fun of it. Now it’s the accepted name. :)
Another that comes to mind is the idea of epicycles to explain planetary motion as seen from Earth. Long ago, planetary retrograde motion was explained by a model that had planets on tiny orbits within their larger orbit (around the Earth, of course!). Once it was shown that the Sun was the center of our solar system, not the Earth, epicycles were discredited and discarded.
For the most part, epicycles explained and predicted retrograde motion of the planets. When it didn’t predict things correctly, it was simply thought that the timing wasn’t recorded correctly.
It was also once thought that the orbits of the planets around the sun were circular. It explained observations relatively well but there were problems. More observation and calculations showed that the orbits were slightly elliptical. This explained and predicted things MUCH better. Once all of the mathematics of the orbits was worked out, it explained the orbits perfectly. The mathematics and physics are understood so well that we now routinely send spacecraft to other planets and have the 2 rondezvous months or years after leaving Earth. That takes A LOT of precision.
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