re: #32 wheat-dogghazi-mailgate

It’s also worth noting that astronomer-astrologists 2,000 years ago had no concept of how big the solar system is, until Copernicus made the first estimates in the 1500s. Even then, he was off by a factor of 10, at least.

I wonder if the lack of references to America in the Bible prompted some Christians to propose Jews and/or white people came to America 2,000 years ago.

Albert Van Helden, in Measuring the Universe: Cosmic Dimensions from Aristarchus to Halley, decides that the ancients’ estimate of the size of the Sphere of the Fixed Stars, that formed the periphery of the Cosmos, was no larger than the Earth’s orbit actually is. A really claustrophobic universe.

Reminds me of Firefly, where there were supposed to be dozens, if not hundreds, of planets just floating around like some kind of Aristotelian fever dream in a space no bigger than the inner Solar System, it seems like. Never could figure that out.