nemesis wrote:
> Warp <war### [at] tagpovrayorg> wrote:
>>   They knew about other galaxies, of course, but they weren't sure if
>> they were just small objects in our galaxy, of whether they were large
>> galaxies of their own, very far away.
> 
> so, they thought our Milky Way was in the center of the Universe much like the
> Earth was before, huh? 

More like that all of (a small amount of) space was filled with a 
relatively flat distribution of stars, rather than a large amount of 
space having clusters of stars.

I saw an interesting analysis recently that pointed out that every time 
"astronomy" discovers some major new fact, a major new theory is 
required to explain it. I.e., that the number of "free variables" being 
used to explain things remains one greater than the number of major 
observations needed to explain cosmology. Flat background radiation? 
Inflation after the big bang! Lumpy galaxies in spite of inflation? Dark 
matter! Expansion not slowed from all that dark matter? Dark energy!

Sadly, I really don't know enough about cosmology to know whether to 
take it seriously, since it wasn't a peer-reviewed paper or anything.

-- 
   Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)
     It's not feature creep if you put it
     at the end and adjust the release date.

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