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Ape_Togetha_Strong t1_ixafrer wrote

Probably the most impressive pre-telescope discovery to me is axial precession. It is a 26,000 year long cycle. There are very few "events" to notice that would indicate something is even happening, and those things that you could notice are so gradual that even in an entire human lifetime, the change would be minuscule. With things like predicting eclipses, it's pretty obvious that you're going to notice an eclipse when it happens, and very quickly start to want to predict how they work.

WIth axial precession, there's the two possible states of "having a pole star" and "not having a pole star". People also noticed that stars that never dipped below the horizon in the past now would, and vice versa, or that stars that had never been visible at certain latitudes now were, and vice versa. But it's only a change of about 1 degree every 75 years. Truly impressive.

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Limp_Confidence_1725 OP t1_ixafy0n wrote

that is truly impressive! I’ll need to do more research, but this is great for my assignment. thank you for your answer!

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Asecularist t1_ixafmw4 wrote

Just think about the concept of a year. Calendars broken into months. Changing seasons. They figured out how to record all of these and say they were so and so years old or that so and so king ruled for this many years or that such and such event happened on this day of that month etc. Not perfect but pretty good! They knew when it was noon and what hour of the day and all that.

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DNathanHilliard t1_ixbwi8p wrote

The ancient Greeks figured out the Earth was a sphere, and might have known the same about the moon.

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IAlreadyFappedToIt t1_ixadrru wrote

Which advances in science and technology are you referring to?

Before the invention of telescopes, humans could see 5-6 planets with the naked eye. We did not know they were planets at first. That's... pretty much about the extent of it.

Literally everything else we've ever learned about space or astonomy has been the result of advances in math and/or engineering.

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Asecularist t1_ixaf1ik wrote

That’s not true. They knew very much about the regularity of the changing positions of the heavenly bodies. They knew certain good times in the day or month or year to perform various practical tasks like expecting the sunrise soon bc of the bright morning star or telling time with sundial or when to hunt vs gather for moon phases or when to plant and harvest and expect floods or rainy seasons etc. They knew how to navigate.

Plus we knew God created it all because He told us quite some time ago.

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Limp_Confidence_1725 OP t1_ixaft1x wrote

copy and pasted a question i’m stuck on from my assignment. i need to find three discoveries about space made before we had advanced technology.

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PhoenixReborn t1_ixahtjt wrote

It would probably help to define what the question means by advanced technology. If it's vague, define it for yourself and go from there.

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space-ModTeam t1_ixbxx8j wrote

Hello u/Limp_Confidence_1725, your submission "What are sone discoveries about space made before the advances of science and technology?" has been removed from r/space because:

  • Such questions should be asked in the "All space questions" thread stickied at the top of the sub.

Please read the rules in the sidebar and check r/space for duplicate submissions before posting. If you have any questions about this removal please message the r/space moderators. Thank you.

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