How has technology advanced our understanding of the solar systems?
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Modern technology has advanced our understanding of the Solar system by allowing the Human race to build and send space vehicles into space to explore the various planets and the near Solar system. These vehicles send information back to earth via radio communications and then this data is analyzed by scientists. This has been a slow process as you can remember the very beginning of astronomy when amateur scientists looked into space with crude telescopes.
The late Carl Sagan once said that Humans would be traveling throughout the Solar system now if the church did not interfere with the advancement of technology and knowledge as they did in the middle ages by saying the Earth is flat. Of course this was based on absolutely no scientific evidence of any kind.
I think Flat Earth Society is the main reason for what we know about the space today...!
Well we know a lot about the stars and the universe now. How the universe is expanding, stars dying and reborning, our sun, other suns, and star + galaxies. We can even try to live in space and another planet sooner of later. We have tons of info on other galaxies, stars, planets, other star systems, etc and a lot about ours.
There is no simple answer to this questions for we have had so much technology produced that I would sit here all night discussing each separate advancement and how it has helped us understand the solar system.
The most advanced technology that has helped us understand the solar systems almost more than anything is computer models. Computer models have allowed us to understand many different things...even something as huge as how the solar system was born. Of course, the telescope allowed us to SEE what we study.
I could tell you more if you would like. Contact me.
I'll give you a dramatic example. I took introductory astronomy the same year that Sputnik 1 was launched, 1957. My textbook, by an author named Fath, ran only about eighty pages for the entire Solar System, and there were no color photos in the book, The book cost $2.25 new.
Astronomy textbooks today are filled with color photos of eight planets, several asteroids, dozens of moons; and some of these photos were taken on the surface. The Solar System typically gets 300 or more pages. What we knew about the Moon or planets then was essentially nothing, and the older book was padded with details totally ignored in today's book because there are more important things to discuss. We know in detail the minerology of the Moon and the make up of the atmospheres of Venus and Mars.
All this is due to technology. Yes, much from the space program, but also from vastly improved telescopes and new devices that have replaced cameras, such as CCDs.
One relatively minor example of what technology has changed. Fifty years ago Jupiter had 12 moons, Saturn 9, Uranus five, Neptune 2, and Pluto none. Now Jupiter has 63 moons (more than were known in the entire Solar System in 1957), and the other planets listed all have far more moons than were known then.
I don't think technology advanced it, but let us see better...Humans write books based on there intellectual findings in History..And this leads to smarter thinking and better technology to become more like the created image of God. I do not and will never believe that a piece of paper or a machine will become smarter then a human created in the image of God.." Ever" no matter if a thousands Dr.Phil's or Jerry springer's say so.
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