|
|
|
|
Copernican principle
|
| |
|
| |
In cosmology, the Copernican principle, named after Nicolaus Copernicus, states the Earth is not in a central, specially favoured position. More recently, the principle is generalised to the relativistic concept that humans are not privileged observers of the universe. In this sense, it is equivalent to the mediocrity principle, with significant implications in the philosophy of science.
Since the 1990s, the term has been used (interchangeably with "the Copernicus method") for J. Richard Gott's Bayesian inference-based prediction of duration of ongoing events, a generalized version of the Doomsday argument.
lass="link1" onMouseover='showByLink("m397363",this)' onMouseout='hide("m397363")'href="http://www.absoluteastronomy.com/topics/Michael_Rowan-Robinson">Michael Rowan-Robinson emphasizes the importance of the Copernican principle: "It is evident that in the post-Copernican era of human history, no well-informed and rational person can imagine that the Earth occupies a unique position in the universe."
Hermann Bondi named the principle after Copernicus in the mid-20th century, although the principle itself dates back to the 16th-17th century paradigm shift away from the Ptolemaic system, which placed Earth at the center of the Universe.
Discussion
Ask a question about 'Copernican principle' Start a new discussion about 'Copernican principle' Answer questions from other users |
Encyclopedia
In cosmology, the Copernican principle, named after Nicolaus Copernicus, states the Earth is not in a central, specially favoured position. More recently, the principle is generalised to the relativistic concept that humans are not privileged observers of the universe. In this sense, it is equivalent to the mediocrity principle, with significant implications in the philosophy of science.
Since the 1990s, the term has been used (interchangeably with "the Copernicus method") for J. Richard Gott's Bayesian inference-based prediction of duration of ongoing events, a generalized version of the Doomsday argument.
Origin and implications
Michael Rowan-Robinson emphasizes the importance of the Copernican principle: "It is evident that in the post-Copernican era of human history, no well-informed and rational person can imagine that the Earth occupies a unique position in the universe."
Hermann Bondi named the principle after Copernicus in the mid-20th century, although the principle itself dates back to the 16th-17th century paradigm shift away from the Ptolemaic system, which placed Earth at the center of the Universe. Copernicus demonstrated the motion of the planets can be explained without the assumption that Earth is centrally located and stationary. He argued that the apparent retrograde motion of the planets is an illusion caused by Earth's movement around the Sun, which the Copernican model placed at the centre of the Universe. Copernicus himself was mainly motivated by technical dissatisfaction with the earlier system and not by support for any mediocrity principle.
In cosmology, if one assumes the Copernican principle and observes that the universe appears isotropic from our vantage-point on Earth, then one can prove that the Universe is generally homogeneous (at any given time) and is also isotropic about any given point. These two conditions comprise the cosmological principle.
In practice, astronomers observe that the Universe has heterogeneous structures up to the scale of galactic superclusters, filaments and great voids, but becomes more and more homogeneous and isotropic when observed on larger and larger scales, with little detectable structure on scales of more than about 200 million parsecs. However, on scales comparable to the radius of the observable universe, we see systematic changes with distance from the Earth. For instance, galaxies contain more young stars and are less clustered, and quasars appear more numerous. While this might suggest that the Earth is at the center of the Universe, the Copernican principle requires us to interpret it as evidence for the evolution of the Universe with time: this distant light has taken most of the age of the Universe to reach and shows us the Universe when it was young. The most distant light of all, cosmic microwave background radiation, is isotropic to at least one part in a thousand.
Modern mathematical cosmology is based on the assumption that the Cosmological principle is almost, but not exactly, true on the largest scales. The Copernican principle represents the irreducible philosophical assumption needed to justify this, when combined with the observations.
Bondi and Thomas Gold used the Copernican principle to argue for the perfect cosmological principle which maintains that the universe is also homogeneous in time, and is the basis for the steady-state cosmology. However, this strongly conflicts with the evidence for cosmological evolution mentioned earlier: the Universe has progressed from extremely different conditions at the Big Bang, and will continue to progress toward extremely different conditions, particularly under the rising influence of dark energy, apparently toward the Big Freeze or the Big Rip.
Confirmation
Measurements of the effects of the cosmic microwave background radiation in the dynamics of distant astrophysical systems in 2000 proved the Copernican principle on a cosmological scale. The radiation that pervades the universe was demonstrably warmer at earlier times. Uniform cooling of the cosmic microwave background over billions of years is explainable only if the universe is experiencing a metric expansion.
Ecliptic alignment of cosmic microwave background anisotropy
Results from Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) appear to run counter to Copernican expectations. The motion of the solar system, and the orientation of the plane of the ecliptic are aligned with features of the microwave sky, which on conventional thinking are caused by structure at the edge of the observable universe
Lawrence Krauss is quoted as follows in the referenced Edge.org article:
It would be somewhat surprising if the WMAP alignments were a complete coincidence, but the anti-Copernican implications suggested by Krauss would be far more surprising, if true. Other possibilities are (i) that residual instrumental errors in WMAP cause the effect (ii) that unexpected microwave emission from within the solar system is contaminating the maps.
Modern tests
From the news article "New tests of the Copernican Principle proposed,"
See also
External links
|
| |
|
|
