Space and Planets

The universe is a vast, ever expanding place of such magnitude that humans can have difficulty in imagining it. The study of space and the planets has captured the minds of humans since man first looked up at the stars at night. Paradigms surrounding the planets and how the universe is run have shifted since the Greeks first looked up and saw mythological heroes in the constellations of the stars.

It was once thought that the Earth was the center of the universe, but Copernicus proved that wrong with his heliocentric view of the solar system. This caused an uproar in society at the time, but he was later proved to be correct in his hypothesis. Technological advances such as the telescope allowed for further study of space and the planets through the science of astronomy.

Astronomy today still examines space and the planets, with a focus on the stars, but rather than peering at the sky through a simple telescope which could fit into a pocket, astronomy now implements computers, radioscopes, and telescopes the size of mountains.

Just as the materials used to study space and the planets has changed, so have the fields of science devoted to it. Now there are branches such as cosmology and planetology which look at the greater universe and the planets respectively. Information learned in these areas can benefit the others.

The increasing amount of knowledge gained by the universe can never match the scope of space. As was once said in a famous television show, space seems to be “the final frontier”.