# Famous theories about deep space and astronomy that have been proven to be wrong **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [February 21, 2013, 6:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/famous-theories-about-deep-space-and-astronomy-that-have-been-proven-to-be-wrong/650993 "2013-02-21T18:44:22Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/7cd45c/32.png) [@Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elendil_s_Heir)\ **Post date:** [March 26, 2013, 2:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/famous-theories-about-deep-space-and-astronomy-that-have-been-proven-to-be-wrong/650993/21 "2013-03-26T02:50:37Z")
I attended a presentation at the Cleveland Natural History Museum a few years ago in which a biologist spoke about the dangers of guessing about life beyond Earth. He didn’t say there is none, just that we have to be careful in our surmises. For Exhibit A, he showed the audience an article from _Scientific American_, c. 1920, positing that the species best suited for living on Mars is… beavers. I kid you not. _Scientific American_! ---
**Author:** ![Ethilrist](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ethilrist/32/4604_2.png) [@Ethilrist](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ethilrist)\ **Post date:** [March 26, 2013, 2:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/famous-theories-about-deep-space-and-astronomy-that-have-been-proven-to-be-wrong/650993/22 "2013-03-26T02:57:11Z")
Back in the day, people seemed to be pretty convinced that the Earth was the center of the universe. That turns out not to be the case. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [March 26, 2013, 3:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/famous-theories-about-deep-space-and-astronomy-that-have-been-proven-to-be-wrong/650993/23 "2013-03-26T03:03:19Z")
> [@](#): > > Quoth **Yumblie** : > > Kepler’s laws fit the orbits of the planets pretty well, all except for Mercury. It was hypothesized for a while that Mercury’s strange orbit was the result of another planet within Mercury’s orbit, dubbed Vulcan. No one could find it, though not for lack of trying. Eventually, Einstein published his theory of gravity that explained Mercury’s discrepancies, and the Vulcan theory was discarded. Actually, Kepler’s Laws fit all of the planets extremely well. Newton’s Laws, which provided an explanation for Kepler’s, fit them even better, while also allowing for influences of the planets on each other (Kepler’s Laws contain no such provision). You have to go pretty deep into the details of the calculations, using extremely precise measurements, to find the very small discrepancy in Mercury’s orbit. ---
**Author:** ![johnpost](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/f17d59/32.png) [@johnpost](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/johnpost)\ **Post date:** [March 26, 2013, 3:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/famous-theories-about-deep-space-and-astronomy-that-have-been-proven-to-be-wrong/650993/24 "2013-03-26T03:08:28Z")
> [@Elendil\_s\_Heir](#): > > I attended a presentation at the Cleveland Natural History Museum a few years ago in which a biologist spoke about the dangers of guessing about life beyond Earth. He didn’t say there is none, just that we have to be careful in our surmises. For Exhibit A, he showed the audience an article from _Scientific American_, c. 1920, positing that the species best suited for living on Mars is… beavers. > > I kid you not. _Scientific American_! back then that magazine had similarities to what maybe Popular Science is. it has had different owners and purposes over its history. ---
**Author:** ![Ethilrist](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ethilrist/32/4604_2.png) [@Ethilrist](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ethilrist)\ **Post date:** [March 26, 2013, 3:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/famous-theories-about-deep-space-and-astronomy-that-have-been-proven-to-be-wrong/650993/25 "2013-03-26T03:20:32Z")
> [@Yumblie](#): > > Kepler’s laws fit the orbits of the planets pretty well, all except for Mercury. It was hypothesized for a while that Mercury’s strange orbit was the result of another planet within Mercury’s orbit, dubbed Vulcan. No one could find it, though not for lack of trying. [They found it.](http://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/sciencefair/2013/02/25/pluto-moon-vulcan-shatner/1947565/) ---
**Author:** ![Hari\_Seldon](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hari_seldon/32/5173_2.png) [@Hari\_Seldon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hari_Seldon)\ **Post date:** [March 26, 2013, 12:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/famous-theories-about-deep-space-and-astronomy-that-have-been-proven-to-be-wrong/650993/26 "2013-03-26T12:31:16Z")
I theorize that the OP was using the “just a theory” theory of theories. The common definition of theory is really quite different from the scientists’ definition. The common definition is more like a hypothesis and certainly the steady state theory was at least that. The scientists’ definition of theory is quite a bit stricter, although in the nature of things, it is not quite up to the level of proof in the mathematical sense (and even that is subject to the caveat, “Assume the axioms are consistent”, which, as Goedel showed, cannot be proved for any set of axioms that include those of arithmetic). In 1974 I heard a talk by Sir Fred himself still defiantly defending the steady state theory. He had come up with the idea that mass was steadily increasing with time, rather than that the universe was expanding. He claimed that this was logically indistinguishable from the big bang theory. In which case, who cares. Originally, the steady state theory had the purpose of adding time isotropy to spatial isotropy. I understand his point, since physics is about space-time and why should time have this anomaly? Of course, one could ask about time’s arrow too. Anyway, his 1974 idea still left time isotropy behind. But maybe it would be correct to say that it was time isotropy that the discovery of the cosmic background radiation definitively refuted. One more point. The dark matter had already been conjectured on the basis of there not being enough visible matter in a galaxy to hold it together. Since galaxies do not fly apart (and I think the Milky Way is thought to be 10 billion years old), something is holding them together. And ordinary Newtonian mechanics is enough to show this; you don’t need relativistic correction here. ---
**Author:** ![Ludovic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/7ab992/32.png) [@Ludovic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ludovic)\ **Post date:** [March 26, 2013, 12:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/famous-theories-about-deep-space-and-astronomy-that-have-been-proven-to-be-wrong/650993/27 "2013-03-26T12:32:50Z")
> [@Elendil\_s\_Heir](#): > > For Exhibit A, he showed the audience an article from _Scientific American_, c. 1920, positing that the species best suited for living on Mars is… beavers. > > I kid you not. _Scientific American_! Okay, smart guy, what species would live _longer_ on Mars than beavers? :dubious: 😃 ---
**Author:** ![Capt\_Kirk](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/779978/32.png) [@Capt\_Kirk](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Capt_Kirk)\ **Post date:** [March 26, 2013, 12:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/famous-theories-about-deep-space-and-astronomy-that-have-been-proven-to-be-wrong/650993/28 "2013-03-26T12:52:06Z")
> [@Ludovic](#): > > Okay, smart guy, what species would live _longer_ on Mars than beavers? :dubious: 😃 Wolverines? Those guys are tough Sorry ::ducks and runs:: **Capt** ---
**Author:** ![njtt](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/ecd19e/32.png) [@njtt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/njtt)\ **Post date:** [March 26, 2013, 2:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/famous-theories-about-deep-space-and-astronomy-that-have-been-proven-to-be-wrong/650993/29 "2013-03-26T14:00:42Z")
> [@Hari\_Seldon](#): > > I theorize that the OP was using the “just a theory” theory of theories. The common definition of theory is really quite different from the scientists’ definition. The common definition is more like a hypothesis and certainly the steady state theory was at least that. The scientists’ definition of theory is quite a bit stricter, although in the nature of things, it is not quite up to the level of proof in the mathematical sense (and even that is subject to the caveat, “Assume the axioms are consistent”, which, as Goedel showed, cannot be proved for any set of axioms that include those of arithmetic). In fact, scientists (and probably laypeople too) often use the word “theory” in both these senses. It is only an issue because some creationist insist of disingenuously misrepresenting the way the word is being used in teh phrase “theory of evolution”. > [@Hari\_Seldon](#): > > In 1974 I heard a talk by Sir Fred himself still defiantly defending the steady state theory. He had come up with the idea that mass was steadily increasing with time, rather than that the universe was expanding. He claimed that this was logically indistinguishable from the big bang theory. In which case, who cares. Sir Fred cared because he was a committed atheist, and he thought that a cosmology with a creation event, like the Big Bang, left the door far too wide open for the notion of a creator God. (It is not entirely coincidental, I think, that the Big Bang theory was first propose by [a Roman Catholic priest](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georges_Lema%C3%AEtre).) Even if you try to avoid saying directly that that the Big Bang was caused by God (as most Big Bang cosmologists do), you are left with an extremely significant event whose causes science cannot investigate or explain, which is almost as bad (and leads to wild, empirically unconstrained theorizing, which either leads you back to some meta-level version of steady state theory, or to the positing of things that are just as empirically inaccessible as a God would be, but even less plausible or comprehensible). Incidentally, I think you mean “empirically indistinguishable”, not “logically”. ---
**Author:** ![Mijin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mijin/32/9369_2.png) [@Mijin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mijin)\ **Post date:** [March 26, 2013, 3:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/famous-theories-about-deep-space-and-astronomy-that-have-been-proven-to-be-wrong/650993/30 "2013-03-26T15:31:55Z")
> [@njtt](#): > > Even if you try to avoid saying directly that that the Big Bang was caused by God (as most Big Bang cosmologists do), you are left with an extremely significant event whose causes science cannot investigate or explain, which is almost as bad (and leads to wild, empirically unconstrained theorizing, which either leads you back to some meta-level version of steady state theory, or to the positing of things that are just as empirically inaccessible as a God would be, but even less plausible or comprehensible). \ In terms of trying to explain existence itself, it makes little difference whether the universe is eternal, has a discrete start or time is a closed loop. But, it’s a common perception that the problem is how there could be a t=0, so if we just say that there _was no_ t=0, that’s “solved” something. ---
**Author:** ![Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/7cd45c/32.png) [@Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elendil_s_Heir)\ **Post date:** [March 26, 2013, 3:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/famous-theories-about-deep-space-and-astronomy-that-have-been-proven-to-be-wrong/650993/31 "2013-03-26T15:52:27Z")
> [@Ludovic](#): > > Okay, smart guy, what species would live _longer_ on Mars than beavers? :dubious: 😃 Honey badger don’t give a damn about extreme cold, hard radiation and a very thin atmosphere. ---
**Author:** ![njtt](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/ecd19e/32.png) [@njtt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/njtt)\ **Post date:** [March 26, 2013, 3:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/famous-theories-about-deep-space-and-astronomy-that-have-been-proven-to-be-wrong/650993/32 "2013-03-26T15:56:52Z")
> [@Mijin](#): > > \ > In terms of trying to explain existence itself, it makes little difference whether the universe is eternal, has a discrete start or time is a closed loop. > > But, it’s a common perception that the problem is how there could be a t=0, so if we just say that there _was no_ t=0, that’s “solved” something. The point is that Christianity (as well as Judaism, Islam, and many other religions too) is committed to there having a been a t=0, as is the Big Bang theory. The claim was not that the Steady State theory solved the metaphysical problem of why there is something rather than nothing. The claim was that it it did not provide a pseudo-solution isomorphic to that given by the major religions as the Big Bang theory does). ---
**Author:** ![Mijin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mijin/32/9369_2.png) [@Mijin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mijin)\ **Post date:** [March 26, 2013, 4:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/famous-theories-about-deep-space-and-astronomy-that-have-been-proven-to-be-wrong/650993/33 "2013-03-26T16:15:56Z")
Fair enough. Guess it _was_ a hijack here. ---
**Author:** ![Yumblie](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/y/76d3ee/32.png) [@Yumblie](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Yumblie)\ **Post date:** [March 26, 2013, 6:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/famous-theories-about-deep-space-and-astronomy-that-have-been-proven-to-be-wrong/650993/34 "2013-03-26T18:25:51Z")
> [@Ethilrist](#): > > [They found it.](http://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/sciencefair/2013/02/25/pluto-moon-vulcan-shatner/1947565/) Well how about that, it was actually way out there the whole time! What a silly mix-up. ---
**Author:** ![MikeS](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/919ad9/32.png) [@MikeS](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MikeS)\ **Post date:** [March 26, 2013, 7:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/famous-theories-about-deep-space-and-astronomy-that-have-been-proven-to-be-wrong/650993/35 "2013-03-26T19:52:57Z")
> [@johnpost](#): > > back then that magazine had similarities to what maybe Popular Science is. it has had different owners and purposes over its history. I suspect it was _Popular Science_, actually. See [here.](http://books.google.com/books?id=OigDAAAAMBAJ&lpg=PA56&ots=JovL4ic_cK&pg=PA56#v=onepage) (Of course, _Scientific American_ may have published a similar article around that time; hopefully **Elindil’s Heir** can confirm or deny that this was the article in the presentation.) ---
**Author:** ![Half\_Man\_Half\_Wit](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/half_man_half_wit/32/21766_2.png) [@Half\_Man\_Half\_Wit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Half_Man_Half_Wit)\ **Post date:** [March 26, 2013, 9:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/famous-theories-about-deep-space-and-astronomy-that-have-been-proven-to-be-wrong/650993/36 "2013-03-26T21:08:08Z")
> [@NitroPress](#): > > Not Mars. “There are no mountains on Mars”… Arthur C. Clarke said so. Really? OK, I might not be getting the joke here, but Mars actually is home to the highest mountain on any planet in the solar system, Olympus Mons… ---
**Author:** ![eburacum45](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/eburacum45/32/8690_2.png) [@eburacum45](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/eburacum45)\ **Post date:** [March 26, 2013, 10:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/famous-theories-about-deep-space-and-astronomy-that-have-been-proven-to-be-wrong/650993/37 "2013-03-26T22:43:10Z")
Yes, but Arthur Clarke thought Mars was a billiard ball, with low eroded hills. He is quite good as an indicator of what popular ideas in astronomy were like back in the 50’s and early 60’s before the probes went to these planets. ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [March 26, 2013, 11:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/famous-theories-about-deep-space-and-astronomy-that-have-been-proven-to-be-wrong/650993/38 "2013-03-26T23:16:04Z")
> [@MikeS](#): > > I suspect it was _Popular Science_, actually. See [here.](http://books.google.com/books?id=OigDAAAAMBAJ&lpg=PA56&ots=JovL4ic_cK&pg=PA56#v=onepage) (Of course, _Scientific American_ may have published a similar article around that time; hopefully **Elindil’s Heir** can confirm or deny that this was the article in the presentation.) And if you read it, you see that it is a reasonable and cautious bit of speculation, not some Weekly World News comic nonsense despite the way Elindil’s Heir phrased it. People were often wrong in the past, but we shouldn’t automatically think of them as stupid. ---
**Author:** ![Mijin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mijin/32/9369_2.png) [@Mijin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mijin)\ **Post date:** [March 27, 2013, 12:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/famous-theories-about-deep-space-and-astronomy-that-have-been-proven-to-be-wrong/650993/39 "2013-03-27T00:05:53Z")
> [@eburacum45](#): > > Yes, but Arthur Clarke thought Mars was a billiard ball, with low eroded hills. He is quite good as an indicator of what popular ideas in astronomy were like back in the 50’s and early 60’s before the probes went to these planets. Note that although olympus mons is the tallest mountain/volcano in the solar system, it only has a slope of about 5 degrees and has such a vast profile that, just based on sight, it would not be obvious you were climbing a mountain at all. (Obviously not what the clarkster meant, I’m just saying it’s quite different from what we consider a mountain to be on earth) ---
**Author:** ![billfish678](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7bcc69/32.png) [@billfish678](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/billfish678)\ **Post date:** [March 27, 2013, 12:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/famous-theories-about-deep-space-and-astronomy-that-have-been-proven-to-be-wrong/650993/40 "2013-03-27T00:40:36Z")
> [@Mijin](#): > > Note that although olympus mons is the tallest mountain/volcano in the solar system, it only has a slope of about 5 degrees and has such a vast profile that, just based on sight, it would not be obvious you were climbing a mountain at all. > > (Obviously not what the clarkster meant, I’m just saying it’s quite different from what we consider a mountain to be on earth) The same kinda goes for the deepest cayon in the solar system on mays…I forget the name at the moment. Yeah. its very big and very deep but if you were at the bottom you might not even realize it IIRC [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/famous-theories-about-deep-space-and-astronomy-that-have-been-proven-to-be-wrong/650993.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/famous-theories-about-deep-space-and-astronomy-that-have-been-proven-to-be-wrong/650993.md?page=3)