If Galileo had been accurate and
What would happen to Earth, it’s seasons, habitability , structure etc and our observations in either or both cases. Life as it is? Alien Space Bats?
It is circular, a circle being a special type of ellipse. Didn’t you know, eg a square is a special type of rectangle ? There wouldn’t be ice ages and warming cycles… Then there would be more awareness and accepting of the CO2 global warming link… at the moment people keep saying "But it might be the ice age/warm cycle at work "! Well there would be other differences, such as the spread of animals, and human races.
He was only measuring the tides, seasons, habitability, structure, etc. Its only a measurement and a first pass explanation… Its hard to understand what measurement he got wrong…See, what if we say there is a daily wobble ? There’d still be tides… Well different tides, but still it fits the measurement ? But that would mean the axis wasn’t on a 30,000 year precession cycle, which is linked to ice ages… when the winter occurs the earth is furthest from the sun, the north gets coldest… (the north being mostly land, its affected worse…) … an ice age. So if the wobble of the axis was much faster, there would be no ice ages.
You’ve got that the wrong way around. All circles are ellipses, but ellipses are not all circles.
Also, how does the elliptical shape of Earth’s orbit have anything to do with ice ages?
He didn’t get it the wrong way around, that is what he said: “a circle being a special type of ellipse”.
However, I do not know what it has to do with seasons or ice ages or precession of the equinoxes, what are to do with Earth’s axial tilt, which, so far as I know, Galileo had no particular opinion about, and is not ruled out of reality by the OP.
Perfectly circular orbits would not make much difference. The orbits of Earth, the Moon, and the other major planets (accepting Pluto’s demotion) are pretty close to circular anyhow), and AFAIK nothing in the currently understood physical laws rules out perfectly circular orbits.
What worries me about the OP’s scenario is that it would mean that the moon is not gravitationally acting upon the ocean waters, which is the actual main cause of tides, which in turn would mean that our whole understanding of the nature of gravity would have to be radically revised, and perhaps the very concept of gravity would need to be replaced.
It might be even more disastrous for our current physical understanding if Galileo’s “circular” view of inertia turned out to be true: that is, instead of the first law of motion referring to uniform motion in a straight line, it would instead refer to uniform motion in a circular arc. That is a change to a very basic physical concept. I am not sure what the consequences would be, but I think it is inevitable that they would be far reaching. The universe wold be a very different place.
He did get it wrong, saying that orbits are circles since circles are ellipses.
All orbits are ellipses
All circles are ellipses
Therefore, all orbits are circles … NOT.
Regardless, as njtt says, seasons are due to the tilt of the earth on its axis, not ellipticity of orbit. If it was the latter, both hemispheres would have winter at the same time.
And I agree that it’s impossible to predict what physics would hold if he was right about tides. (Of course, the periodicity of tides is caused by Earth’s rotation about its axis, relative to the positions of the Sun and Moon, so that part is correct. I don’t know enough about Galileo’s hypothesis to say what’s wrong with it.)
Milankovitch cycles. Basically, a less eccentric orbit (for a given semi-major axis) leads to the sun’s heat being more evenly spread out over the course of the year, while a more eccentric orbit “concentrates” the solar irradiation during particular periods. The effects this has on the climate aren’t entirely predictable (and might vary by hemisphere due to axial tilt), but it’s not hard to see that this should have some effect.
Yes he did. The statement ‘it is circular’ is false. It is not circular - it is elliptical.
Circles are ellipses, but not all ellipses are circles. The Earth’s orbit is a non-circular ellipse.
The statement “a circle being a special type of ellipse” is true. But what everyone else is talking about is the original statement: that planetary orbits are circles, and Isildur’s follow-up statement that Galileo got it right because “circles are a special type of ellipse” which is–as folks are saying–backward.)
You two aren’t talking about the same statement. You’re in violent agreement.
That’s the bit I am saying is false.