the Sun as a ball (was Origin of Skt heli 'sun' anybody?)

On Feb 2, 9:04*am, Harlan Messinger
wrote:
Thomas Radner wrote:
Thanks very much for this extremely interesting discussion. Assuming
that Skt heli was derived directly from the PIE, as some people have
suggested, is there no possibility that it could have come from PIE
ghel- 'to shine'?

On Mon, 1 Feb 2010 04:14:07 -0800 (PST), "Peter T. Daniels"
wrote:

In ancient times (just as today, but perhaps not for some centuries in
between), astronomy and astrology were strictly separate disciplines
-- see the treatments by e.g. Simo Parpola of Mesopotamian astronomy
(a largely mathematical discipline) and by e.g. Erica Reiner, David
Pingree, and Francesca Rochberg of Mesopotamian astrology (largely a
discipline of interpreting [celestial] omens, not separable from all
the other kinds of omen interpretation that were practiced).

It may be that Burrow wasn't focused on the difference, or it may not
yet have been noticed, as Pingree's work on the connection of the
Greek and Indian practices was much later.

Peter Daniels,

*I was wondering if you or anyone else happened to know when people
first realized that the sun was a fiery ball, since Anaximander was
still theorizing as late as the 6th cent. BCE that the sun was a wheel
or a disk, and people were routinely depicting and refering to the sun
as such.

When did people first realize that the sun *isn't* a fiery ball? We know

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stellar_nucleosynthesis



Stellar nucleosynthesis
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

....

History
In 1920, Arthur Eddington, on the basis of the precise measurements of
atoms by F.W. Aston, was the first to suggest that stars obtained
their energy from nuclear fusion of hydrogen to form helium. In 1928,
George Gamow derived what is now called the Gamow factor, a quantum-
mechanical formula that gave the probability of bringing two nuclei
sufficiently close for the strong nuclear force to overcome the
Coulomb barrier. The Gamow factor was used in the decade that followed
by Atkinson and Houtermans and later by Gamow himself and Teller to
derive the rate at which nuclear reactions would proceed at the high
temperatures believed to exist in stellar interiors.

In 1939, in a paper entitled "Energy Production in Stars", Hans Bethe
analyzed the different possibilities for reactions by which hydrogen
is fused into helium. He selected two processes that he believed to be
the sources of energy in stars. The first one, the proton-proton
chain, is the dominant energy source in stars with masses up to about
the mass of the Sun. The second process, the carbon-nitrogen-oxygen
cycle, which was also considered by Carl Friedrich von Weizsäcker in
1938, is most important in more massive stars. These works concerned
the energy generation capable of keeping stars hot. They did not
address the creation of heavier nuclei, however. That theory was begun
by Fred Hoyle in 1946 with his argument that a collection of very hot
nuclei would assemble into iron.[1] Hoyle followed that in 1954 with a
large paper outlining how advanced fusion stages within stars would
synthesize elements between carbon and iron in mass.

....



today that it isn't, because fire is a manifestation of combustion, that
is, rapid oxidation, and combustion isn't what produces the sun's
glowing appearance.


well, the start of a discussion of the heliocentric sytem would
neccessarily mean that the sun is (in reality, roughly) spherical.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heliocentrism



Heliocentrism
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

....

The first person to present an argument for a heliocentric system,
however, was Aristarchus of Samos (c. 270 BC). Like Eratosthenes,
Aristarchus calculated the size of the Earth, and measured the size
and distance of the Moon and Sun, in a treatise which has survived.
From his estimates, he concluded that the Sun was six to seven times
wider than the Earth and thus hundreds of times more voluminous. His
writings on the heliocentric system are lost, but some information is
known from surviving descriptions and critical commentary by his
contemporaries, such as Archimedes. Some have suggested that his
calculation of the relative size of the Earth and Sun led Aristarchus
to conclude that it made more sense for the Earth to be moving than
for the huge Sun to be moving around it. Though the original text has
been lost, a reference in Archimedes' book The Sand Reckoner describes
another work by Aristarchus in which he advanced an alternative
hypothesis of the heliocentric model. ...


....



irrelevant to sci.lang, but an interesting tpoic.








Although we take it for granted that these people knew that the sun
was a fiery ball,

If they thought so, they were just as mistaken as anyone who thought it
was a wheel.



and were using artistic devices and metaphors to
depict it as a wheel, I can't help but wonder whether or not they
really knew what the sun was.

Thanks in advance for any info on this.