Date: December 10, 2011
Title: Aryabhatta
Podcaster: The Ordinary Guy from the Brains Matter podcast
Organization: Brains Matter
Link: http://www.brainsmatter.com
Description: We’ve all learned about astronomers from the middle ages, but were they really the first to make particular discoveries or come up with the astronomical theories we accept today? What about the ancient Chinese and Indian astronomers? In today’s episode, we learn about Aryhabhatta, and his contributions to mathematics and astronomy.
Bio: The Brains Matter podcast has been producing and communicating science stories and interviews since September 2006. The show is based out of Melbourne, Australia, and takes an everyday person’s perspective of science in easy-to-understand language.
Sponsor: This episode of “365 Days of Astronomy” has been brought to you by John Sandlin. The Sandlin Family wishes you all Clear Skies.
Transcript:
Hello everyone, and welcome to todays’ episode of 365 Days of Astronomy. I’m the Ordinary Guy from the Brains Matter podcast.
In this episode, I’ll be talking to you about Aryabhatta – an Indian mathematician and astronomer who was born in the year 476, and died in the year 550. He was born in Magadha, which is known today as Patna in the state of Bihar. There has been some historical contention about this, with some claiming he was born in the southern state of Kerala, but his name is indicative of northern India.
He wrote two famous manuscripts called the “Aryabhatiya”, which contained arithmetic, algebra, plane trigonometry, spherical trigonometry, fractions, quadratic equations, sums of power series and a table of sines – and the “Aryabhatta-Siddhanta”, which contained mathematical and astronomical theories which proved over time to be extremely accurate, especially for the time. He calculated the value of pi as being 3.1416 – five significant figures, and is credited with contributing the number 0 and the place value system to mathematics.
In terms of his astronomical views, Aryabhata claimed that the earth rotated on its axis daily, and the movement of the stars was a relative motion caused by that axial rotation – The Earth making a revolution produces a daily rising and setting of the stars and planets” he wrote, – which was in total contrast to the view in Europe that the Earth was the centre of the universe, and the stars rotated in some kind of clockwork fashion around the Earth.
He also calculated the sidereal rotation of the Earth to be 23 hours, 56 minutes, 4.1 seconds. The value today is known to be 23 hours, 56 minutes, 4.091 seconds – remarkable accuracy for 1600 years ago! And his calculation of the sidereal year was 365 days, 6 hours, 12 minutes and 30 seconds – which is only 3 minutes and 20 seconds away from the modern value.
He claimed that the earth moved around the sun, and the moon moved around the earth. There’s some discussion about whether his views were geocentric or heliocentric, but some of his descriptions almost seem to require a heliocentric view of the solar system, but this can’t be confirmed from the historical evidence.
Keep in mind the heliocentric view from Copernicus came 1000 or so years later.
Some of his works were translated into Arabic, and the knowledge passed onto the Arabs and Greeks.
And that’s it for today’s show – if you want to hear more astronomy and science stories, head on over to www.brainsmatter.com.
End of podcast:
365 Days of Astronomy
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