Counter-Earth
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Counter-Earth is a hypothetical body of the Solar system first hypothesized by the presocratic philosopher Philolaus to support his non-geocentric cosmology, in which all objects in the universe revolve around a Central Fire. The Greek word "Antichthon" means "Counter-Earth."
Contents |
[edit] The need for a Counter-Earth
By 500 BC most contemporary philosophers considered the Earth to be spherical - there was obvious evidence for this from the behaviour of objects near the horizon. This meant that all objects on the surface of the Earth had to be attracted to its centre in some way, otherwise they would fall off. It also required other objects, such as the stars and planets, to float above the earth in relation to its centre, otherwise they would presumably move rapidly away. This argument - reasonable in view of the data available at the time - resulted in a geocentric world view.
When the movements of celestial objects convinced Philolaus that the world must be not only turning on its own axis but revolving around a fixed point elsewhere in space, he was faced with the problem of explaining how a spherical world could move in this way without spilling everything on the surface into space. He came to the conclusion that the directions of up and down do not exist in space, except in that all things must fall towards the center of the universe, around which all things (including the Earth, Sun, and all the planets) must revolve. Our earth must be a practically flat world and the underside of our Earth must face this fiery, central point at all times, otherwise we would fall off.
This created a contradiction within the Pythagorean school of thought. Since planets, in their understanding, were composed of a fiery or ethereal matter having little or no density, they could quite easily rotate eccentric to the Earth without becoming off balance. However, the Earth was obviously made of the dense elements of Earth and Water. If there were a single Earth revolving at some distance from the center of space, the universe's center of balance would not coincide with its spatial center. Since this is the point towards which things fall, the earth must have a counter-balance of the same mass or the universe would be flung apart. This problem led Philolaus to develop idea of a Counter-Earth, a second, flat Earth, identical but opposite to ours in every way. This conception of the solar system is outlined in the diagram at the right, with Counter-Earth referred to as Antichthon. The upper illustration depicts Earth at night while the lower one depicts Earth in the day. (In order to prevent confusion it should be noted that the diagram fails to show that Earth and Counter-Earth are flat and point away from the Central Fire). It is likely that Philolaus believed that the whole orbit of Earth was composed of an ethereal sphere, with the Earth and Counter-Earth being local dense points on the surface.
This theory is a very creditable attempt to incorporate all known cosmological data at the time, and indicates the sophistication of Classical Greek thinking. The ideas of a flat earth, Counter-Earth, and Central Fire were all eventually superseded by the theory of Gravitation which is currently held by the scientific community, that describes a spherical earth rotating around both its own axis and the sun. The Counter-Earth is still a popular motif in science fiction and fantasy writing today, usually serving as an allegory for the real Earth.
In the 1st century A.D., after the idea of a spherical Earth superseded the original Counter-Earth theory, Pomponius Mela, a Latin cosmographer, developed an updated version of the idea, wherein a spherical Earth must have a more or less balanced distribution of land and water. Mela drew the first map on which the mysterious continent of Earth appears in the unknown half of Earth - our antipodes. This continent he inscribed with the name Antichthones.[1]
[edit] Scientific analysis
If such a planet actually existed in our current scientific cosmology, as a spherical world that revolved around the sun, it would be permanently hidden behind the sun but nevertheless detectable from Earth, because of its gravitational influence upon the other planets of the Solar System. No such influence has been detected, and indeed space probes sent to Venus, Mars and other places could not have successfully flown by or landed on their targets if a Counter-Earth existed, as it was not accounted for in navigational calculation.
The Sun-Jupiter Trojan asteroid system is an example of a stable Lagrange orbit. Equation 10 in section 14 of Lectures on Celestial Mechanics by Siegel and Moser shows the relation between the masses of the bodies and the distances between them in the case of a collinear orbit. However, these linear orbits are not as stable as, for example, the equilateral Lagrange orbits L4 and L5. Hilda asteroids do not visit L3 of Jupiter-Sun system, though they do come close to it in their curious orbits.
[edit] Greek Mythology
According to some Greek Mythology, Antichthon was placed between Earth and the center of the universe, the throne of Zeus, to stop man from looking at God directly.
[edit] References in culture
[edit] Television & radio
- In the first episode of the radio show The Adventures of Superman, (debuting February 12, 1940), the planet Krypton was referred to as "situated on the other side of the Sun" from the Earth.
- A planned early story for Doctor Who, which was scripted but never filmed, was set on a Counter-Earth that was almost an exact duplicate of Earth. The story had the working titles Beyond the Sun and The Hidden Planet.
- The 1987 television cartoon Dinosaucers was based upon the premise of intelligent dinosaurs coming to Earth from a Counter-Earth planet called Reptilon.
- The twin planets Fire & Water in the Science Fiction show Lexx.
- The 1999 animated series: Spider-Man Unlimited.
- In the Japanese anime series Sousei no Aquarion's (or Genesis of Aquarion (創聖のアクエリオン, Sōsei no Akuerion?) 7th episode, the main antagonist's right hand maiden refers to a bright, three-dimensional decahedron (first believed to be a Dodecahedron, but confirmed to be a perfect Decahedron) as the "power of the Antichthon holy creation geometry". This involves the Decad, a symbol made by Pythagoras related to the Counter-Earth theory and the perfect nature of numbers.
- The 1979 animated television cartoon Sport Billy is from the planet Olympus - a twin of our Earth which is on the other side of the Sun - which is populated by athletic god-like beings.
[edit] Film
- Gerry Anderson's 1969 film Journey to the Far Side of the Sun, (also known as Doppelgänger), features a Counter-Earth which is identical to Earth in every respect except that left and right are reversed.
- In the 1973 film The Stranger, the Counter-Earth (known as Terra by its inhabitants) is culturally and evolutionarily identical to Earth in nearly every respect, with the most obvious difference being the planet's three moons. However, it appears to have skewed significantly sometime in the last century or two. An astronaut from Earth crashes there, and discovers a strange dictatorship known as the Perfect Order. Other than the fact that everyone is left-handed, technology is about the same, although geared for such purposes as monitoring of the population to assure adherence to the Order.
- In the tokusatsu kaiju film Gamera vs. Guiron, Gamera travels to a Counter-Earth known as Terra in order to save a pair of kidnapped children.
- Warning from Space or Mysterious Satellite (宇宙人東京に現わる Uchûjin Tokyo ni arawaru?, Spacemen Appear in Tokyo), a 1956 science fiction tokusatsu film produced by Daiei, depicted a planet-- "Planet 'R'"-- on a collision course with Earth. Warning from Space has one-eyed, starfish-shaped aliens from the planet Paira -- an Earth-like planet that shared the same orbit as Earth but on the opposite side of the Sun -- who take on human forms to warn the earth about the impending disaster.
- in the 1951 movie When Worlds Collide the planet at the end of the movie that the survivors of the doomed earth go to is similar to the counter earth.
[edit] Books and comic books
- Counter-Earth was used by John Norman as the setting for his Gor novels.
- A version of it has appeared in multiple stories published by Marvel Comics. See Counter-Earth (comics).
- The series of graphic novels Les Cités Obscures by François Schuiten and Benoît Peeters features a group of city-states on a Counter-Earth.
- Paul Capon wrote a series of novels, starting with "The Other Side of the Sun" (also serialised on radio by the BBC) set on Antigeos, a Counter-Earth. The other two novels in the series are entitled "The Other Side of the Planet" and "Down to Earth".
- The X12 series of books by Olof Möller prominently features a Counter-Earth called Anti-Tellus.
- The role playing game Mage: The Ascension contains a planetoid called Autochthonia in the Counter-earth position in the game's cosmology. This is the location of The Computer which is central to Iteration X, the cybernetic convention of mages.
- Twin Earths was a comic running from 1952 to 1963 by Alden McWilliams (art 1952-63, story 1957-63) and Oscar Lebeck (story 1952-57). The main characters of the daily strip were Vana, a Terran spy living on Earth to keep tabs on our technology and Garry Verth, an FBI agent. The Sunday version featured a completely separate aspect of the "twin earths" scenario, featuring a young Texan named Punch exploring Terra with its young prince Torro. Twin Earths mostly consisted of travelog-like views of Terran life, for example the fact that in their liberated society, women, who constituted 92% of the population, ran things.
[edit] Music
- Iannis Xenakis wrote a piece of music called Antichthon.
[edit] See also
[edit] References
- ^ Pomponius Mela. de Chorographia.
[edit] Further reading
- The Secret Teachings of All Ages: An Encyclopedic Outline of Masonic, Hermetic, Qabbalistic and Rosicrucian Symbolical Philosophy, by Manly P. Hall, Philosophical Research Society Inc. ISBN 1-58542-250-9
- Book of Earths, by Edna Kenton, Kessinger Publishing. ISBN 0-7661-2856-3
[edit] External links
- Burch, George Bosworth. The Counter-Earth. Osirus, vol. 11. Saint Catherines Press, 1954. p. 267-294
- History of the Pythagorean school hosted by Drury University, Springfield, Missouri
|
||||||||||||||
