Question

Did Eratosthenes really do the measurement? Because the Great Library at Alexandria was an amazing firetrap (wood shelves, papyrus scrolls, etc.), it burned several times and many of the early Greek manuscripts were lost. All of the descriptions that we have of Eratosthenes are second-hand in what were essentially astronomy textbooks. As we will se later, the ancient Greeks often did thought experiments but did not always do the actual experiments. My opinion is that Eratosthenes las the right man at the right place to do the measurement. He is credited with inventing the modern longitude and latitude system and was the director of the Great Library at Alexandria. He would have been in charge of all of the maps in a military empire (the empire of Alexander the Great). He was in charge of the surveyors who made the maps and could have been delegated to find where the Sun angle was vertical at high noon on the summer solstice. He is said to have written three books about the project, so it was a major operation. rement How could anybody know that? There is no way to lay a tape measure through thousands of miles of solid and liquid rock and i

Answer 1

(C) is the most likely answer. Hydrodynamic models of the sun allow one method of estimating its internal properties. And the model accouts for everything that has been observed and measured so far about sun ( Mass, radius, surface temperature, luminosity etc)

a , b -- These two are not possible to do so far by our present available technology.

d- model if not tested with actual measures will not provide correct answer.

e- This is a completely absurd option. Our science community not so ethically immoral. Which they don't or can't find, it's kept in research category not picked up randomly.

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