Thomas Digges

High school (ages 12+)
Space & Astronomy

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Date:

Step 1 · Read the article

Open the article and read it at the level above. Then answer the questions below in your own words.

https://smallwhale.org/articles/thomas-digges

1. When was Thomas Digges born?
2. When did Thomas Digges die?
3. What is the career?
4. What is the intellectual impact?
5. Who was Thomas Digges?
6. What did Thomas Digges publish that showed the Sun at the center of the solar system?

Write what each word means, using the article.

Do not copy the article. Write two things you learned, the way you would explain them to a friend.

Answers below are taken from the article’s stored facts, so they match what the student read.

1. When was Thomas Digges born?Circa 1546
2. When did Thomas Digges die?August 24, 1595
3. What is the career?English mathematician and astronomer
4. What is the intellectual impact?Challenged Aristotelian cosmology and contributed to the conceptualization of modern cosmology
5. Who was Thomas Digges?Thomas Digges was a clever English thinker who lived in the 1500s and helped people learn new ideas about the stars.
6. What did Thomas Digges publish that showed the Sun at the center of the solar system?He wrote a book about Virginia that included a special part with a picture of the Sun in the middle and the Earth and other planets orbiting around it.

Heliocentrism: The astronomical model in which the Earth and planets revolve around the Sun.
Aristotelian Cosmology: The ancient Greek model of the universe with Earth at the center and celestial spheres.
Olbers' Paradox: The paradox arising from the assumption of an infinite, static universe filled with stars, which implies a uniformly bright night sky.
Cosmology: The scientific study of the origin, evolution, and structure of the universe.