The Sun Is The Center Of The Universe (And The Hottest Star, Too)
By Daniel Miessler on April 25th, 2007: Tagged as America | Education | Rants | Science
I know now why Georgia has such horribly uneducated grade school students. My friend teaches at a school in south Georgia and happened to walk by a classroom where a teacher was teaching some young, impressionable first graders about the universe.
Outside the classroom was a poster where a bunch of the children had written a collection of facts that they’d learned, and there were a few main points that the teacher put there herself.
Of those were two important facts that many aren’t aware of:
- The sun is the center of the universe.
- The sun is the hottest star in the universe.
The teacher wrote these things down. She thinks our sun is the center of the universe, and she’s teaching human children about science in the United States of America in the year 2007.
WTF.
[ More to follow: My friend is going to write an essay on other things he's seen, and he's going to name the school so we can voice our concern. I'm going to link to it here. ]
--
Silly teacher, everyone knows earth is the center of the universe, sheesh!
Comment by IDIOT — 4/25/2007 @ 12:30 pm
She confused “solar system” with “universe”. What grade was this? Anything below 4th and I say big deal, teachers at that level are generalists and focus more heavily on reading and writing than anything else.
Comment by Carl Sagan — 4/25/2007 @ 12:49 pm
Carl !?! I didn’t know you were raised in Georgia to defend its teachers and education?
Comment by Carl Sagan's buddy — 4/25/2007 @ 1:12 pm
When I was in High School a couple of buddies of mine were in Geology class and the teacher asked them which way the Nile flowed. My buddy said North to which she replied false because “how could a river flow up?”
Comment by Mommar — 4/25/2007 @ 1:28 pm
Even if she confused “solar system” with “universe,” are there more stars in our solar system for the sun to be deemed “the hottest?” I think not. Moron. Fire her ass. Bet she won’t get confused teaching dishwashing or cooking.
Comment by Navin R Johnson — 4/25/2007 @ 1:29 pm
Funnily enough, since the universe is expanding in every direction away from every other point since the big bang, every point is also the center of the universe.
So our star the Sun is at the center, in a weird kinda way.
Comment by Dave — 4/25/2007 @ 1:46 pm
I’ll skip the 20 year list of incredibly bad teachers I’ve had because ultimately they all have the same cause.
Teachers are not objectively evaluated and replaced as needed.
Improving any system requires honest evaluation and a willingness to adapt based on that information.
For decades, too many people in the US have put political ideology above honesty and performance. Both the Communists and the Fascists lie not only to the people but to themselves. Unless that changes soon, we will soon finish squandering the Great Hope that was America.
Comment by Shy Boy — 4/25/2007 @ 2:01 pm
Navin… er… I think you’ve confused “Solar system” with “Galaxy”. While the sun is technically the hottest star in our solar system, that’s cuz it’s the only star in our solar system.
And everyone should know that I am the center of the universe (and so are you). The universe began everywhere at once, and so one could say that there is no center, but because the speed of light is the speed of time, there edge of the universe as we see it, goes back in time and is the same distance away from us at all points… the only place where things are actually happening NOW are in your head, everything else takes some amount of time to get to you, so you are the center of the universe.
But I wouldn’t try to explain that in a kindergarten.
Comment by kathaclysm — 4/25/2007 @ 3:07 pm
And since you’re the center of the universe, and the it is always expanding, the entire universe is moving as fast as possible to get away from you.
Comment by Nick Douglas — 4/25/2007 @ 3:44 pm
We all know that the poor teachers are underpaid! When in doubt you need to find wikipedia same goes for the teachers.
Comment by !politician — 4/25/2007 @ 4:14 pm
Well, she was partly right — the sun IS the hottest star in the Universe — and it’s easy to prove!
Walk outside at noon on a sunny day. Notice the tremendous amount of heat coming from the sun. Now walk outside on a clear night and notice how little heat is coming from a whole bunch of stars. Out-numbered kazillions to one and the sun still produces more heat! Therefore it is the hottest star in the Universe. QED
Comment by Ken Davies — 4/25/2007 @ 6:06 pm
Depends on how you are defining center. While it is true there is no center of expansion, there is a center of mass. (We just don’t know where it is, and we can’t know either, due to hyper-inflation.)
Comment by Tim McCormack — 4/25/2007 @ 8:47 pm
Tim — if the universe is finite but unbounded, there’s no CoM.
And in more general terms, I’d dispute the existence of entities that can’t be observed.
Comment by David — 4/26/2007 @ 7:06 am
How can a teacher in this day and age possibly believe that? She is obviously wrong. I am the center of the universe.
Our sun is a G2 for surface temperature rating, around 6,000k and in theory the scale goes to O1 33,000k and up.
Now some actual smart people out there may know if there is a if it is possible that a surface temperature of a given star may be lower than another, but the core temperature may be higher due to size and density.
I like Ken’s comment on this. Maybe she meant that the sun is the hottest star in the solar system, lol.
Comment by steve — 4/26/2007 @ 11:26 am
Suppose she was thinking of the solar system and was thinking of Jupiter as a failed star?
http://csep10.phys.utk.edu/astr161/lect/jupiter/interior.html
(Somehow I don’t think that someone who pondered the fact that Jupiter is in some sense a failed star [off by "only" a factor of 100 or so] would confuse the solar system with the universe.)
Comment by Carl M — 4/26/2007 @ 1:03 pm
shy boy,
Teachers are not objectively evaluated and replaced as needed, because it is hard to get ANYONE to do the work in many school systems. Teaching is a pretty difficult, draining, culturally (and in many places financially) under-rewarded job. They can’t afford to fire the ones who don’t do such a good job (or the ones who sometimes screw up), because unless there were other significant changes, we would end up with classes with 50 kids in them, and no elementary school teacher no matter how good, is going to be able to do great things under those circumstances.
Yes, the teacher was pathetically wrong, but just firing her isn’t going to solve anything.
Comment by FlMom — 4/26/2007 @ 1:23 pm
If you think about it, the current theory of cosmology still says that the Sun is the center of the Universe. That’s what the big bang and the microwave radiation thing is all about. The remnants of the big bang are equal in every direction. That makes the Sun the center of the Universe. I personally don’t agree with this interpetation, but a lot of scientists do. Someday they will get it right. Galileo and Corpernicus are rollling in their graves!
Comment by Guess What . . — 8/30/2007 @ 1:32 am