Geoscience Reference
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9
Oceans of the Solar System
Early Days
What kind of worlds, and oceans, lie beyond Earth? This question has
fascinated people since they first began to gaze into the star-strewn
heavens. Democritus (~460-370 bce) was among the first to leave a
record of his musings. A man who chose to smile on life rather than
frown on it, he was a cosmic pluralist, and imagined many worlds
beyond Earth that had grown from the atoms that whirled across the
heavens. Those distant worlds grew, and decayed, and some were
destroyed in collisions with others—while some, to him, were 'bare of
animals and plants and all water'. Given what we know now, these
were inspired intuitions. Nevertheless, they did not find favour with a
younger and ultimately more influential man, Plato, nor with his even
more famous student, Aristotle, both of whom considered that there
was no world in the universe but our Earth. They knew of the planets,
but thought them to be perfect bodies in the heavens.
This worldview of Plato and Aristotle was to govern—or perhaps
to muzzle—scientific thinking for the next millennium and more.
Then, with Galileo and the invention of the telescope, the spirit of
evidence-based inquiry into the heavens began—although not with-
out opposition—to stir once more. Galileo was born in Pisa in 1564,
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