sphere
8
6.8
- noun
- /sfɪr/
- Specialized
:
esfera celeste
- The concept of the heavenly sphere helps observers understand the movement of celestial bodies.
- celestial sphere
- the sphere of Earth
- cosmic sphere
OK, so the observable universe is defined as this sphere that's around you.
- OK, so the observable universe is defined as this sphere that's around you.
- And what Penrose says is that, well, what what a point in space-time is, is that sphere, that sphere of all the light rays coming in.
Examples
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Now, another way that you can tell that we're on a sphere is to think about how there's something called the tropics on the Earth.
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Hey, Bill, can you prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the earth is a sphere and not flat?
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Identify this point on the sphere with the corresponding point on the plane.
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Further text analysis might tell you that by down we mean towards the ground, and that the ground is a planet called Earth, which is a sphere, and so on.
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And you fly this way because that's the shortest distance across a the surface of a sphere between two points.
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The Earth was viewed as an immobile sphere at rest, having reached its natural position at the center of the cosmos.
Academic text (2013) -
As the sun sets, the stars appear to twinkle on the celestial sphere above us.
-
In astronomy, the celestial sphere is used to visualize the positions of stars and planets.
Synonyms
1
8.4
An imaginary ball around the Earth in the sky where stars and planets appear to be
Compounds
4
6.8
A region where a foreign country has strong political or economic control without formal rule
2
6.2
The area where a person or group can affect decisions even without official power
- Specialized
1
8.4
An imaginary ball around the Earth in the sky where stars and planets appear to be
- Specialized
A model of the sky made of rings that shows how stars and planets move
Surface Forms
Etymology
Sphere comes from the Greek sphaira meaning 'ball', and long ago people pictured the sky as a giant round ball around the Earth, so astronomers called the imagined surface where stars appear the 'celestial sphere'.