Insignificant Emily and the Intellectual Idiots

Chapter 5

And Yet It Moves

And so, my first meeting with the Intellectual Idiots unceremoniously ends. Despite my wit, I feel like I failed to make a good first impression. Agatha assures me that they are just weird, even though they leave, and one of them laughs at me. This is fine. This always happens to me. It was worse when I first came back to the Academy.

I ignore them as they walk away, have lunch with Agatha, and then return to the library. As soon as we reach the library, Agatha ditches me for her usual spot—she has a favorite. For some reason, I feel particularly close to Agatha today, so I follow her. Her hideout is well-decorated. It has a nice couch she had brought in and some snacks, too. Was this provided by the school? No, there’s no way. Agatha broke the rules. She hid this place with magic, but it’s still safe because Agatha used a type of magic the mages at the library don’t know about yet. I grab a few books that I’m not allowed to check out and take a seat. I also pull out Giuseppe’s little book.

Nicholas Giuseppe was an astronomer from Belifera’s neighboring country, Tuberosa. Apparently, he wasn’t murdered—he died by suicide. There was a will too. People who read the will said that he must have been murdered, but there was no evidence to support that. In the end, his death was considered a suicide. Anyway, Nicholas Giuseppe’s death isn’t what matters right now. It’s not like this is a reason to give up my future career as an astronomer.

Hang on.

Come to think of it, is astronomy so hard that it’d drive someone to suicide? What were his circumstances? Was he depressed? What happened to him? The sudden thoughts push through my head, but I shake them off. Right now, I have to figure out why the Earth moves, not whether this man had depression.

I might’ve studied liberal arts, but even I know that Copernicus debunked the geocentric model and put forward the theory of heliocentrism back in 1543. How do I know the year? You know how we focus on the unimportant things, whether it’s 1534 or 1543? I actually don’t believe I need to know any of this. These are just facts that were drilled into my brain. Whether it happened in 1534 or 1543, what does it matter to someone who lives in the twenty-first century?

Anyway, I open Nicholas Giuseppe’s book. When I open a book, the first thing I usually look at is the table of contents. Then I read the preface. However, I don’t have much time today, so I only read the table of contents. Chapter Four is titled “Rotation of Celestial Bodies and the Sun as the Center of the Universe”—I’m sure that means the sun is at the center, with other planets orbiting around it.

Mind you, I’m in my third year in the astronomy department. No, including the years Emily attended school, I’m in my seventh year, but I’m still a third-year. The academy was considerate enough to let me retake my first year after a year off due to my “amnesia.” Actually, it might not have been out of consideration at all—the tuition is disgustingly expensive. I’m pretty sure they’re just milking me.

I scan the table of contents and flip to the next page. What the hell is Nicholas Giuseppe talking about?

—Thus, Targoas was the first to propose heliocentrism, which Hippico rejected. Later, Claudius Ptolemy crystallized geocentrism, leading humans to believe that our planet was at the center of the universe for 1,500 years.

Damn. They believed that for 1,500 years? I guess humanity is the same in any world.

—Since then, a few astronomers claimed that the sun was at the center of the universe and that it was the ground we live on that revolves and rotates instead. However, they failed to produce concrete evidence.

Giuseppe?

—Proponents of the geocentric model asserted that if our planet rotated around the sun, everything on its surface would fly off. They were also convinced that an object dropped from a tower would fall in the opposite direction due to the planet’s rotation. They discovered no evidence of this. Therefore, the Earth did not spin.

Giuseppe!

—However, those who dream of becoming great astronomers must ignore this hogwash. Our world is centered around the sun, and our star rotates and revolves around it.

It seems like Giuseppe is good at providing strengths and weaknesses.

—Now, let’s take a look at celestial bodies.

When I flip to the next page, I find a drawing. Unlike the neat print of the book, this page is handwritten. It isn’t easy to read because it’s written in a different language. Really, Giuseppe? Anyway, in the drawing, the innermost circle is the sun, followed by the planets—Hydrago, Bennuse, Tero, Shankar, Lupatar, and Canico.

This is news to you, right? This is why astronomy is driving me crazy. Still, it’s better than astrology. They call stuff there Pleione and Hekani, Alterp and Dschukera, and Uva or some other weird names for the different sections in the sky—what do you mean the sky has sections? Right, Emily. This is fine. You’re lucky you’re studying astronomy, not astrology. I’ll go crazy looking at Giuseppe’s messy handwriting and figures.

Underneath the drawing is a caption.

—Any good prospective astronomer should know this by now.

I know I can’t, but I want to give Giuseppe a second death. Of course, I’ll eventually learn why Earth rotates around the sun—I just don’t know it now.

Giuseppe continues. We’ll have to wait for the people of the future to establish the structure of the solar system and the universe. I’m pretty sure that will happen in the next chapter, right? Then again, that’s what happened in my world.

Listen, Earthlings. We only discovered this after Kepler and Newton, right? To borrow the words of Alexander Pope, nature and nature’s laws lay hidden in the night. God said, “Let Newton be,” and all was light, and that’s how everything was solved. Is there really a god?

***

Sadly, there is nothing else I can glean from the library. Let me correct myself—there are many things I could glean, just none that I’d understand. I pick up Giuseppe’s book and return to my dorm. Then I continue to read. I had taken his work lightly because the book was so thin, but I shouldn’t have.

—The reason people believed in geocentrism was because heliocentrism was too complicated.

At least, that’s what Giuseppe says.

—Why do people measure distance?

He also asks a lot of pointless questions.

—That’s because there’s distance between the eyes.

They say humans can measure the distance between objects because we have two eyes. However, the distance between our eyes is small compared to the distance between the stars, making it impossible for the naked eye to measure the stars. So mathematicians with profound insight and wisdom racked their brains.

—Let’s use Earth!

“Why are they suddenly talking about Earth?” I say aloud.

“I dunno. Do your own homework,” Agatha says. Her words are bullsh*t, but I can’t say anything. Her response is reasonable—assignments are solo tasks.

For astronomers, stargazing is fundamental. It’s important to calculate the distance between stars. How do they calculate that distance? They can start by using a ruler. They can lift the ruler to the sky and measure the distance between stars. The problem is that people have different arm lengths. That means the distance between the stars will vary depending on the length of one’s arms.

They might’ve come to this conclusion if they grew up in the East. You’re right, and I’m right. The distance you measured and the distance I measured are both correct. This is the true essence of the Classification of Buddha’s Teachings! Ah, how nice would that be? I knew it. Buddhism is open to so many interpretations! Not that any of this information helps with my assignment.

Anyway, everyone has a different way of measuring things. That’s why astronomers decided to measure the angle between two stars. That way, they could estimate the distance between two stars regardless of arm length.

If you made it this far, welcome to the world I now live in. We’re currently stuck in BCE times, and we still have a long way to go before we reach the depth of knowledge of the world in which I used to live.

“Agatha, should I quit the Academy?” I ask, turning to the mage.

She turns to me, looking incomprehensible.

“Can’t you just get an F? Why quit now? It’d be such a waste. At least get a diploma before you go.”

She’s not wrong, but I don’t think you can get a diploma if you keep getting Fs. She’s full of contradictions.

In any case, if you want to find the angle between two stars, you can set the distance between an observation point and a star as one, and the angle between the two stars as theta. From a human’s perspective, it’s easier to divide this triangle in half and calculate the right angle this creates instead, which we’ll call theta two. The length of the opposite side of this angle is called the jya-ardha—in other words, it’s a trigonometric function.

These ancient astronomers worked really hard to calculate these trigonometric functions accurately. However, I hate working hard. I’m sorry to be that person, but I really don’t like working hard. I do not dream of labor. If I was born in—I mean—possessing a noblewoman’s body, why should I have to study? This wonderful world is so painful.

Anyway, back to the topic at hand. You may know this as the Pythagorean theorem, but the human eye has its limits. So, the proper answer is…

“Huh?” I say.

“What?”

“Oh my God, Agatha!”

That’s right. I probably looked like Archimedes when he hopped out of the bath, shouting, “Eureka!” Clearly, this was just as big as the discovery of density.

“Let’s use Earth!”

That’s what Giuseppe said. Use Earth! The human eye can’t observe these far distances, but it’s possible to calculate using the Earth. If you observe a star in a specific spot once in the summer and again six months later, the star's position will have shifted slightly. That’s trigonometry! I can’t explain the rest from here, so I’ll rely on Giuseppe’s book.

—The stellar parallax is incompatible with the geocentric model, as there would be no change in the observation point. The farthest star is about 0.62 seconds away, where 160 of one degree is one minute, and one minute of 160 is one second. In other words, there would be a difference of 0.000172 degrees.

What the hell, Giuseppe?

I’m sorry. I thought I had it, but I’m lost again.

Anyway, this means I don’t have to drop out of the academy just yet. It looks like I’ll be able to finish my assignment. That alone makes me happy. Little did I know what would happen to me tomorrow.