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http://www.teachastronomy.com/ The first scientific thinking about the universe dates back to the Greek philosophers of the fifth and sixth centuries B.C. They applied logic, they formed hypothesis, and they tried to test the hypothesis although this was a time two thousand years before the invention of the telescope, and there was a limit to what they could do with the naked eye. However, they made enormous strides. Aristarchus, for example, used logic and geometry to deduce a Sun-centered universe two thousand years before Copernicus, and in fact the biggest Greek universes that were calculated were many, many millions of miles across. They even came up with the idea of infinite space applying the mathematics of Euclid and realized the implications of an infinite universe. As Plato's colleague Archytas put it, imagine you are at the edge of the universe, and you hurl a swift spear. Do you imagine that this spear hits something, finds a barrier, and bounces back, or should it travel forever? And if it should travel forever, what lies beyond the edge? The Greeks were thinking about the size of the universe, the implications of an infinite universe, and what an edge might mean two thousand years before scientists would address the problem with observations.