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THE cosmos loves irony. While trying to prove that the Earth is fixed in space, an Italian priest described something similar to the Coriolis effect 鈥� the slight deflection experienced by objects moving in a rotating frame of reference 鈥� nearly 200 years before mathematician Gustave Coriolis worked it out in 1835.
In 1651, Giovanni Riccioli published 77 arguments against the idea that the apparent motions of the heavens were due to the Earth鈥檚 rotation and orbit around the sun. Now, at Jefferson Community and Technical College in Louisville, Kentucky, has translated them from Latin, and discovered that Riccioli conjectured phenomena resembling the Coriolis effect ().
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Riccioli argued that if the Earth were rotating, the speed of the ground at different latitudes would be different, so cannon shots fired due north or south from near the equator would show a slight deflection east or west as the ground moved beneath them during flight. No such effect was known at the time, so he wrongly concluded that the Earth must be stationary.
鈥淭he Coriolis effect was then unknown, so Riccioli concluded that the Earth must be stationary鈥�
Still, historian , formerly of Harvard University, says Coriolis should retain credit for the idea because he recognised the deflection should occur for objects moving in any direction, not just north or south.