Even in the times of the ancient Greeks the thinkers were optimists trying to understand
the universe. One of them, Anangoras, deduced from a large meteorite which fell in
Greece in 467 BC that the sun was a mass of molten iron. He also interpreted eclipses
correctly, and had the idea that heavenly bodies were formed by condensation from a
chaotic whirling mass. All this is very close to modern ideas, as was the explanation of
the heavens as a sphere with either the earth or th sun as its centre.
