Question
Question: Major Laws of planetary motion replaced ____ with elliptical orbits....
Major Laws of planetary motion replaced ____ with elliptical orbits.
parabola orbits
ellipse orbits
hyperbola orbits
circular orbits
circular orbits
Solution
The question asks what type of orbits were replaced by elliptical orbits through the Major Laws of planetary motion, also known as Kepler's Laws of Planetary Motion.
Kepler's First Law states that planets move in elliptical orbits with the Sun at one of the foci. Before Kepler, astronomical models, such as the Ptolemaic and Copernican systems, primarily described planetary motion using perfect circles or combinations of circles (epicycles). Kepler's work demonstrated that these circular models were inaccurate and that the true paths of planets were ellipses.
Therefore, the Major Laws of planetary motion (Kepler's Laws) replaced the idea of circular orbits with elliptical orbits.