What was the Centre of the Universe?

What was the centre of the Universe?

Let’s take a trip back in time, how about the second century A.D when all the people thought that the Earth was the centre of the universe and the sun, the stars, the moons and the other planets orbited around it? Yes, a crazy thought but it is true, that is what people thought at the time. They knew no better to think that; there was no proof to tell them other wise. They observed the sun rising in the east and setting in the west, seeing the stars and planets to appear to move across the sky. Astronemers recorded the movements and Ptolemy created a complex system with circles within circles called epicycles, it was an accurate representation of the celestial patterns.

Ptolemy’s model of an Earth centred universe.

Now, let’s fast forward a few centuries to the sixteenth century when Nicolaus Copernicus proposed that the sun was the centre of the universe with all the stars, planets and the Earth orbiting around it. The problem was that Ptolemy’s model was better at describing the celestial movements. Therefore there was an argument against the Copernican system.

Nicolaus Copernicus’s model of a sun centred universe.

In the seventeenth century, Galileo Galileo built a telescope. He observed that Venus displayed phases, and showed that it orbited the sun. He also discovered that there was four moons orbiting Jupiter. His discoveries proved that everything in the universe did not revolved around Earth, instead everything revolved around the sun.

Johannes Kepler didn’t agree with Nicolaus Copernicus’s model and made a heliocentric system with orbits of elliptical rather than circular. This model showed more accurate predictions about the sun centred universe and the concept of a sun centred universe was believed.