Using Evidence to Support Your Ideas

It might be tempting to imagine that Earth is the center of the Universe if you don’t consider the perspective of observers in other galaxies.

Throughout most of human history, the center of the Universe was thought to be Earth. Aristarchus of Samos in the 3rd Century BC challenged this idea by proposing that Earth orbited the Sun, which placed the Sun at the center of the Universe. However, his ideas were not accepted by the scientists of the time. In 1543, Polish astronomer Nicholas Copernicus wrote On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres, which again proposed that the Sun is the center of the Universe. His idea was also rejected by the scientific community until Italian astronomer Galileo Galilei produced telescopic evidence that proved Earth was not at the center of the Universe.

Often breakthroughs in understanding, such as there being no center to the Universe, come as a result of challenging the popular theories or beliefs of the time.