Geocentrism

An Essay

Preface

This essay draws heavily from Mark Gober’s An End to the Upside Down Cosmos, synthesizing his research with my own reflection on what the evidence suggests. Gober’s work compiles an extraordinary range of primary sources—quotations from physicists, descriptions of foundational experiments, and recent cosmological data—that rarely appear together in mainstream discussions. I have attempted to present this material fairly, neither advocating for geocentrism nor dismissing it, but rather examining why the question remains more open than most assume.

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Introduction

The word geocentrism triggers an immediate association: flat earth. This conflation is understandable given the cultural landscape, but it represents a category error that must be cleared away before serious inquiry can proceed.

Geocentrism concerns Earth’s position and motion relative to other celestial bodies. Does Earth revolve around the Sun, or does the Sun revolve around Earth? Is Earth moving through space, or is it stationary? These are questions about cosmological relationships and frames of reference. The shape of Earth is a separate question entirely. Ptolemy, the most famous geocentrist of antiquity, assumed a spherical Earth. So did Tycho Brahe, whose geocentric model influenced Kepler. One can hold any combination of views on these questions independently—they operate on different axes of inquiry.

The reflex to collapse these distinct questions into one dismissible package itself warrants examination. It suggests that challenges to the heliocentric model have become difficult to consider on their own terms, that the framework has been so thoroughly absorbed that questioning any part of it activates associations with the most easily ridiculed position available.

This essay examines what the evidence actually says about geocentrism and heliocentrism. The findings are surprising—not because they definitively prove one model over the other, but because prominent physicists have repeatedly acknowledged that the two models are observationally equivalent. The choice between them, it turns out, has rested on philosophical grounds rather than empirical ones. And that choice has had consequences extending far beyond astronomy, shaping how humanity understands its own significance in the cosmos.

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The Historical Arc

The debate between geocentrism and heliocentrism stretches back millennia. Ancient Greeks such as Pythagoras and Aristotle held geocentric views based on their broader philosophy about Earth’s place in the cosmos. The most influential geocentrist was the Egyptian mathematician Ptolemy, working around 150 AD. His model, described in the Almagest, made accurate predictions about celestial motions and dominated astronomical thinking for over a thousand years.

Heliocentrism also has ancient roots. The Greek astronomer Aristarchus proposed a Sun-centered model in the third century BC. But the framework that would eventually displace Ptolemy came from Nicolaus Copernicus in the sixteenth century. His 1543 book On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres placed the Sun at the center and set Earth in motion around it.

What motivated Copernicus remains unclear. As the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy notes, “It is impossible to know exactly why Copernicus began to espouse the heliocentric cosmology. Despite his importance in the history of philosophy, there is a paucity of primary sources on Copernicus.” What is clear is that his model was not more accurate than Ptolemy’s. Physicist Carlo Rovelli observed in 2011 that “Copernicus’s predictive system is less accurate, not more, than Ptolemy’s.” Yet Copernicus’s framework sparked what would become known as the Scientific Revolution.

Galileo’s observations through his telescope shifted societal thinking further. He observed the phases of Venus, which he argued were better explained if Venus orbited the Sun. He also saw moons circling Jupiter, which he took as evidence that not everything revolved around Earth. However, as Robert Sungenis notes in Geocentrism 101, these observations did not exclusively support heliocentrism. Venus’s phases could be explained by a model in which planets orbit the Sun while the entire system revolves around Earth. And the fact that moons orbit Jupiter tells us about Jupiter’s local system—it does not logically entail that Earth must similarly orbit the Sun. Observing Jupiter is not the same as observing Earth.

Tycho Brahe proposed exactly such a hybrid model in the late sixteenth century. In his system, the planets revolve around the Sun, but the Sun and its planetary entourage revolve around a stationary Earth. This model could account for Galileo’s observations while maintaining Earth’s central position.

Brahe’s assistant, Johannes Kepler, inherited his master’s treasure trove of astronomical data after Brahe’s death. Rather than developing the geocentric framework, Kepler fit the data into an improved heliocentric model, introducing elliptical orbits. His work, combined with Isaac Newton’s theory of gravity, cemented heliocentrism as the default cosmological view.

But here is where the story becomes strange. Despite heliocentrism’s dominance, prominent physicists have repeatedly acknowledged that the two models are, in a meaningful sense, equivalent.

Astronomer Fred Hoyle stated in 1973: “Let it be understood at the outset that it makes no difference, from the point of view of describing planetary motion, whether we take the Earth or the Sun as the center of the solar system. Since the issue is one of relative motion only, there are infinitely many exactly equivalent descriptions referred to different centers—in principle any point will do, the Moon, Jupiter.”

Physicist I. Bernard Cohen wrote in The Birth of a New Physics (revised 1985): “There is no planetary observation by which we on earth can prove that the earth is moving in an orbit around the sun.”

Albert Einstein and Leopold Infeld remarked in their 1938 book The Evolution of Physics: “The struggle, so violent in the early days of science, between the views of Ptolemy and Copernicus would then be quite meaningless. Either [coordinate system] could be used with equal justification. The two sentences, ‘the Sun is at rest and the Earth moves,’ or ‘the Sun moves and the Earth is at rest,’ would simply mean two different conventions concerning two different [coordinate systems].”

Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow acknowledged the same point: either heliocentrism or geocentrism could be used to explain our observations of the sky.

These are not fringe figures. These are among the most celebrated names in modern physics. And they are stating, plainly, that the choice between models is not dictated by observational evidence.

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The Experiments

If observation cannot distinguish between the models, perhaps experiment can. Several foundational studies in physics have bearing on this question—and their results have been interpreted in ways that reveal the prevailing bias.

In 1871, physicist George Airy conducted an experiment to detect Earth’s movement through the aether—the medium then believed to permeate all space and serve as the substrate through which light traveled. Airy observed a star through two telescopes: one filled with air, another filled with water. Given water’s property of slowing light and the assumption that Earth was moving, Airy expected to need different tilt angles for the two telescopes to account for the combined effect. He found, however, that both telescopes required the same tilt.

The scientific community interpreted this as a failure to detect Earth’s motion through the aether. But the result could equally be explained by a stationary Earth surrounded by a moving aether. Physicist Hendrik Lorentz commented in 1886: “Briefly, everything occurs as if the Earth were at rest.”

The most famous experiment in this lineage is Michelson-Morley (1887). Albert Michelson had conducted an earlier version in 1881. The design involved splitting light beams and sending them in perpendicular directions—one aligned with Earth’s alleged motion around the Sun, another perpendicular to it. If Earth were moving through the aether, the beam traveling against that motion should be detectably slower.

Michelson found minimal difference between the two paths. In his paper published in the American Journal of Science, he stated: “This conclusion directly contradicts the explanation…which presupposes that the Earth moves.”

The 1887 experiment with Morley used more sensitive equipment and controlled for disturbances. The result was the same. Rather than proclaiming that the studies supported a stationary Earth, the scientific community concluded that the aether did not exist. Scientist John Bernal wrote in 1969: “The Michelson-Morley experiment was the greatest negative result in the history of science.”

But “null result” is not quite accurate. There was a small detection—a “fringe shift”—beyond experimental error. The light beams were not perfectly aligned, suggesting some interaction with a medium. Physicist Dayton Miller’s subsequent experiments at Mount Wilson further validated this detection. These findings could be interpreted as evidence for both an aether and a stationary Earth. That interpretation has been largely ignored.

The quotations from prominent physicists are striking. Henri Poincaré wrote in 1901: “A great deal of research has been carried out concerning the influence of the Earth’s movement. The results were always negative.” In 1905, he added: “Are we about to enter now upon the eve of a second crisis? These principles on which we have built all, are they about to crumble away in their turn?… Alas…such are the indubitable results of the experiments of Michelson.”

Physicist G. J. Whitrow stated in 1949: “It is both amusing and instructive to speculate on what might have happened if such an experiment could have been performed in the sixteenth or seventeenth centuries when men were debating the rival merits of the Copernican and Ptolemaic systems. The result would surely have been interpreted as conclusive evidence for the immobility of the Earth, and therefore as a triumphant vindication of the Ptolemaic system and irrefutable falsification of the Copernican hypothesis.”

Nobel laureate Wolfgang Pauli referred in 1958 to “the failure of the many attempts to measure terrestrially any effects of the earth’s motion.”

Bernard Jaffe wrote in 1960: “The data were almost unbelievable….There was only one other possible conclusion to draw—that the Earth was at rest.” He then revealed his own bias: “This, of course, was preposterous.”

Physicist James Coleman wrote in 1954: “The easiest explanation was that the earth was fixed in the ether and that everything else in the universe moved with respect to the earth and the ether….Such an idea was not considered seriously, since it would mean in effect that our earth occupied the omnipotent position in the universe, with all the other heavenly bodies paying homage by moving around it.”

Richard Wolfson stated in 2000: “What’s the conclusion from the Michelson-Morley experiment? The implication is that the earth is not moving.”

The pattern is consistent: physicists acknowledge what the results implied, then explain why that implication was not taken seriously. The reasons given are philosophical, not empirical.

Einstein’s response to Michelson-Morley is particularly significant. He stated in a 1922 speech: “While I was thinking of this problem in my student years, I came to know the strange result of Michelson’s experiment. Soon I came to the conclusion that our idea about the motion of the Earth with respect to the ether is incorrect, if we admit Michelson’s null result as a fact. This was the first path which led me to the special theory of relativity.”

Einstein’s theory of relativity proposed that the measuring device contracted at high speeds, masking Earth’s motion. This preserved the heliocentric model. Columbia University physicist Charles Lane Poor wrote in 1922: “The Michelson-Morley experiment forms the basis of the relativity theory: Einstein calls it decisive. If it should develop that there is a measurable ether-drift, then the entire fabric of the relativity theory would collapse like a house of cards.”

A cynical reading: Einstein invented an entirely new physics to preserve the philosophical commitment to a moving Earth.

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Modern Data

The pattern of interpretation did not end in the early twentieth century. Recent cosmological data has raised similar questions—and provoked similar responses.

The Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) is radiation left over from the early universe, according to standard Big Bang cosmology. In 2005, analysis of CMB data revealed an unexpected alignment—the radiation exhibited a structure correlated with Earth’s orientation, including its equinoxes and the plane of its orbit around the Sun.

This alignment became known as the “Axis of Evil”—a term adapted from the George W. Bush administration’s geopolitical phrase. That a scientific finding would be named using the word evil reveals something about the establishment’s response. The data implied what should be impossible under the Copernican Principle: a special orientation centered on Earth.

Physicist Lawrence Krauss commented in 2006: “When you look at CMB map, you also see that the structure that is observed, is in fact, in a weird way, correlated with the plane of the earth around the sun. Is this Copernicus coming back to haunt us? That’s crazy. We’re looking out at the whole universe. There’s no way there should be a correlation of structure with our motion of the earth around the sun—the plane of the earth around the sun—the ecliptic. That would say we are truly the center of the universe.”

University of Michigan researchers commented in 2004: “Physical correlation of the cosmic microwave radiation with the equinoxes is difficult to imagine, since the WMAP satellite has no knowledge of the inclination of the Earth’s spin axis.”

Astrophysicist Rahul Kothari noted in 2013 that the data “suggests a potential violation of the cosmological principle.” Ashok Singal wrote the same year: “There is certainly cause for worry….The Copernican Principle seems to be in jeopardy.”

Observations of quasars have produced similar results. Physicist Y. P. Varshni wrote in 1976: “The quasars…are arranged on 57 spherical shells with Earth in the center. This is certainly an extraordinary result.” He continued: “The Earth is indeed the center of the Universe. The arrangement of quasars on certain spherical shells is only with respect to the Earth….This means that the cosmological principle will have to go.” His results were validated in a 2001 paper by Ukrainian astronomers and reinforced by University of Michigan physicist Michael Longo.

Physicist Jonathan Katz observed gamma ray bursts that further challenged the Copernican Principle. He wrote in 2002: “No longer could astronomers hope that the Copernican dilemma would disappear with improved data. The data were in hand, and their implication inescapable: we are at the center of a spherically symmetric distribution of gamma-ray-burst sources.”

Brazilian physicist Joao Magueijo told New Scientist in 2005 that the Axis of Evil “could be telling us something fundamental about our universe, maybe even that the simplest big bang model is wrong.” He also suggested the data could be explained by “a rotating universe”—which raises the question of what the universe might rotate around.

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The Copernican Principle

If the heliocentric and geocentric models are observationally equivalent, and if experiments have failed to detect Earth’s motion, why has heliocentrism become the unquestioned default?

The answer lies in what has been called the Copernican Principle—the philosophical commitment that Earth does not occupy a special place in the cosmos. This principle has become foundational to modern cosmology, but its foundation is not empirical.

Edwin Hubble’s observations in the 1920s provided a pivotal moment. He found that galaxies appeared to be moving away from Earth in all directions. One interpretation: Earth is at the center of the cosmos. Hubble acknowledged this possibility in his 1937 book The Observational Approach to Cosmology: “Such a condition would imply that we occupy a unique position in the universe, analogous, in a sense, to the ancient conception of a central earth. The hypothesis cannot be disproved but it is unwelcome and would be accepted only as a last resort in order to save the phenomena. Therefore, we disregard this possibility and consider the alternative….The unwelcome supposition of a favored location must be avoided at all costs.”

Avoided at all costs. This is not the language of dispassionate empiricism. This is the language of philosophical commitment.

Hubble continued: “There must be no favored location in the universe, no center, no boundary; all must see the universe alike.” To achieve this, cosmologists constructed a model in which the universe has no center—the expanding balloon analogy, in which every point on the surface recedes from every other point equally.

Stephen Hawking was explicit about the philosophical basis. In A Brief History of Time (1988), addressing why cosmologists assume the universe looks the same from every vantage point (not just Earth), he wrote: “We have no scientific evidence for, or against, this assumption. We believe it only on grounds of modesty: it would be most remarkable if the universe looked the same in every direction around us, but not around other points in the universe.”

“Modesty” is a philosophical value, not a scientific finding.

George Ellis, professor emeritus at the University of Cape Town, stated in 1995: “People need to be aware that there is a range of models that could explain the observations. For instance, I can construct you a spherically symmetrical universe with Earth at its center, and you cannot disprove it based on observations. You can only exclude it on philosophical grounds….What I want to bring into the open is the fact that we are using philosophical criteria in choosing our models. A lot of cosmology tries to hide that.”

The implications of this choice are profound. University of Washington astrophysicist Jonathan I. Katz summarized the Copernican Principle’s meaning: “The importance of Copernicus’s ideas was both philosophic and scientific: Man is not at the center of the universe, but is only an insignificant spectator, viewing its fireworks from somewhere in the bleachers. In modern times this has been elevated into the ‘cosmological principle,’ which states that, if averaged over a sufficiently large region, the properties of the universe are the same everywhere; our neighborhood is completely ordinary and unremarkable. We are not special, and our home is not special, either. This is one of the foundations of nearly all modern cosmologies.”

We are not special. This is what the Copernican Principle asserts. And this assertion has been adopted not because evidence compelled it, but because it aligned with certain philosophical preferences—preferences that, as Hawking admitted, rest on “modesty” rather than data.

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Conclusion: The Inversion

What emerges from this examination is a pattern. At each juncture—historical, experimental, observational—the evidence has been interpreted to support the heliocentric model, even when that interpretation required dismissing results, inventing new physics, or acknowledging that the choice rested on philosophical grounds.

Ptolemy’s geocentric model was accurate. Copernicus’s heliocentric model was less accurate but was adopted anyway. Experiments designed to detect Earth’s motion through the aether failed to do so—and were interpreted as disproving the aether rather than disproving Earth’s motion. CMB data aligned with Earth’s orientation was labeled “evil.” Quasar distributions centered on Earth were called “disturbing.” At each point, the interpretation that preserved the Copernican Principle was chosen.

Over the past five years, I have come to recognize that inversions—frameworks that reverse the true order of things—can be created and maintained for centuries. They persist not because the evidence supports them, but because they become embedded in institutions, education, and the psychology of those who inherit them. Challenging an inversion triggers reflexive dismissal because the inversion has become invisible; it is simply how things are understood to be.

The heliocentric model may represent such an inversion. This is not a claim that geocentrism is definitively true. As physicist Robert Bennett notes, proving that Earth is at the center of the universe would require knowing the universe’s boundaries—knowledge we do not possess. What can be said is that the evidence does not compel heliocentrism, that prominent physicists have acknowledged this, and that the choice between models has been philosophical rather than empirical.

The consequences of that choice extend beyond astronomy. If the Copernican Principle is true, then we are, as Stephen Hawking put it, “just a chemical scum on a moderate-sized planet, orbiting around a very average star in the outer suburb of one among a hundred billion galaxies.” Our existence is accidental, our location unremarkable, our significance negligible.

If the Copernican Principle is a philosophical preference rather than a scientific finding, then this bleak assessment of human significance rests on an assumption, not a discovery. The question of whether we occupy a special place in the cosmos—whether our existence reflects intention rather than accident—remains open.

What was lost when heliocentrism was adopted as unquestionable truth was not just a cosmological model. What was lost was a framework compatible with human significance. The inversion, if it is one, did not merely rearrange the heavens. It rearranged humanity’s understanding of itself.

Whether that understanding can be rearranged again depends on whether the evidence is permitted to speak.

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References

Assis, André Koch Torres. Relational Mechanics. Montreal: Apeiron, 1999.

Cohen, I. Bernard. The Birth of a New Physics. New York: W.W. Norton, 1985.

Einstein, Albert, and Leopold Infeld. The Evolution of Physics. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1938.

Gober, Mark. An End to the Upside Down Cosmos. Cardiff, CA: Waterside Productions, 2024.

Hawking, Stephen. A Brief History of Time. New York: Bantam Books, 1988.

Hoyle, Fred. Nicolaus Copernicus: An Essay on His Life and Work. London: Heinemann, 1973.

Hubble, Edwin. The Observational Approach to Cosmology. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1937.

Katz, Jonathan I. The Biggest Bangs: The Mystery of Gamma-Ray Bursts, The Most Violent Explosions in the Universe. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002.

Sungenis, Robert. Geocentrism 101. State Line, PA: CAI Publishing, 2017.

Varshni, Y. P. “The Red Shift Hypothesis for Quasars: Is the Earth the Center of the Universe?” Astrophysics and Space Science 43 (1976): 3–8.

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