Solar System - created from Mind Map

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Geocentric Model

Heliocentric Model

Galileo

Now

Everything orbited the Earth in perfect circles

Accepted model of the universe from the time of the Ancient Greeks until the 1500s

Began to be replaced in the 1600s

Began replacing Geocentric Model in the 1600s

States that the Earth and planets all orbit the Sun - Sun at the centre of the universe

Already been around for 2000 years, first inroduced in a bok by Coprnicus in 1543, showing that astronomical observations could be explained without having the Earth at the centre of the universe

Copernicus' ideas weren't popular at the time, and the model itself was condemned by the Church

One of the most convincing pieces of evidence for this theory was Galileo's observations of Jupiter's moons

In 1610, Galileo was observing Jupiter using a telescope (a new invention at the time) when he saw three stars in a line near the planet

When he looked again the next evening, he saw these stars had moved in the wrong direction in the night sky

After a week, a fourth star had appeared

They never moved away from Jupiter and seemed to be carried along with the planet

He realised that they weren't stars, but moons orbiting Jupiter, showing that not everything was in orbit around the Earth, proving the Geocentric model was wrong

The current model still says that the planets in our Solar System orbit the Sun but that these orbits are actually elliptical rather than circular

As technology has improved, our idea of the Solar System and the universe had changed, e.g. the invention of the telescope led to the discovery of Uranus