when was the heliocentric theory officially accepted?
116674
There really isn't any officially accepted list of scientific theories.  The best science can offer is that a theory fits experimental data and can be used to predict future events.  More and more scientists use it as it becomes obvoius that a given theory is the most reliable and predictive.  Typically, a theory is at best regarded as widely accepted.  \n\n\nThe heliocentric theory is the most widely used explanation because it fits the data and provides future predictions.  Since science tends to be self-correcting, this will contnue untuil someone find a some flaw in the theory.  \n\nFor what it's worth, the heliocentric theory is technically wrong.  We don't orbit the sun, but rather, the sun and planets orbits the center of mass of the solar system.  This is typically inside the sun, but occasionally moves outside the relative boundary of the sun's surface.
272482
When the Sun was born. ;)  4.6 billion years ago.
172697
Beginning in the 1970's, Hartmann and many others theorized and offered "proof" that our moon was formed billions of years ago when a planetesimal about the size of Mars impacted Earth. Today, this theory is almost totally accepted.
32358
I don't think anyone recorded it for posterity. It has been mistakenly attributed to Zeno of Elea (circa 490 BC to 430 BC). He has some equally interesting paradoxes:\nhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zeno%27s_paradoxes
859326
You guys keep trying.\n\nThe theory of planetary motion is pretty well accepted, and that only took 300 years. You can SEE that the sun moves around the earth, but these fuzzy-headed people called astronomers came up with this wild theory - the earth moves around the sun!\n\nSo today, 99.99% of all biologists, zoologists and botanists tell us the theory of evolution is the best explanation they have of the diversity - and similarity - of life. Christian biologists, Jewish bioligists, Muslim biologists, Sikh biologists . . .\n95% of the Christian fundamentalists reject the theory. (85% of them accept the theory of planetary motion, however.)\n\nEvolution is only a theory and it flies in the face of common sense. There is no way a Great Dane and a toy poodle can have the same ancestor.\n\nMaybe by 2206 that 95% rate will be down to 15%. We can hope.
716401
In classical times, educated people pretty much understood that the Earth is a sphere.\n\n"Eratosthenes (276 BC - 194 BC) estimated Earth's circumference around 240 BC. He had heard about a place in Egypt where the Sun was directly overhead at the summer solstice and used geometry to come up with a circumference of 250,000 stades. This estimate astonishes some modern writers, as it is within 2% of the modern value of the equatorial circumference, 40,075 kilometres. However, the length of a 'stade' is not precisely known; Eratosthenes' figure falls short if we do not use a fairly generous estimate for this length." (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spherical_Earth)
821367
One is incorrect and the other is correct.  The heliocentric model (or Copernican model) places the sun as the center of the solar system, with the planets revolving around it, which is correct.  \n\nThe geocentric model place the earth as the center of the solar system, with the planets and the sun rotating around it.  This is incorrect.  \n\nIn the 17th Century, the astronomer Galileo was branded a heretic and excommunicated from the Church for "daring" to challenge the Vatican's misguided belief (derived from a literal reading of the Bible) that the geocentric model was correct.  Science ultimately vindicated Galileo as correct, and the Church only issued a formal retraction of the excommunication of Galileo in this century.
352498
Ptolemy came up with an early model (pre Galileo and pre Copurnicus) that was ingenious, but wrong.  He had the Earth at the center and all the planets (and the sun!) circling around it.
182867
The basic observations were done thousands of years ago. THe ancient Greeks knew that the direction of the pole changes over time (also known as the progression of the equinoxes). Of course, it wasn't until recently that this effect was explained by the wobble of the earths axis. It used to be seen as just another cosmic cycle.
12824
No one, not even the church believed the earth was flat when Columbus sailed. The major point of contention was just how big around it was. The biggest theologian in the Middle Ages, Thomas Aquinas believed in the spherical earth and died 218 years before Columbus sailed. Further, Dante's Divine Comedy, written between 1308 and 1321, more than a hundred years before Columbus sailed, describes a round earth. Finally, Bertold von Regensburg referred to the round earth in a sermon in the vernacular, letting us know that it was common knowledge even among the uneducated that the earth is round.
574716
The person who amassed enough evidence for the Copernican theory was the Italian astronomer, physicists and philosopher, Galileo Galilei (1564-1642). \n\nAs a supporter of the Copernican system, Galileo was continuously in trouble with the ecclesiastical authorities. He used his telescope to observed things in the heavens never before observed by man: craters in the moon, sunspots and the moons of Jupiter. All these findings rocked the religious world. The first two seemed to show that heaven was not perfect: another favorite teaching of the theologians was threatened!\n\n A Dominican friar attacked Galileo for his observations. He pointed out that there was an apt quotation in Acts 1:11. The setting was Jesus' ascension; after he disappeared from the view of his apostles, an angel appeared and told them: "Men of Galilee, why do you stand here looking at the sky?" In the Latin translation of the Bible, the lingua franca of the Bible then, the first two words of that passage was Viri Galilaei. Galileo's family name was Galilei. The monk thus thundered that this was God's warning to Galileo not to peer at the heavens with his telescope!\n\nThings took a turn for the worse when Galileo published his book Dialogues on the Two Chief World Systems in 1632. The general verbal condemnation turned into direct persecution. He was summoned by Pope Urban VIII in 1633 to appear before the Inquisition in Rome. Galileo, already seventy years old and in ill health, was forced to make the journey in the chilly winter of February 1633, from Florence, where he lived, to Rome. There under threat of torture, Galileo was forced to recant. The old and ailing man was also forced to read the following declaration:\n\nI, Galileo Galilei ... aged seventy years, being brought personally to judgement, and kneeling before you Most Eminent and Most Reverend Lord Cardinals, General Inquisitor of the universal Christian republic against depravity ... swear that ... I will in future believe every article which the Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church of Rome holds, teaches and preaches ... I held and believed that the sun is the center of the universe and is immovable, and that the earth is not the center and is movable; willing therefore, to remove from the minds of your Eminences, and of every Catholic Christian, this vehement suspicion [of heresy] rightfully entertained against me, ... I abjure, curse and detest the said errors and heresies,... and I swear that I will never more in future say or assert anything verbally or in writing, which may give rise to a similar suspicion against me ... But if it shall happen that I violate any of my said promises, oaths and protestations (which Go averts!), I subject myself to all the pain and punishments which have been decreed ... against delinquents of this description.\n\nGalileo was then sentenced to life imprisonment in a Roman dungeon. This was later commuted to placing him under house arrest. The great scientists died in 1642, a blind and broken man. Galileo's memory was not left in peace by the Inquisition. Galileo's manuscripts were destroyed and even his right to be buried on consecrated ground was disputed. \n\nThus was how Christianity treated one of the greatest scientists the world has ever known.
11086
oops... misread.\nNicolaus Copernicus proposed the sun-centric model.\nhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copernicus\n\nI think the geocentric model was assumed since the beginning of time.  Everybody saw the sun revolving around the earth.  It was obvious...
858955
On 17 February 1998, Voyager 1's heliocentric radial distance equaled Pioneer 10 at 69.4 AU and thereafter exceeded Pioneer 10 at the rate of 1.02 AU per year. On August 12, 2006, Voyager 1 reached a distance of 100 AU (9.3 billion miles) from the Sun.
1031301
Yes in the summer of 1999. It was very cool; the whole world seemed to go cold. I looked directly at the sun several times during it
46491
A long time ago in human history, people thought that Earth was flat, and at the universe's center. They believed that seven members of the solar system forever circled around us—see graphic to the right, or view one from Censorinus - Sur le jour natal. \n\n     Some Mediterranian peoples also believed that each hour of the day was ruled by either the Sun, Moon or one of five then-known planets, all of which were thought of as gods. The sequence in which they thought hours were governed was the inverse order of distance they believed those solar system objects to be from Earth. \n\nDuring this time, Egyptians thought that the most distant was Saturn, shown at the bottom of the graphic above. They thought that the order of closer members (shown counterclockwise following Saturn) was Jupiter, Mars, Sun, Venus, Mercury and closest, the Moon. So they believed that the first hour was ruled by Saturn, the second by Jupiter and so on. \n     Egyptians also believed that after each seven hours the order in which these objects ruled was repeated, so it started again with Saturn. \n     According to those ancient Egyptians, the planet that ruled the first hour also governed the entire twenty-four hour period, and gave its name to that day.    The first (and also the 8th, 15th and 22nd) hours of the first day were sacred to Saturn, the 23rd to Jupiter, the 24th to Mars and the first hour of the next day to the Sun. Therefore, they believed that the first day was ruled by and named after Saturn (Saturday) and the second was ruled by (and named after) the Sun (Sunday). \n\nEgyptians once divided all twelve 30-day months (of their 360-day calendar year) into three 10-day weeks in the same manner as Greeks of the same period.    The epoch at which planet worship caused them to change its length to seven days is not known, but it must have been over twenty-five hundred years ago because Herodotus, writing in his History during the 5th century B.C. said: "Here are some other discoveries of the Egyptians. They find...each day belongs to a god..." \n     Adherents of the cult of Sin at Harran, who were known as Harranians or Sabeans by Arabic and Syrian authors, named their days after the same solar system members  as Egyptians and Persians. Like Hebrews and many other peoples, they considered the one named after Saturn to be the seventh day, so they began their week with a day named after the Sun. All seven days were named after solar system members in the same order as they were in Egypt. \n\nIt is interesting to note that these exact same solar system objects, and in the same sequence, were also used to name days in ancient India, Tibet and Burma.   This is also true of names for Japanese days of the week, but the custom there has been traced back only a thousand years.  \n     Roman soldiers stationed in Egypt became accustomed to the pagan seven-day week and began to introduce it into their own homeland to replace their eight-day marketing week. Octavian (Caesar Augustus) and succeeding Roman rulers permitted this practice but it wasn't made official until the emperor Constantine took that step in A.D. 321. \n     English names for days of the week are derived from Anglo-Saxon names for those same seven heavenly bodies that were revered by ancient peoples. Compare those English and Anglo-Saxon day names in the table below. Other similarities between day and "planet" names in various countries can be observed there.
662586
I say Newton in about 1700:\n\n"Newton’s form of Kepler’s third law shows that one can use orbital motion to determine the masses of the objects."
442132
In 1705 Edmond Halley predicted, using Newton's newly formulated laws of motion, that the comet seen in 1531, 1607, and 1682 would return in 1758 (which was, alas, after his death). The comet did indeed return as predicted and was later named in his honor. \n\nThe average period of Halley's orbit is 76 years  but you cannot calculate the dates of its reappearances by simply subtracting multiples of 76 years from 1986. The gravitational pull of the major planets alters the orbital period from revolution to revolution. Nongravitational effects (such as the reaction from gasses boiled off during its passage near the Sun) also play an important, but smaller, role in altering the orbit. Between the years 239 BC and 1986 AD the orbital period has varied from 76.0 years (in 1986) to 79.3 years (in 451 and 1066). The closest perihelion passage to the time of Jesus are 11 BC and 66 AD; neither event took place in Jesus' lifetime. Its most famous appearance was in 1066 when it was seen at the Battle of Hastings, an event commemorated in the Bayeux Tapestry.