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Unit1 Great Scientists-Using Language(2)

So between 1510 and 1514 he worked on it, gradually improving his theory until he felt it was complete. In 1514 he showed it privately to his friends.

The changes he made to the old theory were revolutionary. He placed a fixed sun at the centre of the solar system with the planets going round it and only the moon still going round the earth.

He also suggested that the earth was spinning as it went round the sun and this explained changes in the movement of the planets and in the brightness of the stars.

His friends were enthusiastic and encouraged him to publish his ideas, but Copernicus was cautious. He did not want to be attacked by the Christian Church, so he only published it as he lay dying in 1543.

Certainly he was right to be careful. The Christian Church rejected his theory, saying it was against God's idea and people who supported it would be attacked.

Yet Copernicus' theory is now the basis on which all our ideas of the universe are built. His theory replaced the Christian idea of gravity, which said things fell to earth because God created the earth as the centre of the universe.

Copernicus showed this was obviously wrong. Now people can see that there is a direct link between his theory and the work of Isaac Newton, Albert Einstein and Stephen Hawking.

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