Quote:
Originally posted by Secret_Agent_Man
It was empirically proven that the Earth revolves around the Sun. As I said, much of the data which was used for that proof was gathered through the use of telescopes.
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Actually, not necessarily. The first demonstrations of the earth's rotation around the sun did not rely on data collected from telescopes (Copernicus didn't use one, though Gallileo did to later refine the theory). The first direct proof - stellar parallax - requires careful observation, but it is, I understand, observable without aid if your reference star is fairly close.
