A Brief History of Our View of the Solar System

Most of what we know about the  solar system and how it works was known before humans ventured into space. Even in ancient history, people were very fascinated by the moon and the stars. People who lived long ago also knew that by keeping track of the moon and stars, they could have a fairly easy way of knowing dates and times. The Greek's view on the solar system was geocentric. Geocentric has the idea that the earth is the center our galaxy and that all the other planets and stars orbit around it. This remained the most popular view until the 16th century. A man named Nicolaus Copernicus started changing this idea in 1543. He wrote a book called On the Revolution of Heavenly Bodies. His idea was that the sun was at the center. This is what scientist call heliocentric. This is the way we now know the earth orbits. Two men made what are called the "Kelper Laws". These didn't explain why the planets moved as they did, only how they moved. Sir Isaac Newton was the man who found the Universal Law of Gravitation. The main difference between all these people is the amount of technology they had helping them. What we know in science is always growing and changing...who knows what we will know tomorrow.