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Does the Earth move around the Sun?

Discover the fascinating debate on whether the Earth goes around the Sun and the role of reference frames in modern physics.

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In the comments to Mark's post about the embarassment being caused to the U.S. by the creationism trial in Dover, a scuffle has broken out over another deep question: does the Earth go around the Sun? See here and here and here. It's actually a more subtle question than you might think. The question is not "Was Ptolemy right after all?", but rather "in the context of modern theories of spacetime, is it even sensible to say `X goes around Y,' or is that kind of statement necessarily dependent on an (ultimately arbitrary) choice of coordinate system?" You've come to the right place for this one; biologists can have their fun demolishing creationism, but we're the experts on the whole geocentrism/heliocentrism thing. The answer, of course, does indeed depend on what one means by "move around," and in particular the comments refer to the notion of a "reference frame." I ...

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