Search engine giant Google has posted a doodle honouring Nicolaus Copernicus on his 540th birth anniversary.
The doodle features an animated heliocentric model formulated by the Polish astronomer—the sun placed at the centre of the universe and has the Moon revolving around earth.
It also shows the then known five other planets—Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn—revolving around the sun.
Born on February 19, 1473, Copernicus was a Renaissance mathematician and astronomer.
Best known for his treatise “On the Revolution of the Celestial Spheres,” Copernicus asserted that the earth revolved around the sun — contrary to the medieval belief that the earth was the centre of the universe.
The theory was viewed with suspicion by the Church, and his treatise was not published until 1543, the year of his death.
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