This is not about the birth of the universe, but rather the birth of the science of Astronomy.
Another document: https://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/0903/0903.3429.pdf
> How Marius Was Right and Galileo Was Wrong Even Though Galileo Was Right and Marius Was Wrong -- or, how telescopic observations in the early 17th century supported the Tychonic geocentric theory and how Simon Marius realized this.
Sometimes scientists who followed their instincts were right, and those who followed the available facts/data were not. Sometimes. Or in other words: Things are not that simple.
The Popperian model of science suggests that it steps from one empirically-sound but falsifiable position to another, but that is the view with hindsight - what happens at the leading edge is much more fluid, and having the right sort of instincts about where the evidence is leading is not just a matter of luck. Heliocentricity was generally accepted well before stellar parallax was observed.
It appears to me that MOND (Modified Newtonian Dynamics) seems to be going the way of Brahe's model - it fitted the initial data, but does not seem to work consistently for the general case.
[0] http://tofspot.blogspot.com/2013/08/the-great-ptolemaic-smac... (part 1)
The author claims:
"the reaction at the time was "WTF? Which heresy are you talking about here?"
But the exact heresy was explicitly and very clearly stated both in the sentence by the Inquisition:
http://hti.osu.edu/sites/hti.osu.edu/files/documents_in_the_...
"the above-mentioned Galileo, because of the things deduced in the trial and confessed by you as above, have rendered yourself according to this Holy Office vehemently suspected of heresy, namely of having held and believed a doctrine which is false and contrary to the divine and Holy Scripture: that the sun is the center of the world and does not move from east to west, and the earth moves and is not the center of the world, and that one may hold and defend as probable an opinion after it has been declared and defined contrary to Holy Scripture."
And in Galileo's Abjuration:
http://www.creatinghistory.com/galileo-galileis-abjuration-2...
"after having been judicially instructed with injunction by the Holy Office to abandon completely the false opinion that the sun is the center of the world and does not move and the earth is not the center of the world and moves, and not to hold defend, or teach this false doctrine in any way whatever, orally or in writing; and after having been notified that this doctrine is contrary to Holy Scripture; I wrote and published a book in which I treat of this already condemned doctrine and adduce very effective reasons in its favor, without refuting them in any way"
The premise of the whole series by that author is also wrong, approximately, that because the parallax wasn't observed until around 1750 Galileo couldn't prove in 1633 that the Earth is not standing still, therefore the Church was right and it wasn't a matter of faith but a personal thing. It's obviously a completely invalid argument.
- the clearly written sentence
- clearly written statement by Galileo
- the fact that the rotation of the Earth around the Sun was obvious to anybody who actually "did the math" and compared with the observations, even at that time
- the fact of how long both Galileo's and Copernicus' books remained banned by the Church afterwards
and instead claims that "missing parallax observation" made right for the Church to claim "heresy." No it doesn't and that particular detail was never relevant. Even now we don't know what's beyond the limit of our observations, but because of that we don't punish the scientists who make the best models for what we actually observe.
So yes, the Church was very wrong, and there are very clear written documents. Including that both Galileo's and Copernicus books remained on the Church's list of banned books for the next centuries!
The guy writing "smackdown" seems to be in a search for anything to prove actions of the Church "acceptable" by intentionally avoiding the major facts: yes the Church considered exactly even teaching or writing about the heliocentric world a real heresy. And it acted according to that not only in one point of time but through the centuries, obviously not because "Galileo had a bad personal problem with the Pope of that moment" or anything else that the "smackdown" guy wants to pass as a "good reason". The "smackdown" guy should be smackdowned and recognized as effectively a liar.
I know a lot of people "want to believe him" and that link to his page is resent around, but it doesn't make it true.
Not so much; people who -could see- the phases of Venus were in possession of -conclusive- data that it was not moving in a circle between the Earth and Sun.
"Although the extreme crescent phase of Venus has been observed with the naked eyes, there are no indisputable historical pre-telescopic records of it being observed." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phases_of_Venus
There may be no records, but that might not have stopped ANYone with keen eyesight from knowing (including the Greeks back to Aristarchus, or even the Babylonians). For 2000 years, the 'authorities' (e.g. Aristotle) were wrong.
There are no records of it from the ancient world, and "Venus with horns" could mean anything.
> For 2000 years, the 'authorities' (e.g. Aristotle) were wrong.
Careful to not let desires and personal aspirations cloud your judgment there.
The tl;dr is that when you look through a telescope today stars are pinpoints. You can magnify them as much as you want, and they still appear pinpoints. Brighter stars might appear larger than smaller ones, but their size doesn't change with magnification. Galileo's telescope had such a small aperture that diffraction distorted the image, and the size of the disk of a star did change with magnification. Since they didn't understand diffraction at the time, they thought they were seeing the star's disk. Since there was no measurable parallax on stars at the time, they knew they had to be very far away, and thus unbelievable enormous in order to have a disk visible in a telescope.