History of the center of the universe
History of the center of the Universe Figure of the heavenly bodies — An illustration of the Ptolemaic geocentric system by Portuguese cosmographer and cartographer Bartolomeu Velho , 1568 (Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris), depicting Earth as the centre of the Universe. The center of the Universe is a concept that lacks a coherent definition in modern astronomy ; according to standard cosmological theories on the shape of the universe , it has no center. Historically, the center of the Universe had been believed to be a number of locations. Many mythological cosmologies included an axis mundi , the central axis of a flat Earth that connects the Earth, heavens, and other realms together. In the 4th century BCE Greece, the geocentric model was developed based on astronomical observation, proposing that the center of the Universe lies at the center of a spherical, stationary Earth, around which the sun, moon, planets, a...