Google doodle of Copernicus' model of the universe.
(Credit: Screenshot by Steven Musil/CNET)
Google is invoking the name Copernicus again, but this time it's not a joke.
The Web giant is celebrating the 540th birthday of the Renaissance mathematician and astronomer who changed the way people look at the universe with a doodle. Nicolaus Copernicus, who was born in 1473, is perhaps best known his heliocentric theory, which asserted that the sun, and not the Earth, was at the center of our universe.
The doodle is a representation of Copernicus' model for the solar system -- a golden sun encircled by six planets on stylized plane.
In an effort to improve the calendar, the Catholic church appealed to Copernicus in 1514. His heliocentric theory was central to "De Revolutionibus Orbium Coelestium" ("On the Revolutions of the Celestial Spheres"), which Copernicus finished in 1530. The theory challenged the long-held belief that the Earth was the stationary center of the universe with other planets, including the sun and moon, rotating around it.
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