Ever heard of Nicolaus Copernicus. Of course you have, he’s the 16th century mathematician and astronomer who proposed the Heliocentric model. In fact, Copernicus wasn’t the first to propose the Heliocentric( or Sun at the center) model of the solar system. Astro-hipsters will recollect all the way back in the 3rd Century BC, before their was even the pope to rebel against, Aristarchus of Samos was telling folks that the Earth rotated around the Sun and not the other way around. So why are we talking about long dead people who proposed very obvious theories. Well, despite the new Geocentric movie that is coming out (check it out if you haven’t already, pretty classic), the National Science Foundation also did a study that included a question about whether the Sun rotated around the Earth or the Earth around the Sun. And guess what happened. 1/4 Americans are apparently under the impression that the Sun orbits around the Earth. At first, this might make you laugh, it did for me at least, but the longer you think about it the more disturbing this is. For god’s sake, its the 21st century folks. Maybe Copernicus didn’t put the debate to bed, in truth his predictions for the orbits were actually less accurate than Geocentric models, because he thought the planets orbited in circles and not ellipses. But Galileo, and then Kepler, and then Newton, did put this to bed. And that was all before America was even a country. America, and the world, currently face a crisis with regards to climate change, caused by a scientifically illiterate populous and congress who have yet to heed the warnings of the scientific community as we are constantly warned of our unsustainable track. But maybe the problem is more basic. Global Climate Change is a lot harder to understand than gravity, at least the basics of both, maybe what Americans need is a focus on basic science education in order to deal with the larger problems of our society. At the very least, Obama should have a big announcement tomorrow that the Earth, and all the other planets, rotate around the Sun. Actually, maybe that wouldn’t help, that would probably lead to half of Americans thinking the Sun rotated around the Earth and their was just a big conspiracy to convince us otherwise. 

http://time.com/7809/1-in-4-americans-thinks-sun-orbits-earth/