In fairness to Aristotle & Ptolemy, their model can be patched with epicycles and eccentrics, and if you add gravity back in it can explain the inversion of constellations.
Its unwieldly and inelegant, but its only indefensible once you get to quantum effects.
Gaia the Space Turtle has no such theoretical problems, as her believers can adjust their reality to match their predictions :D
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How does adding gravity back in explain the inversion of the constellations?
But I must concede that the space turtle is an extremely elegant solution to this problem.
Is that right? Is this analogous to doing physics in rotating reference frame? Heard something like that once. You end up having to include "illusions" like centrifugal force etc, but they can be made consistent
With geocentric gravity, you can have a spherical Earth. Not sure from memory when this was introduced, but probably BC.
This then raises the question of how the outer "spheres" stay up there. If gravitational force diminished at a rate higher than inverse-square (as the Strong Nuclear Force actually does), then you can handwave away most of that problem.
With this alternate physics, human-powered flight could be practical if you could only get far enough from the ground, which is a fun thing to think about.
It is :)
By Copernicus' time, astronomers had observations over sufficient time to recognise the geocentric model was going to also require higher-order eccentrics to remain consistent with reality. If they'd had calculus, they could have kept going...
