s are incomparably farther off, at infinity.

And this fantastic rotation would all be accomplished round a minute
point!

To put the problem in this way is to solve it. Unless we deny the
astronomic measures, and the most convincing geometric operations, the
Earth's diurnal motion of rotation is a certainty.

To suppose that the stars revolve round the Earth is to suppose, as one
author humorously suggests, that in order to roast a pheasant the
chimney, the kitchen, the house, and all the countryside must needs turn
round it.

If the Earth turns in twenty-four hours upon itself, a point upon the
equator would simply travel at a rate of 465 meters (1,525 feet) per
second. This speed, while considerable in comparison with the movements
observed upon the surface of our planet, is as nothing compared with
the fantastic rapidity at which the Sun and stars would have to move, in
order to rotate round our globe.

Thus we have to choose between these two hypotheses: either to make the
entire Heavens turn round us in twenty-four hours, or to suppose our
globe to be animated by a motion of rotation upon itself. For us, the
impression is the same, and as we are insensible to the motion of the
Earth, its immobility would seem almost natural to us. So that, in last
resort, here as in many other instances, the decision must be made by
simple common sense. Science long ago made its choice. Moreover, all the
progress of Astronomy has confirmed the rotary movement of the Earth in
twenty-four hours, and its movement of revolution round the Sun in a
year; while at the same time a great number of other motions have been
discovered for our wandering planet.

The learned philosophers of antiquity divined the double movement of our
planet. The disciples of Pythagoras taught it more than two thousand
years ago, and the ancient authors quote among others Nicetas of
Syracuse, and Aristarchus of Samos, as being among the first to promote
the doctrine of the Earth's movement. But at that remote period no one
had any idea of the real distances of the stars, and the argument did
not seem to be based on any adequate evidence. Ptolemy, after a long
discussion of the diurnal motion of our planet, refutes it, giving as
his principal reason that if the Earth turned, the objects that were not
fixed to its surface would appear to move in a contrary direction, and
that a body shot into the air would fall back to the West of its
starting-point, the E