A vivid narrative that connects the lives of four great astronomers as they discovered, refined, and popularized the first major scientific discovery of the modern era: that the Earth moves around the Sun.
Today we take for granted that a telescope allows us to see galaxies millions of light years away. But before its invention, people used nothing more than their naked eye to fathom what took place in the visible sky. So how did four men in the 1500's-of different nationality, age, religion, and class-collaborate to discover that the Earth revolved around the Sun? With this radical discovery that went against the Church, they created our contemporary world-and with it, the uneasy conditions of modern life.
Heaven on Earth is an intimate examination of this scientific family-that of Nicolaus Copernicus, Tycho Brahe, Johannes Kepler, and Galileo Galilei. Fauber juxtaposes their scientific work with insight into their...