Aryabhata worked out why the stars seem to move

A closer look

While many ancient thinkers were convinced the entire universe was aggressively orbiting their local town square, scholars like Aryabhata sat down and did the actual math. In the fifth century, he calculated that the stars only appear to move because the Earth is continuously spinning. He accurately explained the planetary rotation centuries before it became widely accepted, effectively debunking geocentric narcissism.