By far the most tantalizing loss from the library [of Alexandria] was a treatise by the mathematician Aristarchus of Samos (310–230 BCE) that provided the first model for a heliocentric universe. That’s right: this guy casually figured out that the Earth was orbiting the Sun some 2,300 years ago, and we have no real idea how he did it.

His argument was destroyed along with the rest of the Library, but we know that it existed because Archimedes wrote the following passage about it in The Sand Reckoner.

It is gut-wrenching to think that the true nature of the solar system had been successfully divined all the way back in the third century BCE, only to be suppressed for another 1,800 years.

Imagine how different the course of history might have been had this revolutionary idea been fostered and investigated instead of ridiculed, dismissed, and ultimately engulfed in flames. For better or for worse, we would have been a very different species if Aristarchus’ contemporaries had embraced his findings instead of accusing him of impiety.

After Centuries of Lost Ideas, Humans Saved History by Sending It to Space   

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