Abyssal plains were not recognized as distinct physiographic features of the sea floor until the late 1940s and, until very recently, none had been studied on a systematic basis. They are poorly preserved in the sedimentary record, because they tend to be consumed by the subduction process.
The first man to discover that the earth moves around the sun was an Italian scientist named Galileo Galilei.
* Ptolemy develops a geocentric model that has the planets moving around the Earth. However, in order to account for retrograde motion, he put the planets on circles that move in circles. * Copernicus suggests a heliocentric model. His model has the planets moving around the Sun in circular orbits.