Discovery and exploration of the Solar System that moved through the sky. Although the Greek philosopher Aristarchus of Samos had speculated on a heliocentric reordering of the cosmos, Nicolaus Copernicus in the 16th century developed a mathematically predictive heliocentric system. His 17th-century successors, Galileo Galilei, Johannes Kepler, and Isaac Newton, developed a modern understanding of physics that led to the gradual acceptance of the idea that Earth moves around the Sun and that the planets are governed by the same physical laws that govern Earth. In more recent times, this led to the investigation of geological phenomena such as mountains and craters and seasonal meteorological phenomena such
Gardens of the Sun Brazil attempted to return most of the planet to a "natural" state, to the extent that most of Earth's population inhabits a few megacities. The Outers, by contrast, survive by terraforming the moons of Jupiter and the other outer planets and practicing genetic engineering, which caused ideological tension with Greater Brazil, ultimately flaring into a full-scale conflict called the "Quiet War". By the time of "Gardens of the Sun", the war is over. The surviving Outers have been forced to Uranus, Neptune and Pluto as the superpowers of Earth raid the moons of Jupiter and Saturn for Outer knowledge. However,