De revolutionibus orbium coelestium have begun work on his new system by that time. Most historians believe that he wrote the "Commentariolus" after his return from Italy, possibly only after 1510. At this time, Copernicus anticipated that he could reconcile the motion of the Earth with the perceived motions of the planets easily, with fewer motions than were necessary in the "Alfonsine Tables", the version of the Ptolemaic system current at the time. In particular, the heliocentric Copernican model made use of the Urdi Lemma developed in the 13th century by Mu'ayyad al-Din al-'Urdi, the first of the Maragha astronomers to develop a non-Ptolemaic
The War of the Worlds the 20th Century, including first contact and war between planets and their differing species. There were, however, stories of aliens and alien invasion prior to publication of "The War of the Worlds". In 1727 Jonathan Swift published "Gulliver's Travels". The tale included a people who are obsessed with mathematics and more advanced than Europeans scientifically. They populate a floating island fortress called Laputa, 4½ miles in diameter, which uses its shadow to prevent sun and rain from reaching earthly nations over which it travels, ensuring they will pay tribute to the Laputians. Voltaire's "Micromégas" (1752) includes two beings from Saturn