Ah, Grasshopper, you progress well.

Already snatched the pebbles.....

Buggered if I know what I'm supposed to do with them now.....

You're supposed to move the pebbles from one end to the other and watch them not move because the Earth is flat and if it were round the pebbles would roll away.

Definitely in the scientists should know science category...

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/30/science/30profile.html?pagewanted=all

One adult American in five thinks the Sun revolves around the Earth, an idea science had abandoned by the 17th century.

http://www.gallup.com/poll/3742/new-poll-gauges-americans-general-knowledge-levels.aspx

End of the last century ( half 90's ), it was 18% for US... between UK ( 19% ) and Germany ( 16% )

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/gnxp/2011/03/who-thinks-the-sun-goes-around-the-earth/

Some will think that situation will improve with time but it is untrue... soon, we will be back in the "dark age"...

Well, Europe is worst that US when taken in full...

And how much of the Chinese engineer who make the Apple Iphone think that the sun revolves around the Earth ??? Almost half of the population is wrong there !!!

http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/02/11/us-poll-education-odd-idUSTRE71A4OI20110211

In Russia, it is around 1 on 3...

Well technically speaking neither is right. Which means ~100% of the world population has no clue.

Both the sun and earth as well as the other planets revolve around  the center of mass of the solar system. which happens to be very close to the sun due to the fact that the sun is 99+% of the mass in the solar system .

The fact that stars do orbit the center mass as well is actually what makes a discovery like this possible using doppler spectroscopy.

In this illustration the big one would be a star (the sun is a star for you aspiring writers out there) and the small one would be a planet. The + is the center of mass.

This has been another insightful lesson brought to you by Fistalis the science clown.. cause if your not learning it right your doing it wrong dumb#$%.

Well, you illustration look like these at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barycenter#Astronomy ... cute little theoric illustration... in reality, thing are a lot more complex with a lot of planet who don't rotate in sync...

The pic below show the solar system center of mass... sometine near the nucleus like in 1951 and 1990... and sometime way outside of the sun...

Yes.. but a more complex illustration doesn't change anything. What in my post are you disputing? Notice your illustration doesn't show the movement of the sun.. and assumes the sun is stationary. Which muddles the facts.

Of course the center mass is going to fluctuate with movement of the sun and planets (aka said mass). Its not that the center of mass itself is moving but that the mass itself is changing position, altering where the center of mass is. But that doesn't change the fact that the sun and planets orbit the center mass.

Personally I think the illustration I chose was adequate for illustrating my point. Since the center of mass compared to the suns position isn't important when speaking of the fact that the sun and planets all orbit the center of mass.

 A better illustration would be the suns position in relation to the center of mass.. showing how its orbit is effected by it. Rather than an illustration which assumes the sun is stationary. That particular illustration even gives the idea of the age old myth that the sun is the center of the solar system. Which technically speaking it isn't. While the illustration is technically correct.. it gives the wrong idea, which might lead aspiring writers to make bad assumptions and misinform everyone else.

So what you are saying is that the world, sun, universe, does in fact revolve around me? I already knew that. 

Even if the sun wobbles/rotates, if the mass is centered in the sun, it's part of the sun. We orbit it, it orbits about the galaxy which is zipping about in our cluster and so on and so on.

It's not so much a detailed question of right or wrong on the orbit, but when theologians say that the universe is a layered backdrop of colored glass that spins about the earth, I'm fairly sure they're off on their conceptualization.

I do buy into Sean's idea, though. All hail Sean, avatar of the Flying Spaghetti Monster!

The universe revolves around Jesus!  Everyone who isn't going to burn in hell knows that!

I'm Jewish. Do I get a free pass?

and here is where thoumsins illustration becomes pertinent. The center of mass isn't always in the Sun and many times its outside of it. Although it always is very close (astronomically speaking) to it

Promises, promises.

So the first thing, I think the science writer just made a writing mistake.   Of course the earth doesn't revolve around the sun every 28 days.

For the second thing, you can say anything is the center of the universe you want.   Everything is relative.  But that doesn't mean it makes the mathematical modelling easier.  In this case, sure, we can say the sun revolves around the earth.  I mean every 365.25 days it makes a full circle around the earth, right?   The problem comes when trying to model the other 8 planets and their relationship to the earth.  It's not so much that the sun doesn't revolve around the earth--it's that the other 8 planets don't.  Oh I'm sorry, did I say 8?  I meant 7.  Even that is relative.  But anyway, if you model the earth as the center, modelling the sun's path around the earth is easy--it's the other 7 planets, Pluto, the asteroid belt, the comets--everything else BUT the sun and moon you have to worry about, because they follow very weird parabolic trajectories around the earth.  BUT--if you model the sun as the center, everything becomes very easy:  all the planets follow very simple oblong-shaped paths around the sun.   And from there, it's easy to calculate the projected distance from the earth to any other planet at any given time.   Likewise, you could project Jupiter's moons relative to the earth if you wanted to, but you don't want to.  It's far-and-away easier to model Jupiter's moons as revolving around Jupiter and then calculate their distance to earth from there.

So there is no hard rule that says the sun absolutely has to be the center of everything.  It's just that's what's most easily modelled.  Also this discovery that the planets all follow these arcs around the sun has ramifications when theorizing about the origins (and future) of the solar system, such as it indicates that maybe the sun was here first and the other planets got caught up in orbit--not the other way around.