Cosmology serves as the scientific study of the vast nature and origin of the cosmos. The term first appeared in English in 1656 within Thomas Blount's Glossographia with the meaning of speaking about the world.
Greek philosopher Anaximander proposed a model where the Earth floats very still in the center of the infinite without support from anything. Aristotle described a system of hollow concentric wheels filled with fire surrounding the Earth like bark on a tree.
Nicolaus Copernicus published De revolutionibus orbium coelestium during 1543 describing a heliocentric system where planets orbit the Sun. This work established a new framework for understanding planetary motion before Isaac Newton released Principia Mathematica in 1687.
The Great Debate took place on the 26th of April 1920 at the meeting of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences in Washington, D.C. Edwin Hubble detected Cepheid Variables in the Andromeda Galaxy during 1923 and 1924 to resolve the conflict.
Astronomers reported on the 1st of December 2014 at the Planck 2014 meeting in Ferrara, Italy that the universe is 13.8 billion years old. This composition includes 4.9% atomic matter, 26.6% dark matter and 68.5% dark energy.