Are there scientists who support geocentrism?

Yes. Robert Sungenis, the Catholic apologist and author of Galileo Was Wrong and Geocentrism for Dumskies, cites a long line of physicists, from Ernst Mach and Albert Einstein to Max Born, Hans Thirring and Fred Hoyle, whose own work shows that a fixed Earth with the universe turning around it is just as valid, physically, as a moving Earth. Most of these scientists were not geocentrists themselves. His point is that their physics leaves geocentrism standing. **Einstein and Mach** In *Geocentrism for Dumskies* (2nd ed., Jan 2024), Sungenis traces the idea back to Mach: "About 30 years after Ernst Mach, in 1915 Albert Einstein used a similar concept of 'dynamic relativity' and likewise concluded that either model, the heliocentric or the geocentric, was possible." In *Galileo Was Wrong*, Volume 1 (12th ed.), Chapter 1, he says Einstein "knew instinctively, however, that the choice between a heliocentric or geocentric system was, from both a scientific and philosophical point of view, totally arbitrary," and quotes Einstein and Infeld's *The Evolution of Physics* (1938, p. 212): "The struggle, so violent in the early days of science, between the views of Ptolemy and Copernicus would then be quite meaningless. Either coordinate system could be used with equal justification. The two sentences: 'the sun is at rest and the Earth moves,' or 'the sun moves and the Earth is at rest,' would simply mean two different conventions concerning two different coordinate systems." **Max Born and Hans Thirring** In the same chapter he quotes physicist Max Born (*Einstein's Theory of Relativity*, 1962, 1965, pp. 344-345): "Thus we may return to Ptolemy's point of view of a 'motionless Earth.'" Born goes on: "This has been done by Thirring. He calculated a field due to a rotating, hollow, thick-walled sphere and proved that inside the cavity it behaved as though there were centrifugal and other inertial forces usually attributed to absolute space. Thus from Einstein's point of view, Ptolemy and Copernicus are equally right. What point of view is chosen is a matter of expediency." **Others who extended Thirring's work** In a footnote to that passage, Sungenis lists the physicists who followed: "Thirring's model has been duplicated by Barbour & Bertotti (Il Nuovo Cimento B, 38:1, 1977) and Joseph Rosen ('Extended Mach's Principle,' American Journal of Physics, Vol 49, No. 3, March 1981) using Hamiltonians." The same note names William G. V. Rosser and Christian Møller, then adds: "G. Burniston Brown ('A Theory of Action at a Distance,' Proceedings of the Physical Society, 1955) who discovered geocentrism based on Newtonian physics; Parry Moon and Domina Spencer ('Mach's Principle,' Philosophy of Science, 1959) who arrive at geocentrism using Mach's principle." In his written debate with David Palm and MacAndrew on stellar aberration, he finishes the list: "J. David Nightingale ('Specific physical consequences of Mach's principle,' 1976) who transposed the Einstein equation of Mach's principle into Newtonian physics for a geocentric universe; and several others do the same." **Fred Hoyle** He also quotes astronomer Fred Hoyle (*Nicolaus Copernicus: An Essay on his Life and Work*, p. 82): "we can take either the Earth or the Sun, or any other point for that matter, as the center of the solar system. This is certainly so for the purely kinematical problem of describing the planetary motions. It is also possible to take any point as the center even in dynamics, although recognition of this freedom of choice had to await the present century." From the same book (p. 88): "Today we cannot say that the Copernican theory is 'right' and the Ptolemaic theory is 'wrong' in any meaningful sense. The two theories are...physically equivalent to one another." **What these scientists do and do not say** Sungenis does not claim these men were geocentrists. In the same debate he puts it this way: "Of course, not many of these same physicists like that kind of system, but at least they are honest enough to admit that the 'known physics' allows it." For more on the physics, see [How does relativity affect geocentrism?](/qa/how-relativity-affects-geocentrism) and [How does modern physics actually confirm geocentrism rather than disprove it?](/qa/modern-physics-confirms-geocentrism). For the basic definition, see [What is geocentrism?](/qa/what-is-geocentrism).