In 1614 the Jesuit astronomer Christoph Scheiner and his student, Johann Georg Locher, proposed a physical mechanism to explain how the Earth could orbit the sun. An orbit, they said, is a perpetual fall. They proposed this despite the fact that they rejected the Copernican system, citing problems with falling bodies and the sizes of stars under that system. In 1651 and again in 1680, Jesuit writers Giovanni Battista Riccioli and Athanasius Kircher, respectively, considered and rejected outright this idea of an orbit as a perpetual fall. Thus this important concept of an orbit was proposed, considered, and rejected well before Isaac Newton would use an entirely different physics to make the idea that an orbit is a perpetual fall the common way of envisioning and explaining orbits.

中文翻译：

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如何让地球在 1614 年绕太阳运行

1614 年，耶稣会天文学家 Christoph Scheiner 和他的学生 Johann Georg Locher 提出了一种物理机制来解释地球如何围绕太阳运行。他们说，轨道是永恒的坠落。尽管他们拒绝了哥白尼系统，但他们提出了这一点，理由是该系统下存在落体和恒星大小的问题。1651 年和 1680 年，耶稣会作家乔瓦尼·巴蒂斯塔·里乔利 (Giovanni Battista Riccioli) 和亚他那修·基尔彻 (Athanasius Kircher) 分别考虑并彻底拒绝了将轨道视为永久坠落的想法。因此，在艾萨克·牛顿（Isaac Newton）使用完全不同的物理学使轨道是永久下降的想法成为设想和解释轨道的常用方法之前，轨道这一重要概念就被提出、考虑并拒绝了。