It was Galileo who conclusively swept away the idea that the sun revolved around the Earth, who dismantled the looming edifice of Aristotelian physics.
Au contraire. It was Johannes Kepler's first law of planetary motion, which established that planetary orbits are elliptical, that proved that Copernicus was right. Galileo, in fact, regarded as a "useless fiction" Kepler's (correct) assertion that the moon caused tides, and refused to accept Kepler's finding that planetary orbits were elliptical -- though Copernicus's theory is mathematically untenable unless they are, as Copernicus himself acknowledged.
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