Centuries before Stephen Hawking, an isolated priest imagined black holes

Centuries before Stephen Hawking, an isolated priest imagined black holes

As geologists were realizing that earthly timescales were vast, astronomers began to discover that the same applied to the distances of the cosmos. In the 16th century, the Polish astronomer Copernicus had argued that it was not the Earth, but the Sun that was at the center of the universe. In the 18th century, astronomers realized that this too was wrong. The Sun was but one star among many moving through that great assembly of stars we call th…