Proposed by Heinrich Wilhelm Olbers (1758 –1840), Olbers' paradox argues that the darkness of the night sky contradicts the theory of a static universe. Olbers argued that if the universe was static, and filled with an infinite number of stars, then any line of sight from the Earth would end at the very bright surface of a star. In his poem, Eureka, Poe proposed the expansion and collapse of the universe, which provides a possible solution to the paradox.

Known as Scarab beetles, dung beetles were considered sacred in ancient Egyptian culture. They observed dung beetles emerging spontaneously from balls of dung and associated them with creation. The Egyptian god, Khepre, is depicted as a Scarab beetle (or a man with a Scarab head), and was believed to have rolled the sun across the sky every day.

Giovanni Schiaparelli (1835 – 1910) observed linear structures on the surface of Mars that he called "canali" in Italian. This means “channels” but was mistranslated into English as “canals”. This led to speculation that there were artificially constructed canals on Mars, potentially built by intelligent life on Mars, or Martians!

The Iroquois people of North America believe that Hah-nu-nah, a turtle, holds the Earth on its back and when he moves the sea gets rough and the Earth shakes.

The ancient Chinese believed that the Earth was square, while the heavens were round and domelike, supported by eight giant pillars. The goddess Nüwa repaired these pillars, destroyed in a battle between gods, and later created humans.

This theory, also known as Welteislehre, came to Hörbiger in a vision, and proposed that ice was the basic substance of all cosmic processes. Support for Hörbiger’s theory increased after his death when followers aligned the theory with the political aims of National Socialism in Germany. It was eventually adopted by Adolf Hitler as the Nazi party's official cosmology.

Tycho Brahe (1546 -1601) proposed the Tychonic system, a model where the planets orbit the Sun and the Sun and Moon orbit the Earth. The Earth is still the centre of the universe in this model – but Tycho thought it was more mathematically sound than a model where everything orbits the Earth