Are the stars in the sky uniformly distributed, or are they contained in some particular shape? Based on the Milky Way, it seems like the latter. Kant suggested that the Sun was one of many stars in a lens-like shape, and that the Milky Way was what we see when we look along the long axis of the lens. He suggested that there were other galaxies, but this all remained unproven.
A visual chronology of Asimov's ~1500 scientific inventions and discoveries.
