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Why do we say that the earth moves around the sun?

I should preface by stating that I'm not a physicist and my knowledge of the theory of relativity is limited to what Encarta told me in the 90's (does everyone know what Encarta was?) and I don't even understand the Wikipedia entry!

Encarta had a video on the theory of relativity that basically explained in part that (i suppose in vacuum) there's no way to tell which body is in motion relative to another (without observing from outside the space in which they are moving i suppose).

so my question is whether this warrants a reassessment of our reliance on a heliocentristic model. is it possible the planets do not revolve the way we've modeled them? i'm not necessarily talking geocentric, just different from our current model. should we be exploring this?

ps -- while researching this question i came across geocentricity.com, the first sentence of which starts "Of all the sciences, the Holy Bible..." I'm really not interested in starting a religious debate so please keep answers strictly physics related (though i hope i don't have to even say that on physics.stackexchange.com!)

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statichippo
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    Possibly related: http://physics.stackexchange.com/q/10933/2451 – Qmechanic Jun 16 '11 at 19:30
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    @statichippo: you are certainly right, you don't need to tell us not to get into a religious debate! ;-) From a glance at that website, it appears to be religious propaganda. It is not a valid source of information as far as we are concerned here. – David Z Jun 16 '11 at 19:38
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    I would go as far as to say this is a duplicate of the question in @Qmechanic's comment. @statichippo: regarding your last paragraph - indeed, no need to worry about that here :) – qftme Jun 16 '11 at 19:46
  • Fair enough, I'll close it as such. statichippo, if that other question doesn't give you the answer you want, you can edit this one to explain specifically what you are still confused about, and then it could be reopened. – David Z Jun 16 '11 at 19:56
  • thanks all. if i hadn't used technical terms in my title i probably would have found that post! – statichippo Jun 16 '11 at 19:58
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    One part of the question was not answered: "whether one should be exploring different models" I was answering that when you closed it. The answer is that we are anyway using different models according to our needs. When calculating trajectories of rockets we use the geocentric system. When sending a satellite to the sun the heliocentric system . When studying the sun's influence the heliocentric one. When studying the tides the geocentric one, etc. – anna v Jun 16 '11 at 20:00

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