By Khadija Khan Nearly 400 years ago, the Italian astronomer and physicist Galileo Galilei was convicted of heresy. His crime was to confirm the view that the sun rather than the earth was the centre of the solar system. While today we believe this to be a scientific fact, the Catholic Church at that time believed it was the sun that moved around the earth – a fact of scripture that could not be disputed. Galileo caused huge offence to the Church and, as a result, was prosecuted and put under house…