The belief that the Earth is at the center of the universe and that the sun circles our planet went out the window in the mid-1500s, after Nicolaus Copernicus published On the Revolutions of the Celestial Spheres. It became completely discredited when Johannes Kepler added in his two cents a century later. Copernicus, by the way, came 1,800 years after Aristarchus of Samos, who posited a similar theory: that the Earth circles the sun, not the other way around. In that regard, there’s nothing new under the, em, sun.

That is, unless you’re Katheryne Thomas, the director of The Principle, a soon-to-be-released Christian documentary that promises to turn the current knowledge of our galaxy on its head by allegedly returning to the old saw that our sun circles the Earth.

According to Raw Story,

A new documentary film, narrated by a former Star Trek actress, promotes the long-ago disproven idea that the sun revolves around the Earth. … The film, which is set to be released sometime this spring, was bankrolled in part by the ultra-conservative and anti-Semitic Robert Sungenis, who maintains the blog Galileo Was Wrong.

Here’s the trailer. You’ll hear Sungenis himself claiming that “You can go on some websites of NASA to see that they’ve started to take down stuff that might hint to a geocentric universe.”

The website for the film says that The Principle is “destined to become one of the most controversial films of our time,” because it will present

… unexpected evidence of a preferred direction in the cosmos, aligned with our supposedly insignificant Earth.

Whatever that means.

“The Principle” features narration by Kate Mulgrew (“Star Trek Voyager”, “Orange Is The New Black”, and “Ryan’s Hope”), stunning animations by BUF Compagnie Paris (“Life of Pi”, “Thor”), and commentary from prominent scientists including George Ellis, Michio Kaku, Julian Barbour, Lawrence Krauss, and Max Tegmark. Tracing the development of cosmology from its inception (Stonehenge, the Great Pyramid at Giza), through the great revolution of Copernicus, to the astonishing new discoveries of Earth-oriented alignments in the largest structures of our visible universe, “The Principle” leads us face-to-face with the question, and the challenge — what does this mean for the future of mankind?

Forget Captain Kathryn Janeway. The presence of known skeptics like Krauss (pictured above) and Kaku should really raise some eyebrows. Were they tricked into doing interviews with Sungenis’ crew and made to look silly with selective editing? That’s hardly an unknown tactic for some Creationists.

Krauss has called the movie “nonsense” and said on Facebook yesterday that he didn’t give permission for footage of himself to be used, adding,

The good thing is that I am hoping that journalists contact me, in the rare chance that more than 3 people actually want to watch this garbage.. and I can tell them it is not worth watching.

I sent Krauss a message, asking if he willingly participated in the movie. Absolutely not, he replied.

Either they used footage of me from other documentaries out of context, or someone interviewed me about other things and cobbled together something to look like it supports this garbage. In any case, I have no involvement with this kind of nonsense.

More as this develops.

***Update, Tuesday 1:30 EST***: Krauss has a piece up at Slate now, in which he says he will take no legal action and prefers to kill the movie with silence.