This is fairly easy. The earlier view of the solar system (geocentric) was all based on how other planets and the sun were constantly revolving the earth and we were completely stationary. The Heliocentric view has been proved to be accurate, and it is that the sun is stationary and the planets are revolving it. The similarities are that in that time, it was a continued belief that the planets were the Roman Gods, i.e. Jupiter, Neptune. Another thing is that they were correct in the Geocentric theory with the thought that the planets revolved around something.
Assuming the light takes essentially no time to reach you, the distance at which the lightning occurred can be calculated by multiplying the speed of sound by the time it takes to hear the thunder:
