Certain preconceptions about the physical world inherited from antiquity as yet permeate our established theories of physics and cosmology. Tacitly prominent in this world view is the fact that humans evolved on a 5.97 x 10^24 kg ball of matter.One of the consequences is the "relativistic" point of view, according to which accelerometers may or may not be telling the truth, whether they fall (a = 0) or when they are "at rest" on a planet’s surface (a > 0). The result of an experiment proposed by Galileo in 1632, but not yet performed, would unequivocally prove whether this schizoid relationship with accelerometers rings true or not.An imaginary alien civilization (of Rotonians) evolved on a rotating world in which the truthfulness of accelerometers is never doubted. Adopting a Rotonian perspective leads to a model of gravity according to which the result of Galileo’s experiment dramatically conflicts with the predictions of both Newton and Einstein.The consequences of this new perspective bear on and invite a rethink of many facets of established theories of physics and cosmology. Herein we discover that the Rotonian perspective is consistent with what we actually KNOW about the physical world and -- depending on the result of Galileo’s experiment -- it opens the door to a much more coherent, contradiction-free world view, which spans all scales of size, mass, and time.