This morning there was another cool “Google doodle” (the drawings that celebrate something on the front page of google.com).
On August 25th 1609 Galileo Galiliei was the head of mathematics at the University of Padua in Italy showed off a telescope of his own design to the senate of what was then the city-state of Venice. His was not the first telescope, credit should be given to Dutch spectacle makers Lippershey, Metius and Janaaen.
However Galileo did greatly improve on what had come before by increasing the magnification, first to 3X, then 10X and by some accounts shortly afterwards to 30X. He was primarily showing the telescope off for military purposes and soon created a successful sideline selling them to seafarers and merchants.
It was a few months before he pointed it to the sky at night and challenged the followers of earth-centric view of the universe with direct observations of the phases of Venus that supported Copernicus’s sun-centric theory.
Among his many discoveries were moons around Jupiter, defined the Milky way as densely packed stars, measured the height of the mountains on the moon and found that the sun rotated. He was confused by the rings of Saturn, thinking they were planets, a year or two later they disappeared when they were edge onto the Earth, and much to his confusion reappeared a few years later.
He was denounced by the pope and found guilty of heresy in 1633. 359 years later Pope John Paul II admitted they may have made an error.
The telescope was one of the instruments at the center of the Scientific Revolution that changed the way the world, and universe beyond was seen. It challenged the way the universe had been thought of since Classical Greece and Aristotle’s theories about the earth being at the center of the universe.
Galileo’s orbital mechanics proved Copernicus’s theory, this work was combined with Johannes Keplers work in planetary motion by Sir Isaac Newton.
From this Newton produced the laws of motion and universal gravitation. These are the foundations of all the fun stuff theoretical physicists spend billions of euros on trying to smash particles together, or search the heavens for dark matter or any manner of big experiments. And I think that stuff is cool.
Incidentally the Doge of Venice was so impressed he gave Galileo a pay raise and tenure for life with the university.
Big day for Galileo. His is a fascinating story, founder of of modern science, mathematician, heretic and today he get’s a well deserved Google doodle.