Galileo: Astronomy

Galileo's work in astronomy has done a lot for what for what we now know about the universe. It has also brought a bit of embarrassment for the catholic church through more recent years. All of this was over the dispute of too theories of our universe, one being the "geocentric" theory, the earth as the center of the universe, and the "heliocentric" theory the the sun is the center of the universe. At the time there was no real scientific proof of either one, until Galileo.

The "geocentric" universe was a theory by Claudius Ptolemy(100-170AD). The "heliocentric universe was devised by Nicholas Copernicus, who didn't reveal his ideas until he was on his death bed, in fear of the consequences of saying the church was wrong. The church leaned more towards the "geocentric" model. Their reasoning being it fit with the theology of Thomas Aquinas(1225-1274) he was the master of a nonmoving perfectly spherical earth at the center of our universe. Another idea that seemed logical to the church was, that the Bible said thats how it was. God had fixed the earth upon its foundation , not to be moved. Also it was hard for them to grasp that if the planet did move, why then didn't they fly off as well as everything else with it? With this logic Copernicus' theory seemed quite impossiable. In fact they took Copernicus' book and explained that is was only a mathematical exercise and not to take it seriously. Galileo, on the other hand, thought it was all right.

Galileo enhanced a Dutch spy glass and made his own telescope. With this he made many discoveries some of them right and some wrong. Galileo believed, after reading Copernicus' ideas that this "heliocentric" theory was correct. Of course he kept this quiet for years. He decided he would expand on it and find proof. What he found with his telescope was sun spots and craters on the moon, which proved the Christian idea of a "perfect heaven" wrong. Also he found four large moons of Jupiter and most importantly that Venus had phases, proving that it had to be moving around the sun as well as the earth.

What he had right was that the earth and the rest of the planets revolved around the sun. But, he and many other astronomers thought the paths of the planets were perfect circles. The reasoning behind this being that the circle is the "perfect geometric shape" and the planets way up in the heavens away from the corruption of the earth had to be perfect. In actuality they move in more of an elliptic shape. Also he was right that the moon has craters but he also had believed there are bodies of water. Galileo was right in his findings of multiple moons around Jupiter, although he hadn't found all of them before his death. What he did with all his research and findings with what was available to work with and the attitudes of the people around is quite amazing.

Galileo eventually came out publically with his agreement with Copernicus and his findings. He discovered there was nothing written saying that he could not teach the "heliocentric" idea. He was only told to express partialness to it. So he taught about the "Two Chief World Systems" of Copernicus and Aristotle. He tried to show no real bias. Only unknowingly to Galileo during this time someone had slipped files into the Vatican that stated that Galileo was prohibited from teaching the "heliocentric" theory.

When returning to Rome, Galileo learned that there was a new pope, Pope John Paul II. And even then it didn't happen until 1992. Sadly it was too hard for them to face up to the fact that they had been wrong for 346 years.