Galileo Returns to the Vatican




Four centuries after Galileo Galilei was ordered by the Catholic Church to come to Rome and stand trial on suspicion of heresy, a statue of the Italian astronomer will be erected at the Vatican. 2009 is the International Year of Astronomy, which celebrates 400 years since Galileo first used a telescope to study the heavens, and the Vatican plans to join in commemorating the anniversary. Galileo was condemned to house arrest by the Catholic Church in 1633 because his belief that the sun was at the center of the solar system, and not the Earth, contradicted the bible.
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Galileo Galilei (15 February 1564 – 8 January 1642) was a Tuscan (Italian) physicist, mathematician, astronomer, and philosopher who played a major role in the scientific revolution. His achievements include the first systematic studies of uniformly accelerated motion improvements to the telescope and consequent astronomical observations, and support for Copernicanism.

Galileo's empirical work was a significant break from the abstract Aristotelian approach of his time.

Galileo has been called the "father of modern observational astronomy",
the "father of modern physics"
the "father of science",and
“the Father of Modern Science.”

The motion of uniformly accelerated objects, taught in nearly all high school and introductory college physics courses, was studied by Galileo as the subject of kinematics. His contributions to observational astronomy include the discovery of the four largest satellites of Jupiter, named the Galilean moons in his honour, and the observation and analysis of sunspots. Galileo also worked in applied science and technology, improving compass design.

Galileo's championing of Copernicanism was controversial within his lifetime. The geocentric view had been dominant since the time of Aristotle, and the controversy engendered by Galileo's opposition to this view resulted in the Catholic Church's prohibiting the advocacy of heliocentrism as potentially factual, because that theory had no decisive proof and was contrary to the literal meaning of Scripture. Galileo was eventually forced to recant his heliocentrism and spent the last years of his life under house arrest on orders of the Inquisition.

The phases of Venus, observed by Galileo in 1610

So much more to read and see..https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galileo_Galilei

Legacy

* The four large moons of Jupiter discovered by Galileo (Io, Europa, Ganymede and Callisto) are often referred to as the 'Galilean moons'.
* The Galileo spacecraft was the first spacecraft to enter orbit around Jupiter, where it investigated the planet and its moons for years.
* Galileo is also the name of a proposed, European satellite navigation system.
* A transformation between inertial systems in classical mechanics is called a Galilean transformation.
* The gal, sometimes called galileo, (symbol Gal) is a non-SI unit of acceleration named after Galileo. The gal is defined as 1 centimeter per second squared (1 cm/s²).