On this day in 1633, Galileo Galilei arrived in Rome for trial before the Inquisition. He believed, based on his lengthy astronomical observations that the Earth revolved around the Sun. The Inquisition found that his opinions contradicted the Bible and he was ‘vehemently suspect of heresy’ and forced to recant. He spent the rest of his life under house arrest.
Galileo was an astronomer, physicist and engineer. He studied speed and velocity, gravity and free fall, the principle of relativity, inertia, projectile motion and also worked in applied science and technology, describing the properties of the pendulum and “hydrostatic balances”. He invented various military compasses. With an improved telescope he built, he observed the stars of the Milky Way, the phases of Venus, the four largest satellites of Jupiter, Saturn’s rings, lunar craters and sunspots. He also built an early microscope.
According to Stephen Hawking, Galileo probably bears more of the responsibility for the birth of modern science than anybody else, and Albert Einstein called him the father of modern science. Sadly, many people today, even at the highest levels of our government, still reject science and the scientific method even though advances in science and engineering have made our modern life possible.
Cristiano Banti’s 1857 painting Galileo facing the Roman Inquisition
Siri can be ruthless
This is why we strap it down…
speaks for itself
Unfortunate juxtaposition…
Holy Cow!
Here’s an amazing performance of Sing Sing Sing by the Kyoto Tachibana Senior High School band. Kyoto Tachibana High School is today an integrated Junior and Senior High School located in Kyoto. The school is named after the Tachibana tree which grows near the palace. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=souj-xWs7xs
