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400 Years Ago, Galileo Discovered Four Jovian Moons
krswan writes "OK, the moons themselves are much older, but on January 7, 1610 Galileo first observed '4 fixed stars' surrounding Jupiter. Observations of their changing positions led Galileo to postulate they were really moons orbiting Jupiter, which became further evidence against Aristotelian Cosmology, which led to problems with the Roman Catholic Church, etc... Jupiter will be low in the southwest (in the Northern Hemisphere) after sunset this evening — nothing else around it is as bright, so you can't miss it. Celebrate by pointing binoculars or a telescope at Jupiter and checking out the moons for yourself."
Talk about a late slashdot story
Table-ized A.I.
400 years since the observation by an eminent scientist, who then turned that observation into a revolution of astronomy? The life and times of Galileo? The rise of Heliocentrism?
You know. Stuff that they said in the slashdot article?
which became further evidence against Aristotelian Cosmology, which led to problems with the Roman Catholic Church
To be fair, he also came up with this crazy-wrong idea about how the earth's motion was responsible for the tides. Also, making fun of any 17th-century Italian nobleman (Pope or otherwise) by naming a character in your book "Simpleton" (Simplicio) and strongly implying that you based it off of him.... after he's trying to give you a chance and says "write it up, try to fairly represent both points of view, okay?" ... Well, that's the just sort of social/political ineptitude that's going to get you into serious trouble. (Think of that next time you stumble into office politics.)
The World Wide Web is dying. Soon, we shall have only the Internet.
"By Jove, another moon!"
slashdot: where everyone yells sarcastic metaphors to themselves to understand the issue
... back in 1985, while underway on my ship in the U.S. Navy, middle of the Indian Ocean.
I was off watch, and went and visited a Signalman friend up above the wheel house. They had a set of huge binoculars, which they called "big eyes". The sky was crystal clear, you could clearly see the bands of the Milky Way across the sky. Found Jupiter and zoomed in as far as I could, and clearly saw some of the moons around it. It was a neat experience seeing them myself for the first time.
A minor quibble with the summary above. On January 7, 1610, Galileo only recorded 3 "fixed stars" next to Jupiter. Two of the Galilean moons, Io and Europa, were too close together for Galileo to separate with his 20x power telescope. He continued to observe three moons at most, either because one or more moons were too close to Jupiter and were lost in the glare of the planet, Callisto was too far from Jupiter and was thus out of his telescope's field-of-view, or two of the moons were too close together, during subsequent nights, until January 13, when he was able to see all four for the first time.
Wikipedia is wrong on one point. True, his first observation of all four moon at once didn't come until January 13 and he didn't realize that there were four and not three until that time, but that doesn't mean that one moon's discovery (in Wikipedia's case, Ganymede) should be attributed to that date. By that point, he had observed all four on multiple occasions, just not all four at once. And to that point he hadn't even come to the conclusion that they were in orbit around Jupiter with their own separate orbits, moving a different speeds, until two days later, let alone ascribe identities to each of the stars he saw, connecting one star he saw with another from a different day, beyond the one to the east, the one to the west, and the one in the middle.
The Gish Bar Times - Blog covering Jupiter's moon Io
Galileo!
MOON 1 [sings]:
I'm just a small moon
Nobody sees me
MOONS 2,3,4:
He's just a small moon
Smaller than Ganymede
GALILEO:
But wait! What? OH!
I think I've found Io!
MOONS 2,3,4:
He thinks he's found Io!
GALILEO:
I think I've found Io!
MOON 2:
GALILEO!
MOON 3:
GALILEO!
GALILEO:
FIGARO!
Crumb's Corollary: Never bring a knife to a bun fight.
Dude, they used a different calendar 1 year ago.
further evidence against Aristotelian Cosmology, which led to problems with the Roman Catholic Church, etc...
I know that people who repeat such things are only showing their ignorance (heck, even Wikipedia explains the controversy better), but I feel this lie gets repeated often enough that it should be addressed.
According to Wikipedia:
In its opening passage, Galileo and Guiducci's Discourse gratuitously insulted the Jesuit Christopher Scheiner,[56] and various uncomplimentary remarks about the professors of the Collegio Romano were scattered throughout the work.[57] The Jesuits were offended,[58] and Grassi soon replied with a polemical tract of his own, The Astronomical and Philosophical Balance ,[59] under the pseudonym Lothario Sarsio Sigensano,[60] purporting to be one of his own pupils.
And later:
Pope Urban VIII personally asked Galileo to give arguments for and against heliocentrism in the book,
Indeed, it was Galileo's political antagonism, not his ideas, that got him trouble. Imagine that.
There is a very simple question one can ask to determine if a someone is genuinely objective and dispassionate in their search for the truth:
The manner in which this question is answered is often quite revealing:
In much the same way that there exist Creationists who refuse to accept any evidence contrary to their opinion, even to the point of committing logical fallacies, there exist individuals who really don't read history, and just blindly accept whatever they've been told. Worse, they often repeat things which are provably false, which - aside from the damage done to the Church - call into question their ability to think rationally and perform rigorous analysis.
The Galileo fiasco - that is, the belief that the Church is somehow anti-science because of what happened to Galileo - is an interesting teaching moment. The outworn argument against Creationists, Flat-Earthers, Global-Warming deniers, etc... has always been that science is objective, dispassionate. And yet, in the Galileo fiasco, you have people who in matters of science are otherwise logical and objective, repeating something they know (or should know) is false.
Interesting.
It seems the failings of human nature apply to everyone, after all.
The society for a thought-free internet welcomes you.
Heliocentrism was NEVER a problem for the Catholic Church, Copernicus never had a problem with that many years earlier. Galileo was the pope's cousin and constantly defied the pope on his writings, never touching heliocentrism, heliocentrism was just the way they used to get him some punishment.
Score:1 Offtopic
Wow, I guess someone forgot to change someone's litterbox today.
I'll have you know that this is a musico-historical recreation of the moment of discovery of the fourth of the Galilean moons, encapsulated in a parody of a song depicting the senseless persecution of an innocent man.
My creation is also a bitter, post-modernist exploration of themes of alone-ness and alienation expressed as bodies adrift in the outer reaches of space, a veritable cri de coeur about the importance of attention to one's self-esteem and ultimate sense of being. It's a semiotical exploration of the most fundamental aspects of the human condition!
Offtopic, my keister! It's practically dripping with topicity!
(I knew that Arts degree would come in handy some day.)
Crumb's Corollary: Never bring a knife to a bun fight.
The issue isn't that Galileo was a saint, but that he had to recant under threat of torture. He's become a symbol of a time when religious powers told people what they could say, under threat of torture, prison, or death. When people exaggerate how great Galileo really was, what they're really saying is that they're thankful that part of history is behind us. Whether you love James Dobson or cringe at his name, I don't know anyone who would want to empower him with the authority to have someone tortured and killed because they published a scientific paper, right or wrong, that went against his religious views. We should all be thankful that our culture has moved beyond that.