The Galileo Affair

Three hundred and seventy-eight years ago today, the father of modern science turned the world right-side up with his Dialogo

At the turn of the 17th century, science was still dominated by the millennia-old ideas of Aristotle and Ptolemy -- ideas that were tightly aligned with the teachings of the Catholic Church.

But in March of 1610, the Italian astronomer Galileo Galilei published Sidereus Nuncius (Starry Messenger), a slender volume containing hefty discoveries that started to shake the scientific method from religious ideology.

Until that point, the moon was thought to have had a smooth surface (after all, the heavens were believed to have been more "perfect" than the Earth). But using a telescope, Galileo discovered that the moon was not smooth at all -- it was covered in mountains up to four miles high.

The book also described another, even more troubling discovery: four objects orbiting Jupiter.

This observation was a difficult one to accept for church leaders, as it threw into question one of the most cherished beliefs of the time: geocentrism. If Earth was at the center of the universe, with all celestial bodies revolving around it, how could Jupiter have its own moons?

In August, after Jesuit astronomers rejected these discoveries (even refusing to look through his telescope), a frustrated Galileo wrote a letter to his fellow astronomer Johannes Kepler:

"My dear Kepler, I wish that we might laugh at the remarkable stupidity of the common herd. What do you have to say about the principal philosophers of this academy who are filled with the stubbornness of an asp and do not want to look at either the planets, the moon or the telescope, even though I have freely and deliberately offered them the opportunity a thousand times? Truly, just as the asp stops its ears, so do these philosophers shut their eyes to the light of truth."

During a sermon in Florence in 1614, a Dominican friar named Tommaso Caccini publicly denounced Galileo for promoting the radical theory of heliocentrism, which was originally devised by Copernicus in his famous 1543 text De revolutionibus orbium coelestium.

On February 22, 1632, Galileo published Dialogo sopra i due massimi sistemi del mondo (The Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems).

He got permission to publish the text from the Inquisition, provided that he presented heliocentrism as merely a hypothesis and gave equal treatment to geocentrism. He didn't.

The following year, Galileo was summoned to Rome to stand trial for heresy, while his
Dialogo was placed on the church's Index Librorum Prohibitorum ("List of Prohibited Books").

The aging and ailing scientist was found guilty and sentenced to house arrest for the rest of his life. The publication of any of his past or future books was prohibited.

Still, Dialogo managed to be a bestseller. It was finally taken off the Index in 1835.

In 1966, Pope Paul VI abolished the Index.

In 1989, NASA launched an unmanned spacecraft to study Jupiter and its telltale moons.

The name of the spacecraft? Galileo, of course.

image: Galileo before the Holy Office, 19th-century painting by Joseph-Nicolas Robert-Fleury

The Final Frontier According to Ptolemy, Kennedy, Hubble and Obama

Barack Obama has threatened NASA funding cuts. He should see this picture taken by the Hubble first

Of the dozens of constellations recorded by the ancient Roman astrologer Ptolemy, there is one shaped like a fish, tucked away deep in the Southern sky. He called it Piscis Austrinus, and the star that represents this fish's mouth is also the fish's brightest light. In fact, it's one of the brightest stars in the sky.

Its name is Fomalhaut (in Arabic, Fom al-haut means "mouth of the southern whale"), a young star just 200 million years old, 25 light years away (a distance about six billion times the circumference of the Earth).

In the autumn sky, it's the only first-magnitude star seen from the mid-northern latitudes -- in cities like Shanghai, Baghdad and Casablanca. It's no wonder that Fomalhaut, appropriately known as "The Lonely Star of Autumn," has made its way into Chinese, Persian and Arabic culture.

Its mystical quality has also made its way into Western culture. One of Fomalhaut's many literary references is in "Radio Free Albemuth," a novel by American science fiction writer Philip K. Dick, where it is the origin of an alien satellite.

But now, it's something entirely alien to Fomalhaut that is looking into its region of the universe -- NASA's Hubble Space Telescope. Orbiting 360 miles above the Earth's surface, it's the first and only space telescope to view the universe using primarily visible light.

The Hubble has taken a snapshot of one of the Lonely Star's planets: Fomalhaut b, a planet three times the mass of Jupiter. The image is the first one taken of a planet circling another star other than our own, using only visible light. It is the result of eight years of NASA's research.

Speaking about America's space program in an interview with Cleveland's WKYC-TV in February, President-elect Barack Obama said, "I want to do a thorough review because some of these programs may not be moving in the right direction and I want to make sure that NASA spending is a little more coherent than it has been over the last several years."

He has said that he will fund his education plan in part by reducing NASA's budget. This seems counterintuitive.

As Mr Obama reviews NASA, he should consider Hubble's picture of Fomalhaut b and its other major -- and no doubt inspirational -- accomplishments, such as giving us the most precise age of the universe (13.73 billion years). He should give the government's full support to NASA's continued success with this extraordinary piece of modern technology.

With his famous 1961 "Race to the Moon" speech, President Kennedy inspired a generation to study science, saying, "I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the Earth. No single space project in this period will more impressive to mankind or more important for the long range exploration of space."

In his WKYC interview, Mr Obama mentioned that he grew up with "Star Trek," saying he believes in "the final frontier." He should recall Mr Kennedy's inspirational words -- and perhaps expand his knowledge of astronomy beyond sci-fi television -- before he makes a decision that could draw the frontier's border at Fomalhaut b.

Of that, Ptolemy would surely approve.

The above image, taken with the Advanced Camera for Surveys aboard NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, shows the newly discovered planet, Fomalhaut b, orbiting its parent star, Fomalhaut. (Credit: NASA, ESA, P. Kalas, J. Graham, E. Chiang, E. Kite (University of California, Berkeley), M. Clampin (NASA Goddard Space Flight Center), M. Fitzgerald (Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory), and K. Stapelfeldt and J. Krist (NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory))