WEBVTT - How Did Galileo Become the First Superstar Scientist? 0:00:01.920 --> 0:00:06.520 Welcome to brain Stuff, a production of iHeart Radio, Hey 0:00:06.559 --> 0:00:11.959 brain Stuff Lauren Bogelbaum here today. Italian astronomer, physicist, and 0:00:12.039 --> 0:00:15.840 author Galileo Galilei, who lived from fifteen sixty four to 0:00:15.960 --> 0:00:19.560 sixteen forty two, might be most famous for having been 0:00:19.560 --> 0:00:22.400 put on trial for heresy by the Roman Inquisition in 0:00:22.520 --> 0:00:26.159 sixteen thirty three. That event has come to symbolize the 0:00:26.200 --> 0:00:30.120 conflict between adherence to religious dogma and the intellectual freedom 0:00:30.200 --> 0:00:35.440 required by science. Galileo's trouble with authorities actually stemmed not 0:00:35.600 --> 0:00:38.080 from his own work, but from his advocacy of Polish 0:00:38.120 --> 0:00:42.600 astronomer Nicolas Copernicus's heliocentric theory that the Sun, not the Earth, 0:00:43.000 --> 0:00:46.720 was the object around which the planets revolved. Galileo was 0:00:46.800 --> 0:00:49.840 forced to renounce those views to avoid torture and execution, 0:00:50.280 --> 0:00:52.160 and had to spend the last years of his life 0:00:52.280 --> 0:00:56.960 under house arrest. Even so, Galileo ultimately won the argument. 0:00:57.600 --> 0:01:00.400 Three and a half centuries later, Pope John Paul Second 0:01:00.480 --> 0:01:02.560 gave a speech in which he not only said that 0:01:02.600 --> 0:01:05.840 the Church's persecution of Galileo had been a mistake, but 0:01:05.959 --> 0:01:09.320 also praised him as a brilliant mind who quote practically 0:01:09.480 --> 0:01:15.200 invented the experimental method. But all of that bruhaha, isn't 0:01:15.319 --> 0:01:18.880 the most important thing about Galileo, a scientific giant whose 0:01:18.880 --> 0:01:22.560 discoveries forever changed humans views of both the cosmos and 0:01:22.680 --> 0:01:25.640 the physical world in which we live, and helped establish 0:01:25.720 --> 0:01:29.520 the way in which modern scientists do science. He also 0:01:29.600 --> 0:01:33.360 became one of the first celebrities scientist authors, whose sixteen 0:01:33.400 --> 0:01:38.720 ten book Starry Messenger became a sensation. We spoke by 0:01:38.800 --> 0:01:42.760 email with Paula Finland, the Ubaldo Pierratti, Professor of Italian 0:01:42.880 --> 0:01:45.600 history and co director of the Patrick Soupy Center for 0:01:45.680 --> 0:01:49.240 the History and Philosophy of Science at Stanford University. She 0:01:49.360 --> 0:01:53.800 said Galileo is an interesting example of a versatile Renaissance mind. 0:01:54.400 --> 0:01:57.480 He loves literature, art and music as well as science. 0:01:57.840 --> 0:01:59.720 He knows how to draw, and he certainly knows how 0:01:59.800 --> 0:02:03.080 to fight with eloquence. He's fascinated with how things work 0:02:03.440 --> 0:02:06.480 and visits artisans to know more. I see him as 0:02:06.520 --> 0:02:09.160 one of the culminating products of the Renaissance, living in 0:02:09.200 --> 0:02:11.959 the age of the Reformation. Yet what he does with 0:02:12.080 --> 0:02:15.680 his knowledge launches a new age of science and observation. 0:02:17.200 --> 0:02:20.440 Galileo was born in Pisa, Italy, in fifteen sixty four, 0:02:20.960 --> 0:02:23.560 one of six or seven children of a musician named 0:02:23.639 --> 0:02:28.160 Vincenzo Galilei. In Galileo's youth, his family moved to Florence. 0:02:29.120 --> 0:02:32.079 After getting his early education at a monastery. Galileo was 0:02:32.120 --> 0:02:34.359 sent by his father in fifteen eighty one to the 0:02:34.440 --> 0:02:36.919 University of Pisa, where he was supposed to earn a 0:02:36.960 --> 0:02:40.640 medical degree, but Galileo didn't have much interest in healing 0:02:40.720 --> 0:02:44.000 the human body. Instead, he was curious about the world 0:02:44.080 --> 0:02:47.760 around him and started physics experiments, some of them challenging 0:02:47.800 --> 0:02:51.560 the views of the classical Greek philosopher Aristotle. In fifteen 0:02:51.600 --> 0:02:54.280 eighty five, he left the university without earning a degree 0:02:54.600 --> 0:02:58.760 and began teaching mathematics, another of his interests. Eventually, his 0:02:58.880 --> 0:03:02.000 reputation grew so much that in fifteen eighty nine he 0:03:02.120 --> 0:03:05.040 was invited back to the university to head the math department. 0:03:06.480 --> 0:03:09.600 In fifteen ninety two, Galileo moved to Venice and took 0:03:09.639 --> 0:03:12.440 a better paying post at the University of Padua, where 0:03:12.480 --> 0:03:15.440 he spent the next eighteen years teaching math in astronomy. 0:03:16.320 --> 0:03:18.720 During that time, he began a relationship with a woman 0:03:18.840 --> 0:03:22.120 named Marina Gamba, with whom he eventually had two daughters 0:03:22.200 --> 0:03:26.000 and a son. In sixteen o nine, while still at 0:03:26.040 --> 0:03:29.280 the university, Galileo heard about a Dutchman who had visited 0:03:29.360 --> 0:03:33.480 Venice and showed off a new invention, the telescope. Galileo 0:03:33.560 --> 0:03:36.040 decided to make his own version and taught himself how 0:03:36.120 --> 0:03:40.640 to grind lenses to an even higher magnification. But we 0:03:40.760 --> 0:03:44.080 also spoke by email with Alan Hirschfeld, a physics professor 0:03:44.160 --> 0:03:47.320 and director of the U Mass Dartmouth Observatory and the 0:03:47.400 --> 0:03:52.040 author of the book Starlight Detectives, How Astronomers, inventors, and 0:03:52.160 --> 0:03:56.640 Eccentrics Discovered the modern Universe. He said he was an 0:03:56.720 --> 0:03:59.920 excellent craftsman who read descriptions of the instrument and made 0:04:00.040 --> 0:04:03.120 the most powerful telescopes at the time. He could see 0:04:03.200 --> 0:04:07.240 what others could not, and therefore his observations were groundbreaking. 0:04:08.920 --> 0:04:12.920 Perhaps the most important of Galileo's astronomical discoveries were his 0:04:13.040 --> 0:04:17.000 revelations about the Moon's topography and how its mountains, valleys, 0:04:17.000 --> 0:04:20.960 and plains are comparable to those on Earth. Hirschfeld explained, 0:04:21.440 --> 0:04:25.200 it's a material world in space, not some special celestial 0:04:25.240 --> 0:04:30.200 body made of divine substance. Galileo's discovery of Jupiter's moons 0:04:30.240 --> 0:04:34.480 and their movement was another breakthrough. Hirschfeld said, they keep 0:04:34.600 --> 0:04:37.160 up with Jupiter as it moves, whether it moves around 0:04:37.160 --> 0:04:39.560 the Earth or around the Sun, depending on one's beliefs, 0:04:39.920 --> 0:04:43.120 but Jupiter's moons do not get left behind, as critics 0:04:43.160 --> 0:04:46.120 of Copernicus claimed our moon would if Earth were moving 0:04:46.160 --> 0:04:49.440 around the Sun. Jupiter and its moons provide a model 0:04:49.560 --> 0:04:52.599 of what the Solar System is like small bodies orbiting 0:04:52.800 --> 0:04:57.920 the larger body. Galileo also observed the Milky Way consists 0:04:58.000 --> 0:05:00.560 of stars, most of which are you faint to be 0:05:00.640 --> 0:05:05.080 seen individually by unassisted human eyes, meaning that we learned 0:05:05.200 --> 0:05:09.200 that there are more stars and indeed more cosmos out 0:05:09.240 --> 0:05:13.720 there than anyone had previously thought. He also discovered that 0:05:13.720 --> 0:05:17.880 the planet Venus has changing crescent phases. But we spoke 0:05:17.960 --> 0:05:21.120 by email with Larry Marshall, and emeritus professor of physics 0:05:21.160 --> 0:05:25.160 at Gettysburg College. He said the observation that Venus went 0:05:25.240 --> 0:05:28.040 through a full cycle of phases from new to crescent 0:05:28.160 --> 0:05:31.839 to full and back was totally incompatible with the geocentric 0:05:31.880 --> 0:05:34.760 model of the universe. It could only be explained if 0:05:34.880 --> 0:05:37.080 Venus went around the Sun in an orbit that was 0:05:37.200 --> 0:05:40.160 smaller than the Earth's orbit around the Sun, in other words, 0:05:40.240 --> 0:05:45.720 the Copernican model. Though his astronomical discoveries made him a 0:05:45.760 --> 0:05:50.159 scientific celebrity, Galileo also made important discoveries in physics, going 0:05:50.240 --> 0:05:52.720 back to his early years at the University of Pisa. 0:05:53.720 --> 0:05:58.160 For example, Galileo disproved the Greek philosopher Aristotle's belief that 0:05:58.279 --> 0:06:01.920 heavier objects fall faster than lighter ones, and instead showed 0:06:01.960 --> 0:06:04.120 that objects tend to fall at the same speed no 0:06:04.279 --> 0:06:07.000 matter what their weight or shape, which became known as 0:06:07.080 --> 0:06:11.400 the law of falling bodies. In legend, Galileo accomplished this 0:06:11.520 --> 0:06:13.840 by dropping a cannon and a musket ball from the 0:06:13.920 --> 0:06:17.520 leaning Tower of Pisa, though modern historians have cast doubt 0:06:17.640 --> 0:06:21.520 upon that story. Galileo also discovered that the time taken 0:06:21.600 --> 0:06:25.360 for a pendulum to complete complete one swing was independent 0:06:25.520 --> 0:06:27.800 of the length of the ark, which led him to 0:06:27.880 --> 0:06:32.560 create a design for pendulum clock. But his most important 0:06:32.560 --> 0:06:36.160 breakthrough may have been discovering the concept of inertia that 0:06:36.320 --> 0:06:39.880 bodies at rest tend to remain at rest, which eventually 0:06:40.080 --> 0:06:42.640 became the first of the three laws of motion described 0:06:42.720 --> 0:06:47.200 by British physicist and mathematician Isaac Newton. In the process, 0:06:47.360 --> 0:06:51.560 Galileo also helped establish the way that today's scientists do science. 0:06:52.200 --> 0:06:57.400 Hirschfeld said he fostered the paradigm of physical experiment, precise measurement, 0:06:57.680 --> 0:07:01.560 and objective observation. Let nature speak as the saying goes, 0:07:01.920 --> 0:07:06.080 as opposed to logical inference based on preconceived notions about nature. 0:07:06.880 --> 0:07:09.920 The language of nature, he wrote, is mathematical, and one 0:07:10.040 --> 0:07:18.360 must learn to understand that language. Today's episode was written 0:07:18.360 --> 0:07:21.040 by Patrick J. Tiger and produced by Tyler Playing. For 0:07:21.160 --> 0:07:23.280 more on this and lots of other weighty topics, visit 0:07:23.320 --> 0:07:25.840 how stuff works dot com. Brain Stuff is production of 0:07:25.920 --> 0:07:28.800 I Heart Radio or more podcasts. My heart Radio visit 0:07:28.840 --> 0:07:31.480 the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen 0:07:31.600 --> 0:07:32.480 to your favorite shows.