Galileo Galilei BIography

Galileo Galilei Biography
In the history of the civilized world, few have contributed more to the wealth of scientific technical knowledge that we have today than the legendary Galileo Galilei. Most notably however he contributed the most to the intriguing subject of Astronomy and our knowledge of the celestial world. Born in 1564 in a time when technology was at best rudimentary and almost everything had to be done by hand, Galileo was far ahead of the learning curve for his time. His true potential and greatest accomplishments did not start however until the coming of the 17th century. The number of groundbreaking discoveries, inventions, theories, and furthering of accepted works during his time period made by Galileo is incredible. For the purposes of this biography however, the focus of his work will be his contributions to the astronomical realm.
To begin with, Galileo was a strong supporter of the Copernican theory, which at the time was a highly shunned and rejected stance by the general population. While this stand made Galileo unpopular with quite a number of powerful figures at the time, all of this negative feeling would soon be turned around by the upcoming magnificence of his greatest contribution of all time to the world of Astronomy, the telescope. In the spring of 1609, Galileo heard a rumor that a device which could view objects at great distance as if they were closer had been created in the Netherlands by a spectacle maker there. Hearing of this, Galileo rapidly changed his pace of work and focus, and on August 25th of that very same year presented the fruits of his labor to the Venetian Senate. In this short span of time, Galileo had created an optical telescope using 3 lenses of specific thickness to magnify objects at great distances. The telescope would eventually be perfected by Galileo into a magnification of 40 times at one point, which was quite the powerful instrument for so long ago. His greatest ‘invention’ however is quite controversial, as it was not truly an original creation by him. Since he had heard of the idea from someone else, he actually stole their idea. Although in his defense he did create his own telescope completely from scratch with no help or blueprints from anyone. It was this creation of his own telescope, that allowed Galileo make some of the most groundbreaking and largest additions to our astronomical knowledge ever. With his telescope, he was able to closely examine the Moon in greater detail than ever before. Galileo’s findings that the Moon was a rough, uneven, and pockmarked orb of rock in the sky were highly disputed by many scientists of the day. Some even claimed that if Galileo was seeing a rough surface on the Moon through his telescope, then the Moon actually must be covered in a smooth and transparent crystal. Making further use of his new device, Galileo then turned his attentions to Jupiter in 1610 with his then 30 magnification telescope. He immediately noticed what appeared to be 3 stars which were very close to the planet, 1 in the west and 2 in the east, and all in a straight line. After keeping careful watch over these new celestial objects, Galileo came to the conclusion that they must be satellites of some kind orbiting the planet. This conclusion was made with his observations over the coming months that the 3 objects were often in different positions relative to the planet, but always in the same line relative to each other. Galileo did not stop there though. He went on to observe that the planet Saturn had some very odd bumps next to it, which were later affirmed to be rings surrounding the planet itself. These new celestial discoveries continued over the years due to his incredibly useful telescopic instrument. He was even able to observe that Venus, like the Moon, goes through phases and cycles. While all of these discoveries were remarkably groundbreaking and changed the face of Astronomy forever, they all lead up to a final conclusion that was irrefutable in Galileo’s opinion. This was that the geocentric theory which was held as the truth by the Church and most of the scientific world at the time was completely false. Instead Galileo sided with Copernicus’ postulation of heliocentricity in the solar system. His findings in support of this theory were published and touted widely by Galileo, which ultimately led to his prosecution and condemnation as a heretic by the Church (Galileo was a religious man in fact, he just believed that the Bible could be misinterpreted). He was eventually arrested by the authorities for his ‘lies’, but ultimately only put under house arrest due to his old age and very famous scientific work. It was there that he died in 1642 at the venerable age of 78. Up to this time though he continued to conduct scientific work and stay true to his beliefs, even managing to publish a book on motion while blinded by an eye infection.