William R. Shea

University of Padua, Italy

William R. Shea (left) with Harry Nussbaumer
William R. Shea (left) with Harry Nussbaumer

Date

1 April 2009

Host

Harry Nussbaumer

Title

Galileo's Discovery of a New World in the Heavens and a New Physics on Earth

Abstract

In the autumn of 1609 Galileo pointed his telescope to the heavens and made six important discoveries. First, the Moon has mountains and craters like the Earth, second, there are many more stars than was believed; third, the Milky Way is a congeries of starlets; fourth, Venus has phases and hence goes around the Sun; fifth, Jupiter has four satellites; and sixth there are spots on the Sun. We shall see why these discoveries were to change both our way of seeing the heavens and our assessment of our place in the cosmos. Galileo then went on explore the laws that govern terrestrial as well as celestial bodies and in the process he found that all bodies fall at the same speed regardless of their weight, and that projectiles always have a parabolic form, the two laws that became the basis from which Newton launched his theory of universal gravitation. In this lecture we shall try to look at the heavens with Galileo's eyes.

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