"Tribuna di Galileo" (Sezione di Zoologica "La Specola" del Museo di Storia Naturale dell'Università degli Studi di Firenze), Photo: Saulo Bambi – Museo di Storia Naturale/Firenze

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Galileo and the Others – Background to a Revolution in Astronomy

Four hundred years ago, the first human peered into the night sky with the aid of a telescope. Forty years ago, the first man set foot on a foreign celestial body. From the earliest observations of the regularities of celestial movement to the development of astronomy and space travel, outer space has been part of our empirical world. The astronomical observations and other scientific achievements of Galileo and his contemporaries contributed to the emergence of a new worldview during the seventeenth century. According to this worldview, the Earth was no longer the center of the universe, but rather orbited the Sun like the other planets. Events on our planet as in the heavens were subject to the same physical laws, and thus it was conceivable that other fixed stars were actually distant suns circled by planets of their own – celestial bodies that might also serve as a home to other forms of life. A special research project at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science is exploring the contexts and consequences of this epochal turning point in human history. The German-language magazine, Sterne und Weltraum, has chosen the anniversary of Galileo’s decision four hundred years ago to turn his telescope to the heavens to highlight the results. By Jürgen Renn, Jakob Staude, and Matteo Valleriani. more