by Andy Rivkin
Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems
Galileo Galilei
- Ptolemy (147) proposed a cosmogony whereby the planets and Sun all revolve in circular orbits around the Earth. This work has been largely accepted ever since
- However, recent theoretical work in Poland has suggested instead that the planets, including the Earth, all revolve around the Sun (Copernicus, 1543). This finding, if confirmed, has deep, meaningful, and profound philisophical and intellectual ramifications destined to change the way Western civilization considers its environment
- Recent observations at Hveen Observatory (Brahe and Kepler, 1598; Kepler and Brahe 1601) seem to bear out the difficulty of fitting the positions of Mars to circular orbits. Naked-eye planetary astrometry, however, seems to have been pushed to its limits
My Research
- Invention of the telescope
- Discovery of the phases of Venus
- Discovery of satellites of Jupiter
- Discovery of sunspots
- Discovery that falling bodies move independent of their weights
- Discovery of craters on the Moon
Some Implications and Questions
- The results of my observations show that the Earth is not the center of the solar system, and that the planets revolve around the Sun, except for those which orbit Jupiter. According to recent numberical modelling by Kepler (1609), these orbits are ellipses, not circles.
- The surface of the Moon is not a smooth, perfect sphere. Neither is the surface of the Sun.
- The planets are held in their orbits by some force, similar to the force that moves falling bodies, and not by crystalline spheres.
- Larger telescopes will help revolutionize astronomy
- The Enlightenment has begun
Questions from the audience
- Uwe Fink: Where are your error bars? These observations are notoriously difficult. Are you certain that you aren't being deluded by Satan?
- Galileo: I'm sorry Dr. Fink. Statistical methods haven't yet been invented, so I cannot give you a precise estimate of uncertainties. I do not believe I was deluded by Satan.
- Mike Drake: As someone who studied the Moon as a graduate student, I have a serious problem with your comment about craters. Guy Consalmagno and I showed that geochemically the Moon must be a perfect sphere, and that craters are impossible.
- Galileo: I'm sorry Dr. Drake, but geochemistry hasn't been invented yet, either. In fact, neither geology or chemistry have been invented yet.
- Alex Dessler: Look, this whole geocentric/heliocentric thing is a dead horse that people would come up with every few years to make the papers. When I was editor of GRL, we did a whole series of papers about the subject, and in the end, noone was happy. These Copernican results are always published in books, not in peer-reviewed literature. Why should I believe this now?
- Galileo: I'm sorry you feel that way, Dr. Dessler. I can assure you that the higher spatial resolution of the telescope will allow convincing data to be obtained.
- Don Hunten: You claim you discovered the telescope, but I was the chair of a session at the Amsterdam DPS in 1605 where a Dutch group previously claimed that they invented it...
- Galileo: Well, I wasn't expecting a kind of Inquisition!
(People run in, grab Galileo)
Inquisition: Noone expects the Spanish Inquisition! Off to jail with you!