Lessons Inspired by Galileo: Looking to the Stars and Building Our Legacy
Image credit: Greg Rakozy.
Galileo Galilei (15 February 1564 – 8 January 1642). This Italian naturalist’s legacy looms large over the sciences. He didn’t invent the telescope; it probably came out of an eyeglass maker’s shop. However, Galileo worked tirelessly to improve its design through thousands of experiments.
And eventually he turned his telescope to the sky. What he found there disrupted the accepted picture of how the universe was structured and how it worked. (Copernicus had tried to tell folks about heliocentrism, 50 years earlier. His efforts didn’t go over well. Neither did the earlier work of other scientists wrestling with the same questions.)
💡 In The Starry Messenger, which Galileo published in 1610, he rhapsodized about the “most beautiful and delightful sight”, the excitement of seeing new phenomena, and his pride in the instrument that made these new insights possible.
Image credit: Prachaya Roekdeethaweesab, from Italy banknote featuring Galileo Galilei.
There were thousands more stars than he had thought! And the moon had bumps and craters! Galileo also thought he had spotted four new planets, which turned out to be four moons of Jupiter.
I’m especially fond of Galileo’s sunspot drawings. Click the “animate” box here, and you can see how 400+ years ago he used a few sheets of paper and his technology to ask important questions about the sun. Today, astronomers are using newer tech like AI to continue extracting insights from this Renaissance thinker.
Each one of these observations, and others, challenged the status quo. And we know how that turned out (spoiler alert: Inquisition). Although today we celebrate Galileo as someone who stood up and spoke his truth, the story is a little more complicated than that. Even he had the sense to control his messaging at times.
💡 How did Galileo manage to make these breakthroughs, and more, throughout his remarkable career? Did he have an advanced understanding of optics? Not really. I think of him more as a hardware guy, endlessly employing the design-build-test-refine loop. He was also an argument guy, a dialogue guy, and it was through his interactions with his peers (by turns maddening and illuminating) that he teased out new understanding that we still employ centuries later.
I bet that Galileo would be stunned by our imaging capabilities today—in particular stunning equipment like the recently launched James Webb Telescope. NASA has a fun tracker website that your family can use to follow the action as the telescope journeys to L2, a spot 1.5 million km away that’s ideal for observations of the universe.
I also wager that Galileo would be thrilled by our species’ continuing efforts—and passion—to break free from our home planet. So am I! This is why I’ve been excited to be involved with Humanity in Deep Space, Explore Mars, Ad Astra Media, Astreas, and other groups that are looking to the stars.
💡 Look to the stars not because the Earth is disappointing, but because there is so much more out there. Galileo and his telescope helped us see that.
Just like Galileo, we look, we think, we invent, we test, we struggle, and we dream. This is how we’ll build our legacy for future generations—together.
About Tiffany
Dr. Tiffany Vora speaks, writes, and advises on how to harness technology to build the best possible future(s). She is an expert in biotech, health, & innovation.
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