Galileo Galilei

Submitted by Temlakos on

Galileo Galilei. Portrait by Justus Sustermans painted in 1636. National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London.Galileo Galilei (1564-1642) discovered the laws of falling bodies and of the parabolic path of projectiles. He studied the motions of pendulums, and he investigated mechanics and the strength of materials.

God is known ... by Nature in His works, and by doctrine in His revealed word.1

 

...the glory and greatness of Almighty God are marvellously discerned in all his works and divinely read in the open book of heaven. For let no one believe that reading the lofty concepts written in that book leads to nothing further than the mere seeing of the splendour of the sun and the stars and their rising and setting, which is as far as the eyes of brutes and of the vulgar can penetrate...2

1Galileo Galilei, Discoveries and Opinions of Galileo, trans. Stillman Drake (Garden City: Doubleday, 1957), 183.
2Ibid., 196

Galileo Galilei showing the Doge of Venice how to use the telescope RETURN TO LIST OF DECEASED INDUCTEES.

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18 Comments

Submitted by Temlakos on

And the church mistakenly followed Aristotle when it came to the place of the earth in the cosmos. The earth need not be the center of the universe to be the center of Divine attention. But the Galaxy is likely the center of the universe. We know now that the entire universe rotates about an axis that is not only parallel to but coincident with the axis of rotation of the Galaxy, and in the same direction.

BTW: the name "Milky Way Galaxy" is redundant. "The Galaxy" is the correct name for the large, pinwheel-shaped collection of stars that includes our Sun.

Submitted by WB (not verified) on

Galileo 1) took Augustine's position on Scripture, i.e, don't take every passage literally and 2) was convicted by the church for heresy due to his (correct) theory of heliocentrism. Thought you would want to know the facts about your inductee!

Submitted by John Casey (not verified) on

Right, galaxies, yet in the midst of ALL you see in picture one, we are at the center of it.

How small minded you are.

Submitted by Temlakos on

What you fail to realize is that the vector sum of all vectors having our Galaxy as origin, and extending toward each of those other galaxies, is: Zero.

I'd say that puts us at the center.

Submitted by John Casey (not verified) on

So because our galaxy is used as a reference point, that makes it a law?

Submitted by Temlakos on

The Galaxy is more than a reference point. Remember: the vector sum of the distances of all objects beyond the Galaxy is: zero. That puts our Galaxy at the center of the universe.

Edwin Hubble knew this. But he was afraid of what that implied. So he invented that ridiculous geometrical fudge. And he avowed that the Galaxy must be denied recognition of its special place at all costs.

Submitted by Zipperback (not verified) on

I'm a bit behind on my astronomy.

How does one determine the rotation of the entire universe without a non-rotating fixed point that's not part of the universe?

You can say that the majority of deep space objects are rotating in the same direction as The Galaxy but a more accurate and less solipsistis interpretation is that The Galaxy rotates in the typical fashion of average galaxies.

Also the word "sun" is only capitalized under special circumstances. You're half correct.

http://www.dailywritingtips.com/how-to-treat-geological-and-astronomical-terms/
http://grammar.ccc.commnet.edu/grammar/capitals.htm

The Bible (KJV), for example uses the phrase "the sun" almost 2000 times, never is it capitalized.

Submitted by Temlakos on

As I said, someone calculated a resultant of all the angular momentum vectors. That resultant not only parallels but coincides with the axis of rotation of our Galaxy. This applies not only to galaxies but to groups, clusters, and superclusters.

Amazing, is it not?

Submitted by dadhaver (not verified) on

citation? since when?

the universe's boundaries, if there were any, would be defined by when spacetime ends, not by how much matter is present.

even if this were true, we don't know how much matter is in the universe because we can't see beyond the cosmological horizon - the universe could be far bigger than what we can observe, perhaps infinitely large, not to mention it is expanding rapidly.

have you studied any physics or cosmology past the 1920s?

Submitted by Temlakos on

If you bothered to read my biography here, you would know that I am a graduate of Yale College. While there, I did take a physics course. And since then, I have kept up fairly well with the astronomical literature.

If by "expertise" you mean "the ability to make up fanciful narratives out of the whole cloth to support an origin for the universe other than the Divine," then no, I am not an expert. But I find no shame in not being an expert on lying.

Now then: this conversation is concluded. I have better things to do with my time than to waste it on inveterate atheists.

Submitted by Temlakos on

The boundaries of the universe are the boundaries of the matter in it.

Submitted by dadhaver (not verified) on

Even if our galaxy were the center of the universe this proves absolutely nothing about creationism, god, etc.

And there is no way to prove we are at the "center" of the universe - to verify this we would have to know where the boundaries of the universe, if any, are.

Submitted by dadhaver (not verified) on

"We know now that the entire universe rotates about an axis that is not only parallel to but coincident with the axis of rotation of the Galaxy, and in the same direction."

No, this is incorrect. The universe doesn't rotate around an axis. There are hundreds of billions of galaxies all moving away from each other in all directions at the same speed as space continues to expand. Check your facts before you go posting this blather on the internet and making a fool of yourself.

"BTW: the name “Milky Way Galaxy” is redundant. “The Galaxy” is the correct name for the large, pinwheel-shaped collection of stars that includes our Sun." - No, it is not. The Milky Way Galaxy is the correct name. Calling it "The Galaxy" implies there is only one galaxy, when in fact there are in excess of hundreds of billions.

Submitted by Temlakos on

You evidently have not kept up with the literature. Astronomers, examining the spin of a large number of objects, found that they spun in the same direction as the Galaxy. And the resultant of their angular-momentum vectors overlapped that of the Galaxy and pointed in the same direction.

And if I accepted your second point, then I would have to call our Sun the "Sun Sol."

Instead, we use the word "Sun" (capitalized) to refer to the Sun we know, and the word "sun" (lowercase) to refer to any star having an "extrasolar planet," to describe the particular star that said planet orbits.

Similarly, "Galaxy" (capitalized) is our own, and "galaxy" (lowercase) refers to any formation of stars similar to the one we live in, but not identical.

Submitted by Bass (not verified) on

Terry, I am going to have to question your expertise in astrophysics after a comment like that.

And ask for some citations.

Submitted by Temlakos on

I have published on this very subject elsewhere. In a day or two, I'll have another post on Creation News. Probably it will never satisfy you, but I'll do it anyway, as soon as I have time.

Submitted by Temlakos on

They are galaxies (small g) other than our own. I never said they didn't exist.