Galileo's Discoveries Against The Aristotelian Principles

He made various discoveries in his lifetime, most of them going against the Aristotelian principles at the time. One of his most notable is the telescope, Galileo did not invent the telescope but he was one of the first to use to explore the sky. In 1609 he created his own telescope. he first learned of it through the existence of spyglass. He began to experiment with making telescopes, by polishing and grinding his own lenses. His telescope allowed him to see several times the magnification in comparison to other telescopes of the day. He made out through analyzing several eye-glass devices and made it through trial and error. At the time the telescope was cheaply made and would not be very impressive by modern standards.He released many of his findings in his 1610 booklet “The Starry Messenger.”

Galileo found many things that could not be explained by Aristotelian belief. He learned that the moon was a sphere and was not flat. He discovered that Venus had phases like the moon and assumed that it revolved around the sun, he also discovered that Jupiter had four revolving moons (four of Jupiter’s brightest) Galileo discovered the rings of Saturn however due to his limited technology he was unable to understand what he was seeing, referring to them as ears he discovered that none of these planets or moons revolved around the Earth.

One of Galileo’s most famous discoveries was that he noticed that the Sun had dark patches on it that were later called sunspots. He noticed the motion of the sunspots indicating that the Sun was rotating on an axis. Spots the Sun hurt the churches doctrine and scared many people, putting doubt in the Aristotelian principles that had worked for thousands of years. It was believed that everything the universe had to offer was already discovered and existed as it was the result of an unchanging perfect substance in the heavens.

Galileo found more and more evidence that supported the Copernican theory of heliocentrism, which was the belief that all the planets revolved around the sun. This created controversy with the church which believed that the earth was at the center of everything. The church was so disturbed by his new discoveries that many refused to look inside his telescope claiming that it was the work of the devil. The church soon made the Copernican theory heretical. Putting Galileo under house arrest for the rest of his life.

Although, Galileo provided many contributions to modern physics. He also was also one of earliest people to attempt to understand gravity. Galileo was a great inspiration for Isaac Newton, who was born the year he died, Newton helped complete Galileo’s theories. It is speculated that Galileo performed many experiments in order to disprove Aristotle’s idea of heavier objects falling faster through a medium than lighter objects, Galileo allegedly performed many theories dropping objects from the Tower of Pisa.

He also experimented with many balls of different sizes and weights, rolling them down ramps with various inclinations. He discovered that all the balls had the same acceleration and that their mass did not matter. He is also credited with discovering that objects thrown in the air travel along a parabola. These experiments helped Galileo discover the concept of inertia. This later became Newton’s first law of motion “An object in motion will remain in motion.”