Copernicanism Research Articles

The Work of the Best and Greatest Artist: A Forgotten Story of Religion, Science, and Stars in the Copernican Revolution

The Work of the Best and Greatest ArtistA Forgotten Story of Religion, Science, and Stars in the Copernican Revolution Christopher M. Graney (bio) In 1576 the English astronomer Thomas Digges (1546–95) published his English translation of Nicholaus Copernicus’s (1473– 1543) De Revolutionibus Orbium Coelestium together with a sketch of the Copernican universe under the heading “A Perfit description of the Cœlestial Orbes” (fig. 1). Because Digges’s sketch shows the planets circling the Sun, surrounded by an infinite expanse of stars, it is often hailed as a forerunner of the modern, scientific understanding of an infinite universe in which the Earth is but a speck.1 However, Digges was illustrating not the insignificance of Earth but the greatness of a universe of stars that testified to the omnipotence and magnificence of God. Ideas such as Digges’s played a prominent role in Copernican thought, so much so that Copernicans cited Divine Omnipotence to answer one of the most powerful scientific objections to the heliocentric theory. This Copernican use of religion to answer a scientific objection to heliocentrism greatly troubled one of the most prominent defenders of geocentrism, the Italian Jesuit astronomer Giovanni Battista Riccioli (1598–1671). The story of Digges, Riccioli, and the stars challenges the modern portrayal of the Copernican Revolution as being a contest of religion [End Page 97] Click for larger view View full resolution Figure 1. Thomas Digges’s representation of an infinite Copernican universe. [End Page 98] versus science: geocentricism versus heliocentrism. It also raises questions about how historians and scientists, and in particular Catholic historians and scientists, could forget such a dynamic part of the history of ideas. Writers today commonly portray a Copernican infinite universe, such as Digges envisioned, as rendering irrelevant human beings or the Earth or even God—usually with reference to Giordano Bruno (1548–1600) being burned at the stake, supposedly for advocating such a universe. Consider, as a very recent example, some quotes from David Wootton’s newly published biography of Galileo, Galileo: Watcher of the Skies. Galileo was prepared to say that there is no way of telling whether the Universe is finite or infinite. This was dangerous territory. Bruno had argued that the universe was infinite, and that not only were the stars suns, but they were circled by innumerable inhabited planets (a view which would imply innumerable Christs, for each world would need its own saviour). Moreover, it was difficult to see how an infinite universe could be the work of a creator: an infinite universe must surely have existed (as Aristotle claimed) throughout eternity.2 And later: Indeed [heliocentrism] offered a view of the cosmos in which humankind, and the things that matter to humankind—love and hatred, virtue and vice, mortality and immortality, salvation and damnation—were irrelevant. Far from embodying a scheme of values, far from embodying a telos or purpose, Galileo’s universe appeared to be indifferent to moral and metaphysical issues, and even indifferent to our own existence. . . . Galileo’s greatest and at the same time most disturbing achievement was to recognize that the universe was not made for the sake of human beings, and that it teaches us nothing about right or wrong, and offers us neither salvation nor damnation.3 [End Page 99] The largest illustration in Watcher, aside from the frontispiece portrait of Galileo himself, is Digges’s sketch of the infinite Copernican universe.4 The notion that the vastness of the Copernican cosmos indicates purposelessness and insignificance is so common today as to be cliché. Yet Copernicans apparently were of the mind that the vastness of the universe testified to human beings about the power and magnificence of God. Copernicus himself first connects the vastness of the universe to God. In the Copernican theory, the Earth changes position with respect to the stars as it circles the Sun. That motion should reveal itself in the stars, an effect known to astronomers as “annual parallax.” Yet no such parallax appears to the naked eye. To Copernicus, this indicates that Earth’s motion around the Sun is negligible compared to the distances to the stars, and in those vast distances is seen God...

Zodiac (9)

28 | World Literature Today photo: www.flickr.com/photos/ankakay Who can find the weight of an idea? What weighs more, a metaphor or the sea? One atom eclipsed the weight of Hiroshima, a newborn is heavier than Auschwitz. A Buddhist proverb weighs more than the Himalayas. A colibri hummingbird weighs more than Polyphemus. The Copernican system of the planets is a measure of our thought. Pieces of sunken light marble the sea floor, and Skiroi’s buckthorn leaves are silver spring-scales for measuring fireflies and drops of dew. These two flowers, like the eyepieces of binoculars, reveal what lies beyond space and time. All around me, the blue metaphysics of stone. My memory is a wound – it hurts if you touch it. The stillness of a book is like a temple. And the fairy Gishto weighs significantly more than Spielberg’s dinosaurs – more, even, than Behemoth. The stomach is weighed against cannibalism, cannibalism is weighed against people, people are weighed against kings, kings are weighed against thinkers, thinkers are weighed against slaves, slaves are weighed against freedom, freedom is weighed against mortality, mortality is weighed against the law, the law is weighed against entropy, entropy is weighed against chance, chance is weighed against death, and death is weighed against the mundane . . . the mundane is weighed against forgetfulness, forgetfulness is weighed against sleep, sleep is weighed against myth, myth is weighed against instinct, instinct is weighed against fantasy, fantasy is weighed against heroism, heroism is weighed against paradox, paradox is weighed against words, words are weighed against the prophets, the prophets are weighed against manure, manure is weighed against vanity, vanity is weighed against the apocalypse, the apocalypse is weighed against the dying sea, the dying sea is weighed against the void, the void is weighed against money, money is weighed against shit, shit is weighed against TV, Zodiac (9) Moikom Zeqo January–February 2012 | 29 TV is weighed against schizophrenia, schizophrenia is weighed against coffins, coffins are weighed against the cross, the cross is weighed against Pontius Pilate, Pontius Pilate is weighed against Dante, Dante is weighed against Napoleon, Napoleon is weighed against Waterloo, Waterloo is weighed against the Holocaust, the Holocaust is weighed against wolves, wolves are weighed against lambs, lambs are weighed against utopias, utopias are weighed against dictators, dictators are weighed against God, God is weighed against Satan, Satan is weighed against . . . weighs . . . Now even the air grows old, the air bearded by a lightning bolt, the air rippling the plains – a wretched, unreliable prophet. How can I scrub the moon of Macbeth’s blood? The moon weighs our flesh, sliced by the butcher of heaven. We live in a present that’s so ancient – today’s past is yesterday’s future. The past’s present is the present’s past, the present’s future is the future’s past . . . Please, tell me: who measures our time here – the time we savor and the time we’re dead? So many yellow flowers – yellow from the sulfur all around me. Each word I utter is a cell without a prisoner. The planet falls from the hook of a rainbow. Translation from the Albanian By Anastas Kapurani & Wayne Miller Moikom Zeqo (b. 1949, Durrës, Albania) is the author of more than a dozen books of poetry and fiction as well as numerous monographs on Albanian history, literature, and culture. His book I Don’t Believe in Ghosts (2007; tr. Wayne Miller et al.) was suppressed in Albania from 1975 to 1995, and after the Communist collapse Zeqo served briefly as Albania’s minister of culture. The poem here is from Zodiac, published in Albania in 2000. Anastas Kapurani is the author of The Myth of Lasgush (2004), a critical study of the Albanian poet Lasgush Poradeci. Kapurani lives in Athens, where he teaches for the London Institute City and Guilds program. Wayne Miller is the author of three poetry collections, most recently The City, Our City (2011), and coeditor of New European Poets (2008). He lives in Kansas City and edits Pleiades. ...

<i>Eppur si Muove</i> o el Triunfo de Galileo

En la primera parte de este documento se hace un recorrido por la vida de Galileo Galilei y su lucha, a partir de sus primeras observaciones con el telescopio, a favor del sistema copernicano. Esta lucha culmina en su proceso en manos de la Inquisición, la condena de sus ideas y la obligada abjuración de las mismas. En la segunda parte se recogen algunos textos de Galileo Galilei que reflejan su manera de discutir los problemas relacionados con sus descubrimientos y con los debates que suscitaron para la astronomía de su tiempo. 2009 ha sido designado por Naciones Unidas como Año Internacional de la Astronomía, a propuesta de la Unión Astronómica Internacional (IAU) y la UNESCO. En este contexto de celebración de los 400 años desde que Galileo apuntó su telescopio al cielo, se inscribe este trabajo.DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5377/ce.v1i1.605Ciencias Espaciales 1(1) 2009

Contra Galileo: Riccioli’s “Coriolis-Force” Argument on the Earth’s Diurnal Rotation

In 1651 the Italian astronomer and physicist Giovanni Battista Riccioli (1598–1671) published his encyclopedic book, Almagestum novum, in which he presented seventy-seven arguments against the Copernican theory of the movement of the Earth, one of which foresaw an effect that physicists today attribute to the Coriolis force. Galileo Galilei (1564–1642), Isaac Newton (1642–1727), and Robert Hooke (1635–1703) investigated this argument, which raises significant questions about the nature of the opposition to the Copernican theory in the seventeenth century.

The great Martian catastrophe and how Kepler fixed it

For a few weeks every 32 years, both the Ptolemaic and Copernican predictions for the position of Mars are off by close to 5 degrees—a problem first noticed by Tycho Brahe.

The Eighteenth and Nineteenth Century Ottoman Attempts to Catch Up with Europe

The Eighteenth and Nineteenth Century Ottoman Attempts to Catch Up with Europe

The neglected early history of Geology: The Copernican Revolution as a major advance in understanding the Earth: COMMENT

Alvarez and Leitao (2010) propose a completely new way to look at the early history of geology, with the declared purpose of raising awareness among earth scientists of the historical development of their discipline, and giving a better place to earth sciences with respect to what is generally considered to constitute science within contemporary society. To that aim, they defend the thesis that the Copernican Revolution, generally assumed as the founding event of modern science, could actually be viewed as offering the very fi rst understanding of Earth as a planet, and hence as a major advancement not only in astronomy and physics but also in the fi eld of geology. The aim of the present discussion is to analyze the epistemological idea of geology on which the thesis defended by Alvarez and Leitao is grounded, because, despite the positive intentions of the authors, it risks lowering the appreciation of geology as a discipline, heavily rooted in a different and specifi c epistemology, namely that of the historical sciences. Their reasoning, by contrast, is completely biased by the defi nition of science generally assumed for physical–mathematical sciences. The idea of seeing heliocentric Copernican theory as a truly Earthcentered theory in the Alvarez and Leitao paper is based more on socialpsychology arguments than on analytical or epistemological grounds. It is certainly appealing to call attention to the change introduced by the Copernican Revolution of the meaning of the word “earth” itself, and the derivative general perception of 17 th century society. However, the “word

Este . . . Cíclope: Góngora’s Polifemo and the Poetics of Disfiguration

This essay argues that Góngora’s Fábula de Polifemo y Galatea operates in a skeptical mode, responding to an epistemological crisis that dominated seventeenth-century Spanish intellectual and artistic production. In dialogue with skeptical intellectual trends, particularly Montaigne’s brand of Pyrrhonism, Góngora’s elliptical, anamorphic poetics renders language nearly indecipherable. Underlying its monstrous appearance, however, is an elegant symmetry and intelligibility, a circumstance analogous to the cosmic incoherency of the Ptolemaic and Copernican systems resolved by Kepler’s elliptical planetary orbits. Similarly, Polyphemus’s monocular view distorts his picture of the world, a narcissistic condition exposed by the anamorphic pictorial practice Góngora translates into verse. Góngora’s poem enacts, both in plot and method, a process of desengaño in which a literary figuration becomes disfigured, creating a new figural expression of the world and exposing the contingent nature of perception and interpretation.

Observational constraints on inhomogeneous cosmological models without dark energy

It has been proposed that the observed dark energy can be explained by the effect of large-scale nonlinear inhomogeneities. In this paper, we discuss how observations constrain cosmological models featuring large voids. We start by considering Copernican models, in which the observer is not occupying a special position and homogeneity is preserved on a very large scale. We show how these models, at least in their current realizations, are constrained to give small, but perhaps not negligible in certain contexts, corrections to the cosmological observables. We then examine non-Copernican models, in which the observer is close to the center of a very large void. These models can give large corrections to the observables which mimic an accelerated Friedmann–Lemaître–Robertson–Walker model. We carefully discuss the main observables and tests able to exclude them.

Reply: The Solar System Model for the Reconstructive Ladder

Sir: “Exploration, discovery, and creative scientific research are the keys to new knowledge, and essential toward understanding our origins and destiny.”1 This statement is guiding the future of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. It also applies to our stimulating speciality perfectly. It is with great pleasure that we acknowledge the recent interest of ideas concerning the various reconstructive options that we can offer our patients in need today. The recent stimulating letter by Valentina Giordano et al. from Italy entitled “The Solar System Model for the Reconstructive Ladder” in the Journal again highlights the fundamental achievements of current plastic and reconstructive surgery.2 The current momentum in terms of conceptual thinking in reconstructive surgery appears to drift somehow into outer space, as reflected by the concept of the “reconstructive matrix” proposed by Erba et al. in 2010 in this Journal.3 Including the concept of reconstructive stages with maturation of the surgeon by Wong and Niranjan in 2008,4 and our “reconstructive clockwork” in 2010,5 it seems that with the evolving reconstructive techniques including acellular dermal matrices, composite tissue allotransplantation, tissue engineering and regeneration, and robotics, an increased complexity of procedures and surgical skills is mandatory. As far as the proposed reconstructive solar system is concerned, the surgeon in the center of the Milky Way has been assigned an extraordinary role; however, at least in our humble perception, the patient might better fit in the center of our common reconstructive efforts to obtain the best clinical result. Thus, we are in the midst of the discussion of who should be in the center of the universe, the surgeon or the patient. Likewise, Nicolaus Copernicus was involved in some discussion while proposing the heliocentric cosmology in his publication De Revolutionibus Orbium Coelestium in 1543. Giordano et al. state that “the planets, whose orbits are closer to the core, represent the most simple treatments, and often the most used ones, in medical practice.” We would like to question, for example, whether using acellular dermal matrices to represent the Earth in their concept is more often used than local flaps (Mars) or free flaps (Saturn). Considering our closest neighbors, Venus (skin grafting), being close in size to Earth but 400°C warmer because of greenhouse gases, or Mars (local flap) with its carbon dioxide atmosphere, skin grafting and local flaps are fundamental, long-standing techniques in plastic and reconstructive surgery. Mercury as a planet, representing direct closure, is the smallest and fastest moving planet in our solar system, with no natural satellites and almost no atmosphere. Besides, Project Mercury was the name of the first human spaceflight program of the United States from 1959 to 1963, followed by the Gemini and Apollo programs. Thus, direct closure as probably the fastest way to achieve defect closure is reiterated by the metaphor Mercury, the Roman symbol for speed. From an astronomical point of view, we have to correct the authors that Pluto is currently classified as a dwarf planet and no longer as a planet, which was changed in 2006 by the International Astronomical Union because it lacks the gravitational muscle to sweep up or scatter objects near its orbit. Karsten Knobloch, M.D., Ph.D. Peter M. Vogt, M.D., Ph.D. Plastic, Hand, and Reconstructive Surgery Hannover Medical School Hannover, Germany

Galileo's Contribution to Modern Orthopaedics

ABSTRACTIntroduction: Galileo Galilei (1564–1642), world-renowned Italian mathematician, astronomer, physicist and philosopher, made many contributions to science. The objective of this study is to demonstrate that Galileo's discovery of scaling principles permitted others to define and advance orthopaedic research and clinical sciences. Methods. The science and scaling principles of Galileo Galilei were extensively analyzed by reviewing his 1638 original work Discorsi e Demostrazioni Matematiche Intorno a Due Nuove Scienze. Works about Galileo's science were reviewed for the concept of the scaling principles and with the idea of shedding light on how his work influenced modern orthopaedics. Results. Galileo strictly adhered to the Copernican heliocentric theory with the sun at the center of the universe, which caused him aggravation and made him the target of inquisition rage at the end of his prodigious life. With his attention away from the cosmos, Galileo–through the voices of Salviati, Sagredo and Simplicio in the Discourses on Two New Sciences—defined how scaling was important to the movement and function of objects. Galileo introduced important advances in scaling laws, which contributed to the development of the field of biomechanics. This discipline, in many ways, has defined modern clinical and research orthopaedics. Discussion. Galileo, by introducing the principles of scaling, permitted their application to human physical capacity, to bone and tissue response after injury, and to clinical treatment of injuries. Galileo in this way made important contributions to the practice of modern orthopaedics.

A True Demonstration: Bellarmine and the Stars as Evidence Against Earth’s Motion in the Early Seventeenth Century

A True DemonstrationBellarmine and the Stars as Evidence Against Earth’s Motion in the Early Seventeenth Century Christopher M. Graney (bio) In 1615 Robert Cardinal Bellarmine demanded a “true demonstration” of Earth’s motion before he would cease to doubt the Copernican world system. No such demonstration was available because the geocentric Tychonic world system was a viable alternative to the heliocentric Copernican system. On the contrary, recent work concerning early observations of stars suggests that, thanks to astronomers’ misunderstanding of the images of stars seen through the telescope, the only “true demonstration” the telescope provided in Bellarmine’s day showed the earth not to circle the Sun. This had been discussed by the German astronomer Simon Marius, in his Mundus Iovialis, just prior to Bellarmine’s request for a “true demonstration.” In the early seventeenth century, careful telescopic observations made by skilled astronomers did not support the heliocentric world system of Copernicus, but rather the geocentric world system of the great Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe. This was because early telescopic astronomers did not understand the limitations of their telescopes, which produced spurious views of stars. Since they failed to realize this, they concluded that the stars were not sufficiently distant to be compatible with the Copernican system.1 [End Page 69] In April 1615, in a letter offering his opinion on the Copernican world system, Robert Cardinal Bellarmine wrote: I say that if there were a true demonstration that the sun is at the center of the world and the earth in the third heaven, and that the sun does not circle the earth but the earth circles the sun, then one would have to proceed with great care in explaining the Scriptures that appear contrary, and say rather that we do not understand them then that what is demonstrated is false. But I will not believe that there is such a demonstration, until it is shown me. Nor is it the same to demonstrate that by supposing the sun to be at the center and the earth in heaven one can save the appearances, and to demonstrate that in truth the sun is at the center and the earth in heaven; for I believe the first demonstration may be available, but I have very great doubts about the second, and in the case of doubt one must not abandon the Holy Scripture as interpreted by the Holy Fathers.2 Bellarmine had been drawn into a growing controversy concerning Galileo Galilei and the Copernican world system. The discoveries Galileo had made with the telescope in the years prior to 1615 had certainly undermined traditional Aristotelian and Ptolemaic ideas about the heavens. The Sun’s spots and the Moon’s Earth-like features, such as mountains and plains, were inconsistent with their being made of an unchanging and unearthly “quintessence.” Jupiter’s satellites revealed that the Earth was not the center of all heavenly motion. Venus’s phases showed that body to circle the Sun. That the Milky Way was composed of stars and that far more stars existed than could be seen with the unaided eye illustrated the limitations of existing knowledge. In reaction to Galileo’s success, certain opponents of Galileo and Copernicus had begun to turn to biblical rather than scientific arguments to make their case. In December 1613 the Grand Duchess Dowager Christina and some associates had challenged one of Galileo’s [End Page 70] friends and followers, the Benedictine Fr. Benedetto Castelli, on the issue of the Earth’s movement.3 Castelli mentioned this to Galileo in a letter dated December 14. Castelli noted to Galileo that those who challenged him “admitted as true all the celestial novelties you have discovered,” but they challenged the conclusion that the Earth moves, “especially since Holy Scripture [is] clearly contrary to this claim.”4 Galileo replied to Castelli with a substantial letter dated December 21 in which he refuted the biblical objection to the Copernican system. This letter was not published, but copies were circulated.5 Moreover, someone produced altered copies of the letter so as to cast an unfavorable light on Galileo. For example, Galileo wrote to Castelli that “in the Scripture one finds many propositions...

Anders Celsius’ Contributions to Meridian Arc Measurements and the Establishment of an Astronomical Observatory in Uppsala

Abstract Astronomy has been on the curriculum of Uppsala University from at least the middle of the 15th century. However, since Uppsala also was the ecclesiastical centre of Sweden, the acceptance of new ideas, such as the Copernican heliocentric system, was slow. At the same time, more peripheral universities in the Swedish empire, including Dorpat/Tartu, enjoyed a larger freedom. It was not until the early 18th century that a ‘modern’ astronomy emerged in Uppsala. This effort was to a large extent led by Anders Celsius (1701-1744), who was able to establish good international contacts with astronomers in continental Europe. Celsius participated in De Maupertuis’ expedition to the far north of Sweden, in order to measure the meridian arc and determine the shape of the Earth. This paper explores how Celsius became involved in De Maupertuis’ expedition, and how this effort paved the way to the establishment of a fully equipped astronomical observatory, including an extensive collection of books and instruments, most of which survives up to this day.

Redshift drift in Lemaître-Tolman-Bondi void universes

We study the redshift drift, i.e., the time derivative of the cosmological redshift in the Lema\^{\i}tre-Tolman-Bondi (LTB) solution in which the observer is assumed to be located at the symmetry center. This solution has often been studied as an anti-Copernican universe model to explain the acceleration of cosmic volume expansion without introducing the concept of dark energy. One of the decisive differences between LTB universe models and Copernican universe models with dark energy is believed to be the redshift drift. The redshift drift is negative in all known LTB universe models, whereas it is positive in the redshift domain $z\ensuremath{\lesssim}2$ in Copernican models with dark energy. However, there have been no detailed studies on this subject. In the present paper, we prove that the redshift drift of an off-center source is always negative in the case of LTB void models. We also show that the redshift drift can be positive with an extremely large hump-type inhomogeneity. Our results suggest that we can determine whether we live near the center of a large void without dark energy by observing the redshift drift.

Kepler's Trinitarian Cosmology

The theological framework for Kepler's cosmos is based on a metaphorical Trinitarian symbolism, with the sun as God the Father, the firmament as Jesus Christ, and the intervening space as the Holy Spirit. In his heliocentric cosmology the sun becomes the source of planetary movement just as in the Aristotelian geocentric universe God's love beyond the starry realm was seen as the source of the eternal motion of the spheres. Searching for a divinely rooted physical explanation of planetary orbital motion, Kepler began with his solar-oriented distance law, which miraculously led to his law of areas. Finally he chose the ellipse from competing curves because its focus (“hearth”) coincided with the sun, the source of God-given motion.

Getting physical: Empiricism’s medical History

The Koyrean view of the Scientific Revolution as a conceptual change in the mathematical/astronomical sciences has cast a long shadow. The medical sciences, which had a much wider presence in the larger society, still tend to be placed in the outer orbit of the historiography of the Scientific Revolution which predominately revolves around the astronomical/mathematical sciences. Harvey's discovery of the circulation of the blood might be seen as having some analogies with the shift to the Copernican heliocentric cosmology but early modern medicine as a whole tends to be viewed as lacking the theoretical elegance of the mathematical sciences. It is the aim of this wide-ranging collection of essays to revise such a view by looking again at the character of empiricism and its close links with the medical sciences. As Wolfe and Gal remind us forcibly in their introduction, the roots of empiricism are intertwined with the medical sciences. Such historical origins can be important in understanding the character and extent of empiricism. In considering Kant's objection to empiricism as constituting a form of Cartesian dualism, for example, Anik Waldow points to the way in which the origins of empiricism derive from the Galenic school which developed forms of medicine which emphasised the treatment of symptoms rather than seeking to deal with the theoretical underpin- nings of disease. Such attention to the significance of the medical origins of empiricism has been overshadowed in the historiography of the early scientific movement. The Baconian-informed early Royal Society has been regarded as the cradle of a scientific empiricism which was linked to forms of experiment and firsthand observation which had no specifically medical resonances. The fact that many of the members of the early Royal Society were drawn from the medical profession has not been given the prominence or significance it merits. Charles Wolfe's stimulating final chapter, which serves to draw together some of the major themes of the collection, reiterates the importance of the medical origins of

On the Determination of Planetary Distances in the Ptolemaic System

In 1975, Imre Lakatos and Elie Zahar claimed that the determination of planetary distances represents excess empirical content of Copernicus’s theory over that of Ptolemy. This claim provoked an interesting discussion during the first half of the 1980s. The discussion started when Alan Chalmers affirmed that it is not correct to attribute this advantage to the Copernican system over the Ptolemaic. Other scholars criticized Chalmers’s assertion, reaffirming the position of Lakatos and Zahar: one went even further, asserting that Copernicus has not one but two methods for calculating distances, even though this claim was subsequently also criticized. But all participants assumed that Ptolemy has no method for calculating planetary distances. In this article, I argue that this is not correct. I argue, in fact, that Ptolemy has two independent methods for calculating the distances of some of the planets and, therefore, as far as the calculation of planetary distances is concerned, Ptolemy’s system surpasses that of Copernicus.

The Tic-Tac-Toe Theory of Gravity

The Tic-Tac-Toe theory is a qualitative, phenomenological theory that automatically explains many of the features of the universe that we see, such as dark matter and dark energy. In that sense it is a Copernican theory that gives an alternate approach, which immediately and intuitively explains phenomena,independently of any detailed dynamics, for which the explanations in accepted standard theories are usually somewhat ad-hoc.

Modern exploration of Galileo's new worlds

AbstractFour hundred years ago Galileo turned his telescope to the heavens and changed the way we view the cosmos forever. Among his discoveries in January of 1610 were four new ‘stars’, following Jupiter in the sky but changing their positions with respect to the giant planet every night. Galileo showed that these ‘Medicean stars’, as he named them, were moons orbiting Jupiter in the same manner that the Earth and planets revolve about the Sun in the Copernican theory of the solar system. Over the next three centuries these moons, now collectively named the Galilean satellites after their discoverer, remained tiny dots of light in astronomers' telescopes. In the latter portion of the twentieth century Galileo's new worlds became important targets of exploration by robotic spacecraft. This paper reviews the history of this exploration through the discoveries made by the Galileo mission from 1995 to 2003, setting the stage for on-going exploration in the new century.

A new Physics to support the Copernican system. Gleanings from Galileo's works

AbstractGalileo's support to the Copernican theory was decisive for the revolutionary astronomical discoveries he achieved in 1610. We trace the origins of Galileo's conversion to the Copernican theory, discussing in particular the Dialogo de Cecco di Ronchitti da Bruzene in perpuosito de La Stella Nuova. Later developments of Galileo's works are briefly treated.