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Galileo's Accomplishments

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Galileo Galilei was born on February 15, 1564, in Pisa Italy. He studied astronomy, invented new astronomic devices, and discovered some of the most important celestial bodies we know of today. While Galileo was very influential, his research was limited by Europe's environment which prevented him from making possible discoveries and inventions. The Roman Catholic Church in 17th-century Europe prevented Galileo from reaching his full potential, ultimately causing us to be behind in astronomic knowledge in the present day than we should have been. Back in the 17th century, people were very religious based and used the church's ideas to sway their opinions and control their lives. The Roman Catholic Church and Galileo had differing beliefs, such …show more content…

In 1608, the first telescope was made, called the reflecting telescope, and functions through light bouncing off of mirrors to create a zoomed-in picture of the sky. This was the most used telescope at the time however wasn't up to Galileo's standards. A year later in 1609, he created the refracting telescope that uses an objective lens and bends the light continuously getting smaller until it reaches the eyepiece. Galileo was able to see further than any other astronomer was able to with his telescope. In 1610 he discovered Saturn's rings using his new high-tech refracting telescope and with further research and better-developed versions of the refracting telescope, it was found that Saturn's rings are made up of pieces of comets or other rocks in space. Knowing the components of Saturn's rings doesn't necessarily influence anything else to be discovered, but it does show that there is a big gap in time between the discovery and the research. Most of this is due to the discovery being kept quiet by the church because it contradicts its teachings. He discovered the moons of Jupiter including Io, Ganymede, Callisto, and Europa. Upon further research, starting in 1995, Nasa sent probes out to these moons to gather any research or samples they could in hopes that we would discover life beyond Earth. It has since been found that these moons have a hot core temperature, similar to the Earth, meaning there is a possibility of life on one or multiple of these moons. Although there hasn't been any life detected yet, discovering something as life-changing as this takes time. A lot of this time has now been wasted and while there still could be something out there, it is likely that it won't be found in this current generation. The Roman Catholic Church gave him a bad reputation, despite his information being correct, preventing scientific

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