A new study led by physicist Sascha Kempf at the University of Colorado Boulder has delivered the strongest evidence yet that Saturn's rings are remarkably young—potentially answering a question that has boggled scientists ...
Planetary Sciences
May 12, 2023
35
733
Europe's Galileo satellite navigation system – already serving users globally – has now provided a historic service to the physics community worldwide, enabling the most accurate measurement ever made of how shifts in ...
General Physics
Dec 5, 2018
94
2981
A fresh look at data from a 1997 flyby of Jupiter's moon, Europa, suggests that NASA's Galileo spacecraft flew directly through a watery plume, raising hopes of probing the jets for signs of life around the second planet ...
Space Exploration
May 14, 2018
22
350
A team of researchers from the French Aerospace Lab and at the Côte d'Azur Observatory working on France's MICROSCOPE satellite project has further confirmed the equivalence principle by recreating Galileo's free-falling ...
(Phys.org) —Scientists at Towson University in Towson, Maryland, have identified a practical, yet overlooked, test of string theory based on the motions of planets, moons and asteroids, reminiscent of Galileo's famed test ...
General Physics
Jan 6, 2014
98
2
(Phys.org)—University of Arizona physicist Andrei Lebed has stirred the physics community with an intriguing idea yet to be tested experimentally: The world's most iconic equation, Albert Einstein's E=mc2, may be correct ...
General Physics
Jan 4, 2013
81
0
(Phys.org) -- An international team of astronomers led by David Pinfield of the University of Hertfordshire has found a brown dwarf that is more than 99% hydrogen and helium. Described as ultra-cool, it has a temperature ...
Astronomy
May 10, 2012
0
0
A new analysis of data from NASA's Galileo spacecraft has revealed that beneath the surface of Jupiter's volcanic moon Io is an "ocean" of molten or partially molten magma.
Space Exploration
May 12, 2011
3
0
On June 3rd, 2010, something hit Jupiter. A comet or asteroid descended from the black of space, struck the planet's cloudtops, and disintegrated, producing a flash of light so bright it was visible in backyard telescopes ...
Space Exploration
Jun 15, 2010
10
0
Engineers from Caltech have discovered that Leonardo da Vinci's understanding of gravity—though not wholly accurate—was centuries ahead of his time.
General Physics
Feb 13, 2023
0
3186
Galileo Galilei (15 February 1564 – 8 January 1642) was an Italian physicist, mathematician, astronomer, and philosopher who played a major role in the Scientific Revolution. His achievements include improvements to the telescope and consequent astronomical observations, and support for Copernicanism. Galileo has been called the "father of modern observational astronomy," the "father of modern physics," the "father of science," and "the Father of Modern Science." Stephen Hawking says, "Galileo, perhaps more than any other single person, was responsible for the birth of modern science."
The motion of uniformly accelerated objects, taught in nearly all high school and introductory college physics courses, was studied by Galileo as the subject of kinematics. His contributions to observational astronomy include the telescopic confirmation of the phases of Venus, the discovery of the four largest satellites of Jupiter, named the Galilean moons in his honour, and the observation and analysis of sunspots. Galileo also worked in applied science and technology, improving compass design.
Galileo's championing of Copernicanism was controversial within his lifetime, when a large majority of philosophers and astronomers still subscribed (at least outwardly) to the geocentric view that the Earth is at the centre of the universe. After 1610, when he began supporting heliocentrism publicly, he met with bitter opposition from some philosophers and clerics, and two of the latter eventually denounced him to the Roman Inquisition early in 1615. Although he was cleared of any offence at that time, the Catholic Church nevertheless condemned heliocentrism as "false and contrary to Scripture" in February 1616, and Galileo was warned to abandon his support for it—which he promised to do. When he later defended his views in his most famous work, Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems, published in 1632, he was tried by the Inquisition, found "vehemently suspect of heresy," forced to recant, and spent the rest of his life under house arrest.
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