Thursday, February 26, 2009

Galileo's Accomplishments... Through His DAUGHTER?!?!

Galileo, despite being very famous even today, would not have become as famous without the help of his daughter, Maria Celeste. Maria Celeste was a nun residing in a cloister, working at the church apothecary. While working as a medicinal nurse, Maria took the time to help her father, Galileo Galilei, because of his poor health. Maria made medicines for him because of his sickness, took care of his housework, and many more. Galileo was the first to use a telescope to study the sky, and discovered irregularities with the Church dogma about the stars and the sun. What Galileo discovered, were sun spots, which were basically solar storms that darkened a portion of the sun. Galileo recorded these findings and wrote a dialogue, The Diagolo, between an intellectual who argued on the Copernican side and a fool who just mouthed out the church doctrine. Maria aided Galileo in the publishment and editting of the book, which Galileo could not have done on his own due to his poor health. At around the age of 70, Galileo was put under the Inquisition due to his "heretical" writings in The Diagolo. Galileo confessed, and was therefore put under house arrest along with several other long-term punishments such as reading only Holy scripts and praying. Maria also helped her father with this, doing all of the prayers for him instead of just leaving him to do it himself. Galileo's The Diagolo was banned and stored in the Church's records. Maria's taking over of the prayers allowed Galileo more time to study more about his past works on physics and created the basis for Newton. Without Galileo, we would probably not have physics today.

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