Cognitive Labs

On August 25, 1609 Galileo demonstrated an optick tube to a group of Italian merchants. In the process, one invention - ground glass lenses created by a Dutchman - was mashed into another invention, the telescope which can be considered a meta-invention.



As the story goes, children playing with lenses in Hans Lipershey's shop may have accidentally invented the telescope (Oops!) without even trying, and began the process which has culminated in the Hubble Space telescope today.



By aiming the new invention at the sky, Galileo fomented innovation in the realm of celestial mechanics and astronomy, like ripples in a pool into which one has tossed a marble, and provided key support for other period iconoclasts like Copernicus and Kepler. Because of Galileo's troubling observations, it now appeared that heliocentricism was as unlikely to be correct as geocentricism.

The speed of these interlinked discoveries was highly uncomfortable to authorities since it threatened cosmology and humanity's hypothetical position in the universe along with their established referent power.



If fundamental beliefs were found to be lacking a solid foundation, what else would inquisitors and congregations question? They might as well go back to the belief that the Earth was being carried on the backs of turtles. Chaos might result.

As a result, the church silenced Galileo by forbidding him from making new discoveries, writing about his findings, and placing him under house arrest for years.

However, knowledge eventually triumphed.

Labels: 400, copernicus, galileo, hubble, kepler

Galileo was treated "incorrectly" by the Catholic church, according to a church prelate in Rome, when he was subject to inquiry over his findings. Echoing a theme carried in 'Angels and Demons,' the Vatican now says that the forward momentum of scientific findings should not be parried by dogma and tradition.

In particular, Galileo's conclusion that there appeared to be planetary objects moving externally and independently to the known cosmological system ( e.g., satellites of Jupiter) and that the solar system was heliocentric, rather than geocentric - were threatening the conception of a divinely ordered universe, as it existed at the time.

"Can this teach us something today? I certainly think so," said Monsignor Pagano, head of the Vatican's secret archives.

Read more in the news wire story.

Labels: galileo, monsignor, pagano

New computer models are enabling researchers to create virtual 'skins' on neutron stars. The collapsed remnant of supernovas, neutron stars possess some of the following dazzling properties:

The density is so great that one teaspoonful of a neutron star would weigh 100 million tons. Compare that to baking soda.



If you could replace the shiny clean floor of your kitchen (clean enough to see your reflection) with a neutron star crust, guess what would happen?

Let's say you were groggy after an all-nite programming session or skipped your caffeine fix and you dropped the hypothetical teaspoon, it would strike the surface at 4.3 million mph!

Wow. What would Galileo have said?

In addition, the new computer model projects that the compressed selenium atoms in the crust of the neutron star could be 10 billion times stronger than the strongest cobalt steel on earth.

syndicated space.com article

Labels: galileo, kitchen, neutron, selenium