Tuesday, September 11, 2007

Copernicus and the trial of Galileo


In astronomy, the geocentric theory, which was disconfirmed by Galileo, was the idea that the sun and the moon revolved around he. Heliocentricism is the proven theory that the earth revolve around the sun and the moon. The Geocentric theory was accepted by everyone before the Scientific Revolution erupted. The Heliocentric theory came after the Geocentric theory due to new methods such as the scientific method which was developed during the scientific revolution.
Galileo Galilei also known as the ''father of modern observational astronomy" was an extremely famous mathematician, scientist and astronomer who played a big part in the Scientific Revolution. Galileo was very for Copernicus's Heliocentric idea. He was devoted to spreading his knowledge and his theory to the public. Unfortunately, the Catholic Church's believed in Geocentricism. The Catholic Church believed in Geocentricism because of several writings in the Bible like in the "Chronicles 16:30" where it states that "the world is firmly established, it cannot be moved." Galileo's diffused the idea of Heliocentric which provoked the Catholic Church put Galileo on trial for his belief. After hard interrogation against Galileo was sentenced to life in prison and later house arrest for his believing the Copernicus theory. Recently, Pope John Paul II stated that the way that Galileo was handled was wrong.

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