Galileo Demonstrating the New Astronomical Theories at the
University of Padua.
A replica of the earlest surviving telescope attributed to Galileo
Galilei, on display at the Griffith Observatory.
the Magellan and the Drake expeditions had returned home sailing
only west, unearthed some terrible
implications. Heaven was clearly
up there and hell down below, but
if the Earth is a sphere, then the
centre of the Universe as created
by God was hell.
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Copernicus helped get out of this
dilemma showing that ‘down below’
was not the centre of the universe
– the Sun was. But there was the
other terrible implication with the
ideas of Copernicus that were even
more unacceptable: the idea that
there were other similar planets and
Man was not alone in the Universe.
For the Catholic Church this was
too much, and Copernicus was
clearly wrong; they would live with
the hell conundrum. It was clearly