Who Built the Moon? by Christopher Knight, Alan Butler Read Free Book Online Page B

Renaissance brought about the demise of the Middle Ages and for the first time the values of the modern world made an appearance. The consciousness of cultural rebirth was itself a characteristic of the Renaissance. Italian scholars and critics of this period proclaimed that their age had progressed beyond the barbarism of the past and had found its inspiration, and its closest parallel, in the civilizations of ancient Greece and Rome. By the end of the sixteenth century, a genius from the town of Pisa called Galileo Galilei became one of the most important scientists of the Renaissance carrying out experiments into pendulums, falling weights, the behaviour of light and many other subjects that captured his imagination. Above all, for most of his adult life Galileo was an avid astronomer.
    In May 1609, Galileo received a letter from Paolo Sarpi telling him about an ingenious spyglass that a Dutchman had shown in Venice. Galileo wrote in April 1610:
    ‘About ten months ago a report reached my ears that a certain Fleming had constructed a spyglass by means of which visible objects, though very distant from the eye of the observer, were distinctly seen as if nearby. Of this truly remarkable effect several experiences were related, to which some persons believed while others denied them. A few days later the report was confirmed by a letter I received from a Frenchman in Paris, Jacques Badovere, which caused me to apply myself wholeheartedly to investigate means by which I might arrive at the invention of a similar instrument. This I did soon afterwards, my basis being the doctrine of refraction.’
    From these reports, and by applying his skills as a mathematician and a craftsman, Galileo began to make a series of telescopes with an optical performance much better than that of the Dutch instrument. His first telescope was made from available lenses and gave a magnification of about four times, but to improve on this Galileo taught himself to grind and polish his own lenses and by August 1609 he had an instrument with a magnification of around eight or nine. He quickly realized the commercial and military value of his super-telescope that he called a
perspicillum,
particularly for seafaring purposes. As the winter of 1609 brought colder, clearer nights Galileo turned his telescope towards the night sky and began to make a series of truly remarkable discoveries.
    The astronomical discoveries he made with his telescopes were described in a short book called
The
Starry Messenger
published in Venice in May of the following year – and they caused a sensation! Amongst many other findings Galileo claimed to have proved that the Milky Way was made up of tiny stars, to have seen four small moons orbiting Jupiter and to have seen mountains on the Moon.
    As with many of his scientific investigations Galileo could easily have fallen foul of the Church authorities if his drawings of the Moon had been made public. According to Christian tradition both the Sun and the Moon were perfect, unblemished spheres. They simply had to be so because God had created them – and none of the Almighty’s creations could be flawed. Eventually Galileo was put under perpetual house arrest by the Papacy for his blasphemous claim that the Sun was at the centre of the solar system. It is therefore quite possible that he knew more about the Moon than he was willing to admit in public.
    In order to explain the markings on the Moon without treading on the toes of the Church, a number of ideas were put forward in Christian countries. Perhaps the most popular of these, at least for a while, was the suggestion that the Moon was a perfect mirror. If this was the case there were no markings on the Moon but rather reflections of surface features on the Earth. It didn’t seem to occur to anyone that as the Moon orbited the Earth the markings should change, since the land beneath it would not remain constant.
    Another suggestion, and one that was accepted in some