How did the telescope changed the world?

Answer 1

Despite the summer heat, the Senate of Venice assembled on this day in 1609 to view a remarkable scientific instrument. It was built by the well-known astronomer and philosopher from Pisa, Galileo Galilei, and could make distant objects appear closer when viewed through one end of its long pipe. It was a telescope.

Not that Galileo had invented the instrument. Credit for that is generally given to a Dutch stargazer who is almost forgotten today, Hans Lipperhay, who unveiled his basic telescope only the previous year, in 1608.

But Galileo, ever the practical perfectionist, had already improved upon the basic essentials and produced a variable-focus instrument that increased the size of the observed object by eight times.

Why he presented it first of all to the assembled Venetian senators is not clear. But perhaps the Venetians, who had business and commerce in their marrow, saw this instrument as a way to boost their glass lens industry. After all, Venice along with Florence, was the leading center for high-quality ground glass for spectacle lenses and magnifying glasses.

Certainly Galileo made money building and selling his telescope to eager customers, until his designs were overtaken in a relatively short time by more sophisticated types.

The telescope, of course, revolutionized astronomical observation and had a profound impact on overall scientific methodology, by allowing more exact mathematical calculations.

Blasphemous 'Suncentricity'

It also brought into sharp focus the simmering dispute between those who followed the ancient belief of Greek and Egyptian proto-scientists that the Earth was the center of the universe, and that the planets revolved around it, and those who followed the Copernican theory that in fact our Earth is just one of a number of planets revolving around the sun.

Nicolaus Copernicus, the great Polish astronomer, had summarized his theories that the Earth revolved around the sun, instead of the other way around, some 60 years before Galileo intrigued the Venetian senators with his telescope.

Galileo, with his passion for exact observation and independent analysis, became ever more convinced through the use of his telescope that Copernicus was right. But it wasn't long before this brought him into conflict with the Roman Catholic Church.

Some churchmen began attacking Galileo in 1610, arguing that God had made the Earth the center of the universe as a home for man.

By 1616, the matter had come to the official attention of the church, with the formal condemnation of "suncentricity" as "false and contrary to scripture."

Galileo was warned to steer clear of such heresy, which he did for a number of years. But in 1632 he published a defense of his views. This landed him in front of that sinister body, the Inquisition. The Holy Office, as it preferred to be known, tried him, found him guilty of being "vehemently" suspect of heresy, and placed him under house arrest.

It also forced him to recant, which he did. Not very brave perhaps, but practical to the end, he may have thought it best to be a live astronomer than a dead ideologue.

It took the church 359 years to rehabilitate Galileo Galilei. Only in 1992 did the Vatican formally acknowledge that it had been wrong and Galileo right.

The astronomer died at his home outside Florence, still under house arrest, in 1642.

How Newton's Telescope Changed the World Sir Isaac newton didn't use his telescope to find any new things in the universe, but he did use it to radically transform how we view the world we live in and the universe as a whole.

Sir Isaac Newton is often considered as the greatest Astronomer and Mathematician to ever live. There is a lot of validity to this claim. This article looks at his famous reflector telescope and describes some of his discoveries.

A reflector telescope is one that uses a mirror rather than lenses to bend light and magnify images. Reflector telescopes, because they are easier to make and can be made in sizes much larger than refractors, are an invention that changed astronomy and our understanding of the universe. The largest refractor telescope in the world is forty inches in diameter and reflector telescopes dwarf this in comparison. There are currently several reflector type scopes that are over four hundred inches in diameter.

Why a reflector is better than a refractor

If you are familiar with a prism or a rainbow you can understand why reflectors are superior to refractors. When light passes through glass the different bands (or colors) pass through at different angles and this causes aberrations or problems in the images. This is called chromatic aberration and it gives us distorted views of what we see through a lens. In the time of Newton glass making and lens making was very primitive and the problems of chromatic aberration were not yet overcome. Today we can make lenses that have almost no chromatic aberration but we can't make them very large. When a lens gets to be really large it gets very heavy and its own weight will distort the lens and ruin the image.

Newton's telescope solved these problems. A mirror doesn't pass light through it. It simply bounces all the light off the surface. There is no chromatic aberration at all. And because you only need to bounce light off the surface you can place the whole mirror on a supporting structure or base which takes a lot of the weight off the mirror. This way you can build much larger mirrors without any distortion.

It is commonly thought that Newton invented the first reflector telescope but it isn't true. Credit for making the first reflector goes to and Italian Monk, Physicist, and Astronomer named Niccolo Zucchi. He published a book on Optics in the 1650's and it is this book that inspired Sir Isaac Newton to build his own telescope. Zucchi created his first reflector around 1616 while Newton completed his first (and famous) telescope in 1670. But while Zucchi did make some new discoveries with his telescope it didn't work well and was difficult to make and to use. It was Newton's telescope that worked really well and that brought the art and science of reflectors into the world of science.

The real genius of Newton's Telescope

All of that stuff is remarkable but there is something much more important in Newton's Astronomy and in his telescope. He didn't after all, discover moons around Jupiter like Galileo did, or plot the return of a comet like Halley did. But what he did do was tie in Mathematics, Astronomy, and our understanding of the universe using his telescope and his theory of universal gravitation. He proved mathematically that gravitation was a two way operation and that while the earth pulled on a falling apple so the apple too pulled on the earth. This was clearly seen, calculated, and confirmed in the motions of heavenly bodies which was refined and made possible by the new science of reflector telescopes which we can credit to Newton.

Sir Isaac and his telescope carried on with the work of Copernicus and Galileo by furthering our understanding of the universe we live in and helping us to realize there are laws that govern the whole of the universe. And this rule holds true for falling apples and for planets revolving around stars.

The actual telescope that Newton built still survives today and is in the care of the Royal Society of London. They keep it on display in London and sometimes it travels the world as part of an exhibit.

Answer 2

Because they were able to use it to discover things in space like that the Earth isn't in the middle of solar system.