Pope's stargazers teach tomorrow's astronomers (Vatican Observatory)

Everyone knows the Vatican is interested in Heaven but it may come as a surprise to some that it is also interested in the heavens.

In this sleepy lakeside village away from the noise and haste of Rome, the Vatican is helping to train tomorrow's astronomers -- regardless of their religious beliefs.

For the past 20 years, the Vatican Observatory, one of the world's oldest astronomical institutes, has selected young, promising scholars for courses at the papal summer palace.

"The Vatican wants to show its appreciation for science," said Father Chris Corbally, a soft-spoken Jesuit from Britain who is the observatory's vice-director and dean of its international summer school.

"Science is an important value in human life and therefore it is important to the Catholic Church," he said on the palace terrace during a break in classes.

The Inquisition condemned Galileo for insisting that the earth revolved around the sun. It was just one step in a tango between faith and science that still goes on today.

Pope Gregory XIII, on advice of scientists, changed the calendar in 1582 to correct the errors of the Julian calendar.

By the end of the 1700s, three Vatican-sponsored observatories were studying the stars from Rome.

In 1891, Pope Leo XIII formally established the Vatican Observatory inside the Vatican behind St Peter's dome. By 1935, Rome's urban sprawl made stargazing difficult, so Pius XI moved the observatory to the summer palace south of Italy's capital.

"This place is fantastic," said Sarah Chamberlain, 25, a Ph.D. from Australia, one of 25 students selected from more than 200 applicants for this year's courses on "astrobiology," or the search for evidence of life forms on other planets.

"We have very little history in my country but here you just breathe the history. There are books written in 1667 by some of the people that I have only read about or have been taught about in first year physics. To be in this place is absolutely fantastic. Galileo walks here," she said.

The one-month program does not make for light summer reading. World-renowned scientists from Europe and the United States teach topics such as "nucleosynthesis and stellar evolution" and "biomarkers for in-situ and telescopic detection."

"These students come here because they want to learn more science," said Corbally.

"The whole environment of the place invites reflection. But we don't ask what their faith is, or if they have any. What we do ask is what quality of person they are, what enthusiasm they have, what is the promise of continuing in research careers in astronomy or in astrobiology," he said.

Corbally said some 85 percent of alumni who have attended the summer school are still in science.

This year's students come from 19 countries. No more than two are allowed from each country to give the student body a representational mix of industrialized and developing nations.

"Here religion and science are coming together and supporting each other," said Mascia Khristoforova, 21, from Kazan in Russia.

Students from non-industrialized countries get scholarships covering some 75 percent of travel and living expenses.

This year, organizers said bureaucratic slowness at the Italian embassy in Beijing prevented two Chinese students from getting visas in time for the courses. "It was a real loss for China and for the students," Corbally said.

There are two giant telescopes on the roof, each covered with wood and steel domes visible for miles from the palace, built on the ruins of Roman emperor Domitian's residence.

While the headquarters of the Vatican Observatory remains in the papal palace, the principal observing since 1981 has been done at the Vatican's research institute in Tucson, Arizona, one of the world's largest international astronomy centers.

Father Emmanuel Carreira, a Jesuit who taught physics for decades in the United States and his native Spain, is a link between the old and the new worlds.

He shows a visitor the giant telescope -- built in 1935 but still going strong -- with the pride of someone showing off a vintage pre-war Rolls Royce that no-one would ever dream of equipping with an on-board computer.

"You observe with electronic detectors, digital cameras and all kinds of things and then you look at a computer screen. Even if many of them are close to getting their doctorate, most of the students here never have had the experience of actually looking and seeing something through a telescope," he said.

"On the first day, when I showed the new students the moon, this girl from Sweden almost cried," he said.

"She had never seen the moon. She had never seen how beautiful it is and how you can actually see the craters and the mountains and the shadows. It is a real heavenly body and she had only seen it in photographs."

For both the young student and the old professor, it was one of those stardust memories they will never forget.

The Inquisition condemned Galileo for insisting that the earth revolved around the sun.

Urban legend.

Twisting the Knife

How Galileo Brought His Troubles with the Church on Himself

By Wil Milan

If you ask people what Galileo Galilei is famous for, most will say that he invented the telescope, used it to prove the earth goes around the sun, and that the Catholic Church condemned him for his discoveries. That much is common knowledge, no?

In fact, none of those things is true.

Galileo did not invent the telescope. When and where the telescope was invented is not certain, but what is certain is that in 1609 Galileo heard about the new invention and made one for himself. Soon he turned it on the heavens, and it was at that moment that his destiny turned to fame.

Every night brought new discoveries. He discovered that the Milky Way is not a soft band of light but a cloud of millions and millions of stars, that the moon is covered with craters, that Venus has phases like the moon, even that the sun has spots on its face. (Looking at the sun through a telescope is probably what doomed Galileo to blindness later in his life.) Excited beyond measure by his discoveries, Galileo in 1610 published a little book, Siderius Nuncius (The Starry Messenger), detailing his discoveries.

The Starry Messenger made Galileo an overnight celebrity, and his discoveries did not go unnoticed by officials of the Catholic Church, many of whom were scholarly individuals with an interest in the sciences. Some of the leading cardinals of the Church were fellow members of the scientific society to which Galileo belonged and took great interest and pride in the discoveries of their most famous member.

The Church also lauded Galileo publicly. He had a friendly audience with Pope Paul V, and in 1611 the Jesuit Roman College held a day of ceremonies to honor Galileo. When in 1614 a Dominican monk criticized Galileo from the pulpit, the leader of the Dominicans reprimanded the monk and apologized to Galileo on behalf of the entire order.

What did get Galileo into a bit of hot water with the Church was a conclusion he drew from one of his telescopic discoveries: He discovered that Jupiter has four moons that orbit around it just as the moon does the earth. He was fascinated by this, and from this and from observing the phases of Venus (which indicated that Venus orbits the sun, not the earth) he concluded that the earth goes around the sun (a view known as heliocentrism), not the sun around the earth (known as geocentrism).

Today Galileo's conclusion seems obvious. But it was not obvious at the time, and the truth is that Galileo was jumping to conclusions unsupported by the facts. The fact that four moons orbit Jupiter does not in any way prove that the earth goes around the sun and neither does the fact that Venus shows phases as it orbits the sun.

A popular theory at the time (known as the Tychoan theory after Tycho Brahe, the famous Danish astronomer who had formulated it) proposed that all the planets orbit the sun, and the sun with its retinue of planets then orbits the earth. This theory explained Galileo's observations quite well, and many pointed that out to Galileo. But Galileo insisted that what he had found was proof of the earth orbiting the sun. He eventually turned out to be right, but what he had at the time was not proof.

It was that lack of proof, along with his own abrasive personality, that precipitated his troubles with the Church. Galileo was known for his arrogant manner, and during his career there were a great number of people whom he had slighted, insulted, or in some way made into enemies. In 1615 some of them saw a chance to get back at Galileo by accusing him of heresy for his assertion that heliocentrism was proven fact. And so it was that the Church was prompted to inquire whether Galileo was holding views contrary to Scripture.

It must be pointed out that at the time the Church did not have an official position on whether the sun goes around the earth or vice versa. Though geocentrism was the prevailing view, both views were widely held, and it was a matter of frequent debate among the science-minded.

Indeed, most of the resistance to heliocentrism came not from the Church but from the universities. Within the Church some believed heliocentrism to be contrary to the Bible, others believed it was not. In fact, Galileo had wide support within the Church, and Jesuit astronomers were among the first to confirm his discoveries.

So when Galileo was accused of statements contrary to Scripture, the matter was referred to Cardinal Robert Bellarmine, the Church's Master of Controversial Questions (quite a title, isn't it?). After careful study of the matter and of Galileo's evidence, Cardinal Bellarmine-who was later canonized and made a doctor of the Church-concluded that Galileo had not contradicted Scripture. But he did admonish Galileo not to teach that the earth moves around the sun unless he could prove it. Not an unreasonable admonition, really, but it had the effect of muzzling Galileo on the matter, because by then he realized he really did not have proof, though he still thought he was right.

And so it was that Galileo chafed under the cardinal's admonition for most of a decade, until in 1623 the luckiest event in his life occurred: Cardinal Maffeo Barberini, a member of Galileo's scientific society and a great fan of Galileo, became Pope Urban VIII.

This was Galileo's dream come true: a pope who was learned in the sciences, who had not only read all of Galileo's works but was a friend and admirer as well. Galileo was soon summoned to Rome for an audience with the Pope to discuss the latest in astronomy, and Galileo took the opportunity to ask the Pope for his blessing to write a book about the motions of the solar system.

Pope Urban VIII readily agreed to Galileo's request, with one condition: The book must present a balanced view of both heliocentrism and geocentrism. The Pope also asked Galileo to mention the Pope's personal view of the matter, which was that bodies in the heavens perhaps move in ways that are not understood on earth (not an unreasonable view at the time). Galileo agreed, and set forth to write his book.

Had Galileo written his book as promised there would have been no problem. But as he had many times before, Galileo was bent not only on arguing his case but on humiliating those who disagreed with him, and he wrote a book far different from what he had promised.

As was common at the time, he wrote the book in the form of a discussion among three men: one a proponent of heliocentrism, one a proponent of geocentrism, and an interested bystander. Unfortunately, the "dialogue" was one-sided-Galileo portrayed the proponent of heliocentrism as witty, intelligent, and well-informed, with the bystander often persuaded by him, while the proponent of geocentrism (whom Galileo named "Simplicius") was portrayed as slow-witted, often caught in his own errors, and something of a dolt. This was hardly a balanced presentation of views.

But Galileo's greatest mistake was his final twisting of the knife: He fulfilled his promise to mention the Pope's view of the matter, but he did so by putting the Pope's words in the mouth of the dim-witted Simplicius. This was no subtle jab-the Pope's views were well-known, and everyone immediately realized that it was a pointed insult. This was too much for the Pope to bear. He was furious, and Galileo was summoned to Rome to explain himself.

This time things did not go well for Galileo. He was charged with a number of offenses, and though he was not imprisoned or tortured, he was shown the implements of torture. Galileo, by then an old man, was terrified, and agreed to something of a plea bargain: In return for publicly recanting his heliocentric view, he was allowed to return home with a sentence of permanent house arrest. He lived out his remaining years in his home, eventually going blind. Curiously, it was during his years of house arrest that he wrote his finest work, a book dealing with motion and inertia that is a cornerstone of modern physics.

It's interesting to note that during all of Galileo's conflicts with the Church, other astronomers, including the equally famous Johannes Kepler, were openly writing and teaching heliocentrism. Kepler even worked out and published the equations that describe the orbits of the planets about the sun. Yet he never had the problems Galileo did, in part because he had less to do with the Catholic Church but also because he did not have Galileo's biting arrogance.

So it was that Galileo's spiteful manner, his knack for turning even his best friends into enemies, repeatedly got him in trouble. His accomplishments cannot be overstated-Galileo is truly one of the giants of science-but in recounting his famous run-in with the Church, it's also important to remember that the root of his problems were not his scientific views but his own unbridled arrogance.

Wil Milan is an astrophotographer based in Arizona.Though he is not a Catholic, he takes great interest in the history of astronomy. Some of his work can be seen on the World Wide Web at www.astrophotographer.com.

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Urban legend

An urban legend only in that facts challenged mind of yours, Cunnie. NYer has it absolutely right. Try it sometime.

Galileo and the Inquisition

Being one of the most renowned scientist of his time Galileo's opinions were scrutinized not only be his peers, but by also by Church officials and the public in general. This made Galileo the lightning-rod of many complaints against the Copernican doctrine (and also some against Galileo himself). He did not come out unscathed out of these encounters.

In 1611 Galileo came to the attention of the Inquisition for the first time for his Copernican views. Four years later a Dominican friar, Niccolo Lorini, who had earlier criticized Galileo's view in private conversations, files a written complaint with the Inquisition against Galileo's Copernican views. Galileo subsequently writes a long letter defending his views to Monsignor Piero Dini, a well connected official in the Vatican, he then writes his Letter to the Grand Duchess Christina arguing for freedom of inquiry and travels to Rome to defend his ideas

In 1616 a committee of consultants declares to the Inquisition that the propositions that the Sun is the center of the universe and that the Earth has an annual motion are absurd in philosophy, at least erroneous in theology, and formally a heresy. On orders of the Pope Paul V, Cardinal Bellarmine calls Galileo to his residence and administers a warning not to hold or defend the Copernican theory; Galileo is also forbidden to discuss the theory orally or in writing. Yet he is reassured by Pope Paul V and by Cardinal Bellarmine that he has not been on trial nor being condemned by the Inquisition.

In 1624 Galileo meets repeatedly with his (at that time) friend and patron Pope Urban VIII, he is allowed to write about the Copernican theory as long as he treated it as a mathematical hypothesis.

In 1625 a complaint against Galileo's publication The Assayer is lodged at the Inquisition by a person unknown. The complaint charges that the atomistic theory embraced in this book cannot be reconciled with the official church doctrine regarding the Eucharist, in which bread and wine are ``transubstantiated'' into Christ's flesh and blood. After an investigation by the Inquisition, Galileo is cleared. [SEE BELOW in boldface]

In 1630 he completed his book Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems in which the Ptolemaic and Copernican models are discussed and compared and was cleared (conditionally) to publish it by the Vatican. The book was printed in 1632 but Pope Urban VIII, convinced by the arguments of various Church officials, stopped its distribution; the case is referred to the Inquisition and Galileo was summoned to Rome despite his infirmities.

In 1633 Galileo was formally interrogated for 18 days and on April 30 Galileo confesses that he may have made the Copernican case in the Dialogue too strong and offers to refute it in his next book. Unmoved, the Pope decides that Galileo should be imprisoned indefinitely. Soon after, with a formal threat of torture, Galileo is examined by the Inquisition and sentenced to prison and religious penances, the sentence is signed by 6 of the 10 inquisitors. In a formal ceremony at a the church of Santa Maria Sofia Minerva, Galileo abjures his errors. He is then put in house arrest in Sienna. After these tribulations he begins writing his Discourse on Two New Sciences.

Galileo remained under house arrest, despite many medical problems and a deteriorating state of health, until his death in 1642. The Church finally accepted that Galileo might be right in 1983.

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