Galileo’s reach
There was talk of forgery and corruption in Harvard’s Rosovsky Hall Friday, but it didn’t spark an investigation. Rather, the corruption was of the heavens four centuries ago, while the forgery — of a document purportedly by Galileo — was uncovered in 2005. Scholars, artists, and musicians gathered at Harvard for a wide-ranging conference to mark the 400th anniversary of Galileo’s insights on sunspots. The event, organized by Peter Galison, the Joseph Pellegrino University Professor, aimed to humanize the famed Italian astronomer, considered a father of modern science, and detail the times in which he lived. Sunspots are known today to be extremely violent eruptions on the face of the sun caused by magnetic activity. Though they measure thousands of degrees, the spots are cooler than the surrounding areas. Associated coronal mass ejections can disrupt communications on Earth and intensify aurora activity. At the time of Galileo, however, it was widely assumed that the...