15 February 12

Galileo Galilei would be 448 years old today. He turned telescopes toward the night sky and figured out that the only way to explain the motions of the planets and stars was to put the sun, not the earth, at the center of the "universe." This teaching contradicted the doctrines of the religious and intellectual authorities, and he was (wrongly) forced to recant his scientific conclusions. Placed in our own day, Galileo would be a champion on behalf of evolution and anthropogenic global warming, and he would still be absolutely right.