The NASA spacecraft Cassini shot this photo while orbiting Saturn, the sixth planet in our solar system, nine times farther from the Sun than the Earth is. Nothing special, eh? Well, I scanned a copy of this photo, hopped in the time machine* behind my garage, and paid a visit to Galileo Galilei at his villa at Arcetri, Italy, where he was under house arrest by the Vatican for suggesting that the Earth was not a stationary body.
Though his eyesight was failing, Galileo seemed happy to see me (I informed him ahead of time, not to worry, I was an atheist). But he was almost in tears after seeing this image of a planet and from a perspective that he could hardly imagine in 1636. (Galileo was born 450 years ago this year, on February 15.)
I had also brought along a Starbucks for him, to which he graciously said, “Figata!” even though they hadn’t left enough room at the top for the milk. We had a nice visit. I told him that, although he hadn’t gotten everything right, neither did Einstein or Hawking, but they learned from him and referred to him in their scientific papers. “Figata! Figata!” Galileo said as he slurped his Grande relatively quickly.
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That’s a cool little journey. Last fall I read a whole book involving time and space travel and extensive conversations with Galileo, both in Renaissance Florence and on the future, inhabited moons of the outer solar system. Great book by one of my fave “hard” SF authors. Galileo’s Dream by Kim Stanley Robinson http://amzn.com/B002W8QXKE
BTW your security bot thinks it is still 2013.
Oops! That would be my mistake, thanks for letting me know.