{"id":7178,"date":"2014-01-24T00:25:56","date_gmt":"2014-01-24T05:25:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/?p=7178"},"modified":"2022-08-01T07:43:10","modified_gmt":"2022-08-01T11:43:10","slug":"as-galileo-said-figata","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/2014\/01\/as-galileo-said-figata\/","title":{"rendered":"As Galileo said, &#8220;Figata!&#8221;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/wp-content\/uploads\/21NASA2_SPAN-superJumbo.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-medium wp-image-7179\" title=\"NASA photo of Saturn from Cassini orbiter\" src=\"http:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/wp-content\/uploads\/21NASA2_SPAN-superJumbo-300x239.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"239\" srcset=\"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/wp-content\/uploads\/21NASA2_SPAN-superJumbo-300x239.jpg 300w, https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/wp-content\/uploads\/21NASA2_SPAN-superJumbo-640x510.jpg 640w, https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/wp-content\/uploads\/21NASA2_SPAN-superJumbo.jpg 2048w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a>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.\u00a0 Nothing special, eh?\u00a0 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 <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Arcetri\">Arcetri, Italy<\/a>, where he was under house arrest by the Vatican for suggesting that the Earth was not a stationary body.<\/p>\n<p>Though his eyesight was failing, Galileo seemed happy to see me (I informed him ahead of time, not to worry, I was an atheist).\u00a0 But he was almost in tears after seeing this image of a planet and from a perspective that he could hardly imagine in 1636.\u00a0 (Galileo was born 450 years ago this year, on February 15.)<\/p>\n<p>I had also brought along a Starbucks for him, to which he graciously said, &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.wordreference.com\/iten\/figata\">Figata!<\/a>&#8221; even though they hadn&#8217;t left enough room at the top for the milk.\u00a0 We had a nice visit.\u00a0 I told him that, although he hadn&#8217;t gotten everything right, neither did Einstein or Hawking, but they learned from him and referred to him in their scientific papers.\u00a0 &#8220;Figata!\u00a0 Figata!&#8221; Galileo said as he slurped his Grande <a href=\"http:\/\/www.physicscentral.com\/explore\/plus\/galilean-relativity.cfm\">relatively quickly<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>____________________________________________________________<\/p>\n<h5>* Not to be confused with Mr. Peabody&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/WABAC_machine\">Wayback Machine<\/a>, which operated in a completely different way.\u00a0 Besides, that was only a cartoon.<\/h5>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>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.\u00a0 Nothing special, eh?\u00a0 Well, I scanned a copy of this photo, hopped in &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/2014\/01\/as-galileo-said-figata\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[39],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7178","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-interests"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7178","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7178"}],"version-history":[{"count":15,"href":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7178\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":28314,"href":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7178\/revisions\/28314"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7178"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7178"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7178"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}