Before scientists had subtweets and call-out posts, natural philosophers had treatises where they could still mock each other's ideas and opinions. It turns out that Galileo Galilei – father of the modern scientific method – conducted a few using pseudonyms. Now, researcher Matteo Cosci has found evidence to attribute another one to the iconic Italian scientist.
To understand the context of the discovery, we need to metaphorically travel back in time about 418 years. For over 17 centuries, thanks to the influence and power of the Catholic Church, people believed the Aristotelian-Ptolemaic view of the universe: Earth is at its center and the stars are fixed to the vault of heaven. But in 1604, a stella nova (new star) – what we now call a supernova – was seen.
The object is named after Johannes Kepler, who wrote about the observations in his book, De Stella nova in pede Serpentarii (On the new star in Ophiuchus's foot).
But the first person to record the observations in Europe was philosopher Lodovico delle Colombe, a staunch Aristotelian who believed that the supernova was not new, it had always been there but wasn’t always visible. Galileo did not believe that to be the case and decided to take delle Colombe to task with a treatise called “Le Considerazioni Astronomiche di Alimberto Mauri” – The Astronomical Reflection of Alimberto Mauri.
Who is Alimberto Mauri? But of course, it’s Galileo. The attribution has been suspected for a long time but the clearest link between...
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