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Galileo

[gal-uh-ley-oh, -lee-oh, gah-lee-le-aw]

noun

  1. Galileo Galilei, 1564–1642, Italian physicist and astronomer.

  2. Aerospace.,  a U.S. space probe designed to take photographs and obtain other scientific information while orbiting the planet Jupiter.



Galileo

1

/ ˌɡælɪˈleɪəʊ /

noun

  1. full name Galileo Galilei. 1564–1642, Italian mathematician, astronomer, and physicist. He discovered the isochronism of the pendulum and demonstrated that falling bodies of different weights descend at the same rate. He perfected the refracting telescope, which led to his discovery of Jupiter's satellites, sunspots, and craters on the Earth's moon. He was forced by the Inquisition to recant his support of the Copernican system

“Collins English Dictionary — Complete & Unabridged” 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012

Galileo

2

/ ˌɡælɪˈleɪəʊ /

noun

  1. a US spacecraft, launched 1989, that entered orbit around Jupiter in late 1995 to study the planet and its major satellites; burned up in the planet's atmosphere in 2003

“Collins English Dictionary — Complete & Unabridged” 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012

Galileo

  1. An Italian scientist of the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries; his full name was Galileo Galilei. Galileo proved that objects with different masses fall at the same velocity. One of the first persons to use a telescope to examine objects in the sky, he saw the moons of Jupiter, the mountains on the moon, and sunspots.

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Authorities of the Roman Catholic Church forced Galileo to renounce his belief in the model of the solar system proposed by Nicolaus Copernicus. Galileo had to assert that the Earth stands still, and the sun revolves around it. A famous legend holds that Galileo, after making this public declaration about a motionless Earth, muttered, “Nevertheless, it does move.”
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Example Sentences

Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.

Uzbekistan’s medieval astronomer Ulugh Beg built the most advanced observatory of his time, charting the stars with uncanny precision long before Galileo.

Read more on Barron's

Retired tech titans and social media luminaries can no more control the development of AI by banning it than the Catholic Church could undo the fact that Earth revolves around the sun by imprisoning Galileo.

Read more on Barron's

Few have hope that Mars Sample Return will spur recovery as Galileo did.

Read more on Los Angeles Times

The European Galileo system now supports this by broadcasting its corrections free of charge.

Read more on Science Daily

In 1610, astronomer Galileo Galilei used the newly invented telescope to show that the Milky Way was composed of a huge number of faint stars.

Read more on Salon

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galileeGalileo Galilei