GALILEU PERTO DE JÚPITER

Destaque para a coluna "What's New" do físico Robert Park:

"RELICS: SUPERSTITION HITCHHIKES ON A MISSION TO JUPITER.

I was appalled to read in this week's Nature that the Juno mission to study how Jupiter's powerful magnetic field is generated, will carry a fragment of bone from Galileo’s earthly remains. Do the instigators of this foolishness imagine that relics of scientific martyrs, like bones of saints, will somehow confer protection on the spacecraft in the harrowing Jovian environment? To compound my irritation, the information was in a Nature editorial applauding the plan as, "a gesture that would add emotional energy to the mission and remind the public that science is fundamentally a human endeavor." All too human, it would seem; belief in miraculous cures wrought by fragments of the remains of saints has persisted for 2000 years. The editor’s confusion of metaphor and fact continues to the end. "The Juno mission will skim just 4,800 kilometres above Jupiter. Galileo just might enjoy a closer look." "

Robert Park

Na figura: uma "relíquia científica" - o dedo de Galileu, no Museu da Ciência de Florença.