A World Without Galileo
A World Without Galileo — A Time Traveler's Diary A Time Traveler's Diary · Speculative Fiction A World Without Galileo If the law of inertia had never been discovered, where would we be now? A.D. 2041 → A.D. 1720 Day One March 4, 1720 · Padua Something felt wrong the moment I arrived. A large sign hung over the main gate of the University of Padua: Faculty of Natural Philosophy. Below it, in smaller letters: "To discover the cause of all motion is the ultimate aim of natural philosophy." I stopped walking. In the physics I had been taught, motion requires no cause. It simply is — the natural state of things. But not here. In 1642, Galileo Galilei was indeed born in this world. Yet here he had chosen theology over natural philosophy. He walked past the Leaning Tower of Pisa without a second thought. The famous experiment never happened. As a result, ...