A World Without Galileo
A World Without
Galileo
If the law of inertia had never been discovered,
where would we be now?
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, Europe in 1720 still lived inside Aristotle's universe.
"All motion has a cause. Motion without cause is impossible. This has been verified for more than a thousand years."
— University of Padua, Textbook of Natural Philosophy, 1718I settled into my lodgings and headed straight for the library. I needed to understand how different things had become.
I found an astonishing book.
The title read: A Complete Theory of Motion — A Treatise on the Propulsive Air Fluid and the Resistance Substance. Its author was Giovanni Cassini, the most celebrated natural philosopher of the age. Eight hundred pages of meticulous scholarship.
The central argument ran as follows. When a stone is thrown, it continues to fly after leaving the hand. According to Aristotle, without a continuing force it should stop at once. So why does it not? Cassini's answer:
As the stone moves forward, it displaces the air ahead of it. This air does not vanish — it flows rapidly around to the rear of the stone and pushes it onward. We call this the Propulsive Air Fluid (Aethir Propulsivus). By measuring its viscosity and rotational velocity, one may predict any projectile's trajectory with perfect accuracy.
The next chapter was more remarkable still. Why does a heavier object not fall exactly in proportion to its weight? Cassini introduced another substance.
The air contains an invisible Resistance Substance — Resistia — which clings more strongly to lighter objects, impeding their fall. By mapping the density distribution of Resistia, one may account for all observed deviations in falling bodies.
I could not put the book down. What was happening in this world three centuries ago bore an uncanny resemblance to the cosmology of my own time — 2041.
Propulsive Air Fluid = dark matter. Resistia = dark energy. The structure is identical. Both were introduced to explain observed deviations by adding invisible substances. Both are ghosts born of a wrong baseline assumption.
I attended Professor Cassini's lecture today.
The hall was packed. Students from across Europe had come to hear him. Cassini filled the chalkboard with elaborate equations — the viscosity coefficient of the Propulsive Air Fluid, the density function of Resistia, the interaction equations between the two substances.
The mathematics was precise. It matched the experimental data well. Students copied everything down furiously.
Afterwards, I approached the professor with a question.
"Professor, how does the Propulsive Air Fluid operate in a vacuum? There is no air in a vacuum — should not the stone stop immediately?"
"An excellent question. Vacuum experiments do show that stones do not stop at once — this appears to challenge our theory. But it does not. A vacuum is not truly empty; it is filled with Aether, far more rarefied than air but still capable of propulsion. Correcting for the density of Aether, the equations remain perfect."
I said nothing, but I felt a quiet despair. When a theory is wrong, its defenders add auxiliary hypotheses to save it. Aether. In my own century's cosmology, we called it the inflationary epoch.
Walking back to my lodgings that evening, I looked up at the stars. How many invisible substances had this world's astronomers invented to explain those lights above? I resolved to visit the observatory the following morning.
At the observatory I met a young assistant named Marco. He was twenty-two.
He stayed late every night, alone, observing and calculating. When I asked what he was working on, he hesitantly showed me his notebook.
"I have found an anomaly in the motion of the planets — a deviation that cannot be explained by the Propulsive Air Fluid or Resistia alone. I intend to propose a new substance. I call it the Orbital Stabilisation Particle (Orbita Stabilia)."
I examined his notebook carefully. The calculations were faultless. He had measured the deviation, and his method of inverting the equations to map the distribution of an invisible substance was, technically, impeccable. He was simply pointing in entirely the wrong direction.
He was doing perfectly correct mathematics on top of a fundamentally wrong foundation.
I asked him, carefully:
"Marco, have you ever considered a different possibility? What if the natural state of motion is not rest, but uniform motion at constant velocity? In that case — no Propulsive Air Fluid, no Resistia, no Orbital Stabilisation Particles. None of them."
"But — that makes no sense. If uniform motion were the natural state, why does everything eventually stop? A stone thrown across the ground always comes to rest."
"Friction. Without friction, it would move forever. What you are calling Resistia is simply friction — not a separate substance, but a phenomenon of contact between surfaces."
Marco went silent for a long time. His eyes moved. He was calculating something.
"...Then the Propulsive Air Fluid as well..."
"Not needed. Motion requires no maintenance. It is already the natural state."
Marco did not go home that night. As I left the observatory, I glanced back through the window. He was starting his calculations over from the beginning.
Twelve hours before my return device was due to activate, I went back to the library one last time.
I wanted to confirm one thing: the composition of the universe as recorded in this world's leading cosmology textbook.
| Component | This World (1720) | My Era (2041) |
|---|---|---|
| Visible substance | Observable motive force · 4% | Ordinary matter · 5% |
| Invisible substance I | Propulsive Air Fluid · 27% | Dark matter · 27% |
| Invisible substance II | Resistia + Aether · 69% | Dark energy · 68% |
| Status of the theory | Verified thousands of times | Verified thousands of times |
| The deeper problem | The baseline is wrong | Is the baseline wrong? |
I wrote in my notebook:
The scholars of this world were not foolish. They observed with precision, recorded faithfully, calculated correctly, and verified rigorously. They were simply working from the wrong baseline.
Change the baseline, and 95% of the invisible universe vanishes in an instant.
I wonder if the same is true of ours.
The return device chimed. I closed my notebook and entered the coordinates.
Before I disappeared, I looked once more toward the observatory. Marco would still be at his desk. I did not know where his calculations would take him. But I knew he was facing the right direction.
Back in 2041, I turned on the news. A bulletin was announcing the latest failure of a dark matter detection experiment. The researchers were disappointed, but confident. Next time, they said. The theory was solid.
I opened my laptop quietly.
I had a paper to write. About baselines.
This story is fiction. The numbers in the table are not. In the standard model of modern cosmology (ฮCDM), ordinary matter comprises roughly 5% of the universe, dark matter approximately 27%, and dark energy approximately 68%. Neither dark matter nor dark energy has been directly detected. Whether this reflects a problem with the baseline assumption remains an open question.
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