In the fall of the year 1609 Galileo Galilei made the first systematic celestial observations that employed a telescope, thus helping to bring the skies from the realm of mythology into that of physics. Since his time, telescopes have increased nearly a hundredfold in size, with each major step providing a widening of our horizons. Galileo himself, however, went to some length to demonstrate how an increase in scale, without a change in design or in materials, must inevitably bring a structure to a size where it will no longer function properly, and eventually, to the point where it will even collapse under its own weight.
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© 1978 American Institute of Physics.
1978
American Institute of Physics
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