For readers who love to gaze heavenward, the moon and the red planet Mars will put on a show over the weekend. Visible low in the eastern sky late in the evening, the waning gibbous moon and Mars will hold court. If early morning is a more likely moment for...
“What then is time? If no one asks me, I know what it is. If I wish to explain it to him who asks, I do not know.” -St. Augustine of Hippo, Confessions, Chapter 11 Introduction This is the fourth in a series of articles on the nature of time. The first focused on...
At the turn of the last century, a little remembered but dramatic debate took place between prominent astronomers Harlow Shapely and Heber Curtis. The debate concerned essentially several key issues: the location of the sun in the Milky Way galaxy, the size of the...
Four hundred years after the trial, the mere mention of the name “Galileo” is often considered a powerful one-word refutation against the Catholic Church. Why? Because, according to the popular telling of the “Galileo Affair,” it was Galileo who: 1) proved...
Fr. George Coyne, SJ, passed away on February 14, 2020. He was an astrophysicist, a priest, the former director of the Vatican Observatory, and a “remarkable man.” His life and contributions are celebrated in moving tributes from the Vatican Observatory website and...
Do faith and science operate in completely separate, non-overlapping realms? In the first of a series of articles for Thinking Faith, Vatican Astronomer, Guy Consolmagno SJ, explores how science works, how scientists work, and the place that faith has in...
