Since Galileo ground his own glass for the lenses of his occhiolino, scientists and doctors have relied on microscopes. And for those last 486 years, microscopes have remained too expensive ...

Japan’s new earthquake-detection network lengthens warning times, and researchers in Wales have harnessed nuclear blast detectors to gauge tsunami risks. But the U.S. lags in monitoring the ...

How a Dutch fabric seller made the most powerful magnifying lens of his time—and of the next 150 years—and became the first person ever to see a microorganism.

MICROSCOPE is a super high-tech version of Galileo's same basic experiment: It contains two nested glorified cans, one made of titanium and one of a platinum alloy.

Hooke’s observations were based on a relatively simple compound microscope that had two lenses. Instrument-makers at the time were familiar with telescopes and designed microscopes with two lenses, ...

Galileo calls his compound microscope with a concave and a convex lens the occhiolino, or little eye. The magnifying device is a gateway drug—he soon starts experimenting with telescopes.

Galileo’s most famous experiment has taken a trip to outer space. The result? Einstein was right yet again. The experiment confirms a tenet of Einstein’s theory of gravity with greater ...

When oceanographer Victor Smetacek conceived the idea in 2002, he pondered if an underwater microscope could “do for microbial ecology what Galileo’s telescope did for astronomy.” ...

Antonie van Leeuwenhoek was born while Galileo was still alive, and he ended up developing a similar skill in lens making to that of Galileo. Galileo turned his results to the heavens and began a ...

If Galileo dropped a 12-pound bowling ball and a 13-pound bowling ball from the Tower of Pisa simultaneously, by the time they reached the ground, the heavier bowling ball would probably be ...

Illustrations of insects made using one of Galileo's microscopes, and published in 1625, appear to have been the first clear documentation of the use of a compound microscope.