For a century, the University of Michigan held a document that was considered " It is believed that Galileo Galilei wrote it in 1609-1610.. It contains a letter describing the telescope and drawings of Jupiter's moons.. The university said it was "
Galileo did use a new telescope in 1610 to discover that Jupiter was orbiting moons.. This discovery helped confirm the heliocentric model of Nicolaus Copernicus. However, a university investigation showed that Galileo most likely did not write the manuscript.. The document was probably falsified in the 20th century by a man named Tobia Nicotra, according to the Smithsonian Magazine..
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The first doubts about the authenticity of the document arose when Nick Wilding, a historian and researcher of Galileo at Georgia State University, looked at a photograph of the manuscript.. He noticed unusual handwriting, word choice and ink color..
Wilding understands fraud. He teaches the Forgeries, Facsimiles, and Sophisticated Copies course at the University of Virginia School of Rare Books.. He had previously uncovered a falsification of Galileo's Sidereus Nuncius, which allegedly included Galileo's original watercolors of the moon..
Pablo Alvarez of the Michigan Special Collections Research Center said he felt a "
With this information, Wilding continued to investigate the manuscript and discovered that it was in the hands of Nicotra, a notorious 20th-century counterfeiter..
He also traced the watermark to the Italian city of Bergamo and found that it could be linked to a book called Ancient Paper Mills of the Former Austro-Hungarian Empire and Their Watermarks.. This book ended up in the possession of the University of Michigan library and Wilding contacted local experts and offered to take a look at it..
Alvarez did just that.. As a result, watermarks similar to the one found on the manuscript were found only after 1770 - 160 years after the writing of the manuscript.. After that, university scientists came to the conclusion that the "
The university said in a statement that a "