Last week in Tuscany, I spent time in Florence and, of course, visited the beautiful Basilica of Santa Croce. Galileo Galilei’s impressive tomb stands on the left as you enter: a memorial not only to an extraordinary scientist, but also to the complex relationship between evidence, authority, and ideas that change how we understand the world.

Galileo died in 1642 at Arcetri, just outside Florence, still under the shadow of his condemnation by the Roman Inquisition. He was initially buried in a modest site near the chapel of Saints Cosmas and Damian. The grand monument we see today was not completed until 1737, 95 years later.

It is a striking tomb. Galileo is shown above figures representing Astronomy and Geometry, the fields in which he combined observation, instruments and mathematics. He did more than look upwards. He helped show that the heavens were physical, changing and open to investigation, providing powerful evidence against the idea of an unmoving Earth at the center of the cosmos.

Santa Croce is a remarkable setting for that legacy. Often described as a pantheon of Italian brilliance, it holds the tombs of Michelangelo, Machiavelli, Rossini, Antonio Cocchi , Marconi (inventor of the radio), and Galileo himself. It also contains Dante’s grand cenotaph, although his actual resting place is in Ravenna.

This gathering of artists, writers, thinkers and scientists makes the Basilica feel like a celebration of creativity, political thought, ambition and scientific inquiry. It is a place shaped by people willing to question received wisdom.

That change in perspective is at the core of my book, Everything Is Flying.

The story of space is about far more than rockets, astronauts and distant worlds. It is also about how looking outward has changed life here on Earth. From Galileo’s telescope to the satellites orbiting us today, our changing perspective has transformed how we navigate, communicate, track climate and weather, respond to disasters and understand our shared home.

Standing in front of Galileo’s tomb, I was reminded that space has never been simply “out there.” It has always reshaped life on Earth.

“Eppur si muove” — “and yet it moves” — is probably more legend than documented quotation. The story is that, after Galileo was forced by the Roman Inquisition in 1633 to publicly renounce the idea that Earth moves around the Sun, he muttered those words: whatever I have been compelled to say, the Earth still moves.

No contemporary account records him saying it. But the phrase survives because it expresses a deeper truth: authority can demand a recantation, but it cannot change the evidence or the workings of the Universe.

Understanding grows, and the world keeps moving, even when we resist what that means.

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