Despite the rejection of science during the Early Renaissance, many claims were made. According to modern historians, Dante’s Divine Comedy, which we all know well, is considered to be the most well-known literary work that attempts to define hell with religious references.
The depictions of hell, inspired by Dante, both offer us a foresight and make us think. Galileo, the father of modern astrophysics, took this situation a little further and tried to calculate the size of the described hell and find out how many people could fit inside!
Is hell big enough for all sinners?
Yes, talking about it can be a sensitive topic for many people. However, let’s do a little brainstorming with the information given in the accompaniment of science. Dante Alighieri, whom we know, paints a vivid and colorful picture of hell in his literary works, as if he had actually been there. So much so that many researchers and scholars have worked since the 1320s to define hell.
The “dream universe” that Dante built cannot be fully grasped.
In fact, these drawings made by Dante are a dream universe created by himself. However, many researchers do not understand this situation. Scientific studies, the study of religious texts, and biblical-inspired studies enjoyed support throughout the Renaissance.
Thus, in 1588, the Catholic Church asked Galileo Galilei to demonstrate his mathematical expertise and calculate the dimensions of hell based on Dante’s drawings. Galileo, who was only 24 years old at the time, was a great scientist despite his age. Some historians consider him the most intelligent person of the 16th century.
According to Dante’s description, hell consists of 9 rings that get smaller as they get closer to the Earth’s core.
When we look at the shrinking ring, the enlargement of the ring increases the brutality of hell. As it is written in John, the most despicable people in the world, including the Roman soldier who killed Jesus, were sent to the last link. (John 19:34) Those who deny religion in the first circle, the lascivious in the second, the greedy in the third, the stingy and wasteful in the fourth, the perpetually angry in the fifth, the heretics in the sixth, the persecutors in the seventh, the dishonest in the eighth, and the betrayers in the last circle. has.
Christian literature depicts hell in the form of a cone. This cone shape, which we can see in Dante’s works of art, began to form over time.
Galileo studied Dante’s works very carefully before calculating the size of hell.
Before discussing the poet’s fantastic “dream” universe, Galileo tried to see the world through his eyes and studied his works as best he could. While he was not the first person to attempt to measure the dimensions of hell, he was the first to claim that the depicted hell had dimensions with its own set of physics.
Using Jerusalem as the center of the World, Galileo determined a distance of 2,700 km between the Italian city of Friday and Jerusalem. He found the diameter of the cone-shaped hell to be 5,550 km.
But after this little calculation, the calculation at home did not fit the market: he realized that there was a major mistake in his calculations.
These cylinders, which took the form of a cone as they descended into the Earth’s core, would shatter under their own weight, based on the laws of physics. He also did a lot of calculations to determine the size and circumference of hell, thought about it, but discovered that they all had the same problem. It is known that he said that there is a great difference between the real world and the other world, and that all thinkers, including himself, are ignorant of the workings of real world structures.
Attempts to calculate the size of hell have a great share in incorporating many laws of physics that are still in effect today. Especially with these efforts, he advanced as much as possible in the field of physics; made his name known more. Galileo, who pioneered the birth of modern physics, is a scientist who showed examples of these errors he obtained by laying the foundations of mechanics in his book “Two New Sciences” in 1638.
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