Should Galileos tomb be opened for DNA tests?
http://www.newscientist.com/blog/space/2008/03/should-galileos-tomb-be-opened-for-dna.html More than 365 years after his death, Galileo Galilei has become the focus of another controversy involving the Catholic Church and science. Italian scientists want to open his tomb to do DNA tests, but the priest in charge of the church where he is buried says it would be disrespectful. Paolo Galluzzi, the director of the Institute and Museum of the History of Science in Florence, Italy, is leading a group of scientists who want to have Galileo’s remains exhumed along with those of the other body entombed with him, in order to carry out the DNA tests. The scientists hope the tests will allow them to determine if the other remains are really those of his daughter, Maria Celeste, as well as determine the cause of the blindness that afflicted the famed astronomer late in life. But Antonio Di Marcantonio, the priest in charge of the Santa Croce basilica in Florence, in which Galileo’s tomb resides, i
