As you explain in the book, Galileo ends up becoming the lightning rod for controversy that Copernicus feared he would be.  Was adding evidence to prove the original theory more of a danger to the Church than the publication of the theory in the first place?
Yes, and Galileo’s method of describing his discoveries.  His first book was in Latin, but after that, he began writing in Italian, and so the Church interpreted that as a way to spread dangerous ideas to the masses, and that was a major concern of theirs.

And arguments about Galileo rage on.  Governor Rick Perry, in his first debate as a presidential candidate described Galileo as someone whose ideas were outvoted for a time, maybe implying that other scientists were doing the outvoting, and that today’s deniers of climate change might similarly be proven right.  Does that account of history make sense to you?
Very little of what he says makes any sense to me.  So I wasn’t at all sure what he was reaching for there, but it didn’t seem that he spoke from a firm base of knowledge about Galileo.

This leads us to today’s world, where technology is changing everything at such a rapid pace, and we’re learning so many new things about space.  But how many breakthroughs have we seen in recent history, if any, that could potentially measure up to Copernicus’s revolutionary discovery?
I actually think that ideas about dark matter and dark energy are comparable in scope, exactly comparable, because they suggest that our place in the universe is so different from what we think.  Look at the night sky and see all of those stars, and then try to imagine that everything we see is only 4% of what’s there.  It’s quite staggering.  Even everything you can see with an instrument like the Hubble Telescope is only 4% of what’s there.  So I think we still live in a very exciting, changing time.  But one of the differences that I’ve been thinking about is the flow of information.  We live in such an ocean of information. 

So with every new discovery, it seems that we’re getting further from the center of the universe?

Yeah, I think that’s definitely true.  We’ve given up on the idea that the universe even has a center.

And we’re all the more insignificant every day.

I’m not sure that’s the takeaway message.  I mean, we still are what we are and still have a sphere of responsibility if not of influence and can do a lot of good for one another.  And I’m a lot happier thinking about those things than thinking about where I stand in the immensity of the universe.