(John Sarkissian)

This year is the International Year of Astronomy. It was 400 years ago when an Italian scientist named Galileo, turned his telescope (just like the one next to me here) to the sky and made some amazing discoveries with it.

He wrote a little book called The Starry Messenger in which he described his discoveries. I have a copy of that book here.

When I was a boy (many years ago now) I read this book. It was an amazing feeling to know that by reading this book, in a funny sort of way, Galileo was speaking to me. Now, I couldn’t talk to Galileo but he was talking to me through what he’d written. You know, when you think about it, books are like time machines through which people can talk to the future. That’s an amazing thought isn’t it? Whenever you read a book written by someone who lived long ago, it’s like he’s speaking to you today.

In his little book, Galileo described the discoveries he made with the newly invented telescope. He described how he first saw the mountains and craters of the Moon and realised that it was a world just like the Earth. He described how he first saw the moons of Jupiter and realised that everything didn’t revolve around the Earth as previously thought. He saw how the Milky Way was made of countless millions of stars.

These were all amazing new discoveries 400 years ago. But what he wrote, and what people read in his little book, inspired people to learn and understand the Universe even more. Then, in 1969, what Galileo started 400 years earlier, led men to reach up and touch the Moon itself.

Our own CSIRO Parkes Radio Telescope played a vital role in that famous Apollo 11 mission. I was seven years old then, about your age, when that happened.

Reading not only gives us great enjoyment, it expands our imagination and inspires us to do amazing things. Reading books allows the great people of the past, like Galileo, to speak to us directly.

What you write today, people in the future will read. By writing things down in books you too can communicate with people in the distant future and share your thoughts with them just as Galileo did.

Always read. Expand your imagination and let the great people of the past speak to you. Can you hear Galileo talking to you? You will, when you read his book.

Thank you.