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Radiolab

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Galileo's Riddle

Galileo's riddle: Everything that the bullet you drop is just going to hit first. The gun's got to go all the way. Those two bullets both hit the ground at the exact same instant. That's an experimental fact. Newton looked at that, and he said something smart. Let's not pretend that this is some perfectly flat field that goes on forever. No, we're on the Earth. And what roundness means is that the ground curves away below horizontal.

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