I do not want to take anything away from your very convincing post. However, with all due respects......
First, Galileo did NOT discover the speed of light. Nor was he Jewish.
Although a genuinely pious
Roman Catholic,
[14] Galileo fathered three children
out of wedlock with
Marina Gamba. They had two daughters, Virginia in 1600 and Livia in 1601, and one son, Vincenzo, in 1606.
As to the discovery of the speed of light, I don't think that he could take credit for that, despite his being a genius.
The first extant recorded examination of this subject was in
ancient Greece.
Empedocles maintained that light was something in motion, and therefore must take some time to travel.
Aristotle argued, to the contrary, that "light is due to the presence of something, but it is not a movement".
[64] Euclid and
Ptolemy advanced the
emission theory of vision, where light is emitted from the eye, thus enabling sight. Based on that theory,
Heron of Alexandria argued that the speed of light must be
infinite because distant objects such as stars appear immediately upon opening the eyes.
Early Islamic philosophers initially agreed with the
Aristotelian view that light had no speed of travel. In 1021,
Islamic physicist Alhazen (Ibn al-Haytham) published the
Book of Optics, in which he used experiments related to the
camera obscura to support the now accepted intromission theory of
vision, in which light moves from an object into the eye.
[65] This led Alhazen to propose that light must therefore have a finite speed,
[64][66][67] and that the speed of light is variable, decreasing in denser bodies.
[67][68] He argued that light is a "substantial matter", the propagation of which requires time "even if this is hidden to our senses".
[69]
Also in the 11th century,
Abū Rayhān al-Bīrūnī agreed that light has a finite speed, and observed that the speed of light is much faster than the speed of sound.
[70] Roger Bacon argued that the speed of light in air was not infinite, using philosophical arguments backed by the writing of Alhazen and Aristotle.
[71][72] In the 1270s,
Witelo considered the possibility of light travelling at infinite speed in a vacuum, but slowing down in denser bodies.
[73]
A comment on a verse in the
Rigveda by the 14th century
Indian scholar
Sayana mentioned a speed of light equivalent to about 186,400 miles per second, which was apparently chosen so that light would encircle the
Puranic universe in one day.
[74][75] Subhash Kak proclaimed this "the most astonishing 'blind hit' in the history of science!"
[76] In 1574, the
Ottoman astronomer and physicist
Taqi al-Din concluded that the speed of light is finite, correctly explained
refraction as the result of light traveling more slowly in denser bodies, and suggested that it would take a long time for light from distant stars to reach the Earth.
[77][78]
In the early 17th century,
Johannes Kepler believed that the speed of light was infinite since empty space presents no obstacle to it.
René Descartes argued that if the speed of light were finite, the Sun, Earth, and Moon would be noticeably out of alignment during a
lunar eclipse. Since such misalignment had not been observed, Descartes concluded the speed of light was infinite. Descartes speculated that if the speed of light were found to be finite, his whole system of philosophy might be demolished.
[64]
First measurement attempts
In 1629,
Isaac Beeckman proposed an experiment in which a person would observe the flash of a cannon reflecting off a mirror about one mile (1.6 km) away. In 1638,
Galileo Galilei proposed an experiment, with an apparent claim to having performed it some years earlier, to measure the speed of light by observing the delay between uncovering a lantern and its perception some distance away. He was unable to distinguish whether light travel was instaneous or not, but concluded that if it weren't, it must nevertheless be extraordinarily rapid.
[79][80] Galileo's experiment was carried out by the
Accademia del Cimento of
Florence in 1667, with the lanterns separated by about one mile, but no delay was observed. Based on the modern value of the speed of light, the actual delay in this experiment would be about 11
microseconds.
Robert Hooke explained the negative results as Galileo had by pointing out that such observations did not establish the infinite speed of light, but only that the speed must be very great.
As to Columbus being Jewish, this is a debated topic among historians, and there is as yet no definite answer to this question. However, it is known that he did travel with Jews and they were important crew members on that voyage. I just thought I should state that, here.