galileo had already established the principle of relativity, which said that physical events must look the same to all observers, and no observer has the "right" way to look at the things studied by physics. for example, the earth is moving very fast around the sun, but we do not notice it because we are moving with the earth at the same speed; therefore, from our point of view, the earth is at rest. however, galileo's math could not explain some things, such as the speed of light. according to him, the measured speed of light should be different for different speeds of the observer in comparison with its source. however, the michelson-morley experiment showed that this is not true, at least not for all cases. einstein's theory of special relativity explained this among other things.