Final answer:
Galileo's arguments and experiments about falling objects revealed inconsistencies in Aristotle's theory of gravity and led to a paradigm shift in physics. He found that all objects fall at the same rate in the absence of air resistance, laying the foundation for Newton's law of gravitation.
Step-by-step explanation:
Galileo's critique of Aristotle's theory of gravity to describe the motion of falling objects is a landmark development in physics. If heavier objects fell faster than lighter ones, connecting a heavy ball (B) and a light ball (b) with a chain to create a single object B~b, would lead to contradictory predictions based on Aristotle's theory. According to Aristotle, B~b should fall faster than B alone because it is heavier, yet the lighter ball b would act as a drag on B, suggesting B~b should fall slower. This paradox suggested that Aristotle's theory was flawed.
Galileo's further experiments demonstrated that without air resistance, all objects fall at the same rate regardless of their mass. This observation laid the groundwork for Newton's law of gravitation, which states that all masses attract each other with a force of gravity. Furthermore, Galileo's principle, later incorporated into Newton's laws of motion, indicated that objects maintain their velocity unless acted on by an external force, opposing the Aristotelian belief that objects naturally slow down without a force.
The ultimate conclusion drawn from Galileo's experiments is that in the absence of air resistance, every object accelerates at the same rate due to gravity, which is a fact confirmed by modern scientific understanding.