The history of science could be written as a history of instrumentation. From particle accelerators and microscopes to fMRIs and telescopes, as instruments become more powerful, they act as reality amplifiers: they magnify our view of the very small and the very large, allowing us a glimpse of what is invisible to the human eye. It is hard to imagine that, up to 1609, all we knew about the skies depended on what we can see with the naked eye. When Galileo Galilei had the insight to aim his telescope at the night sky, he saw what no human had seen before: a new sky, full of surprises and possibility.…