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In 1643, Galileo Galilei, while generally accepting the horror vacui of Aristotle, believes that nature’s vacuum-abhorrence is limited. Pumps operating in mines had already proven that nature would only fill a vacuum with water up to a height of 30 feet. Knowing this curious fact, Galileo encourages his former pupil Evangelista Torricelli to investigate these supposed limitations. Torricelli did not believe that vacuum-abhorrence was responsible for raising the water. Rather, he reasoned, it was the result of the pressure exerted on the liquid by the surrounding air. To prove this theory, he filled a glass tube, sealed at one end, filled with mercury and upended it into a dish also containing mercury. Only a portion of the tube emptied (as shown adjacent); 30 inches of the liquid remained. As the mercury emptied, a vacuum was created at the top of the tube. This, the first man-made vacuum, effectively disproved Aristotle’s theory and affirmed the existence of vacuums in nature.