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Edgar Allan Poe, Cosmologist
David Mazzotta writes "Bet you didn't know Edgar Allen Poe pre-discovered the Big Bang and Black Holes. This article at the NYT discusses the concept of pre-discovery, or theorhetical anticipation of eventual scientific discoveries. Most of these come from forward thinking physicists, but occasionally they come from a morbid, alcoholic, poet."
Not sure what's up with all the NYT articles today, but here's the obligitory link: What Did Poe Know About Cosmology? Nothing. But He Was Right.
John Mitchel, in 1783, had the idea that a star could be so heavy that the light itself could not escape its gravitational field. I think this precludes mr. Poe by some decades.
Here's a link to the "poem" in question: Eureka. It's appears to me to be simply nine pages of unreadable drivel.
However I did find a rather interesting quote from Poe: "Great intellects guess well."
We can neither love nor pity nor forgive. If you make a slip in handling us you die!
Actually both alcohol and opium are correct. Poe and many other notables during the Victorian period and then into the early 20th century were huge users of laudanum: opium derivatives dissolved into alcohol. Poe, both Shelleys, Dickens, Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Robert Browning, Sir Oscar Wilde, etc. were all laudanum addicts at one point in their lives.
they come from a morbid, alcoholic, poet
/. posts come from otherwise intelligent people that think they know about American literature.
/. reader submit a story and state commonplace assumptions that have no basis in fact and, in truth, came from this slander of a dead man.
And sometimes
Living in Richmond, VA, a city where Poe lived for a large part of his life, I have more than a passing familarity with Poe. I've also done a LOT of research on Poe for a screenplay (a new film production company focusing on digital film production is not only interested in this script, but is seriously negotiating for this script).
One of my former teachers is on the board for the Edgar Allan Poe Museum in Richmond and I have had long conversations and interviews with the current and former heads of the Edgar Allan Poe Museum.
In short, Poe was NOT an alcoholic (believe me, after years of working in treatment programs, I KNOW alcoholics), and there is little or no evidence he used opium, in any form.
There is strong evidence he may have been diabetic, in which case he could have what amounts to an allergic reaction to alcohol (I'm not an M.D., so I don't know all the details here.) He was also a critic and could write scathing reviews of other writers. True, he was found in a bar, went into a coma, and died a few days later. What many people don't know is that he was found in a bar on election day! I don't rember the exact law, or if the bar was a polling place, but for legal reasons, no alcohol was being served in the bar due to it being election day.
Diabetes would explain problems Poe had if he drunk and it would also explain his death -- a diabetic coma.
As for being morbid -- some of his writing was morbid. I suggest reading something like "The Poetic Principle" if you want background on this. Poe had quite a sharp sense of humor (and quite a sharp ego, as well) and was totally enticed by beauty. While I would call a number of his works morbid, I have not found enough in research to say he was morbid.
One last point: I mentioned he was a scathing critic. When he died, one of the writers he had severly criticized (I'm sorry -- I should remember his name off the top of my head, but I can't remember it) feigned friendship with Poe and asked to write the obit and handle other similar details. He used the chance to lambast and destroy Poe's reputation with slander and libel. The effectiveness of his slander can still be seen today, 153 years after Poe's death, when we see an intelligent
Anyone read 'Art and Physics: Parallel Visions in Space, Time and Light' by Leonard Shlain? That book highlights some similar occurrences to this throughout history, showing parallels between Salvador Dali to Albert Einstein, Leonardo da Vinci to Isaac Newton, and dozens more, examining and comparing pieces of art to scientific discoveries and theories, then going into lots of detail and explaining each side of the equation.
:)
The book shows through the course of history how artists have stumbled upon and understood in art what scientists later theorized and proved in science. It helps shed a light on not only the parallels between art and science but explain the inner workings of each, and treads through history looking at different art movements and explaining where they're coming from as wellExtremely interesting and compelling read, fairly heady at times, but overall quite good and DEFINITELY worth checking out if this subject interests you.
Likewise, black holes are just an educated guess at what might be at the centre of galaxies or left behind in the wake of supernovae. For all we know, the absence of light in these areas may well be merely extremely dense clouds of cosmic dust rather than pinpoints of near-infinite gravitational power.
The Max-Planck-Institut für extraterrestrische Physik has been tracking the star S2 near the center of our galaxy since 1992. After measuring 2/3 of the period, they are able to confirm:
1. Black holes exist.
2. There is one at the center of our galaxy.
See http://www.mpe.mpg.de/www_ir/GC/intro.html
Excellent work by a very dedicated group!
Regards,
Mike
What is Muslim Physics? Physics is EXACTLY THE SAME whether the physicists involved are Muslim or not.
I think of some famous Muslim physicists like Abdus Salam (a Nobel Prize Laureate)or K. Rammal
(who pioneered the use of ultrametric structures
in spin glass theory). Their work is not
different from the work of their Atheist, Hindu or
Christian colleagues.
By the way I am not Muslim, Hindu or Christian.
I grew up in a Catholic familiy but like many other scientists I am an Atheist.
Likewise, black holes are just an educated guess at what might be at the centre of galaxies or left behind in the wake of supernovae. For all we know, the absence of light in these areas may well be merely extremely dense clouds of cosmic dust rather than pinpoints of near-infinite gravitational power.
Black holes are not black. matter falling into the singularity give off massive amounts of energy. There have been many observations of energy emitters centered on the space where calculations should show intense enough gravity to be a black hole. Calculations also show they should emit blue light. From the event horizon in nothing escapes but A LOT of energy escapes in the space preceding it.
Plus, extremely dense dust clouds don't really destroy matter and produce the excessive amount of radiation that black holes do, nor do they have the gravitational effects on other objects on space that a black hole does.
Just curious, but how much astronomy do you actually know? there is quite a bit more substance to back it up than The Cast of Amontilado.
------- Sorry about the spelling, I suffer from two problems. Dyslexia makes it difficult to spell well, lazy makes it
Actually, in terms of alcohol content, absinthe is equivalent to vodka. Commonly, absinthe is mixed with about an equal amount of water and some sugar (poured over a sugar cube into a glass of water) before it is drunk, mainly to reduce the bitterness of it (absinthe is a wormwood liquor). Absinthe also contains thujone (i think that's the right name), a neurotoxin. This is also currently banned in the U.S.
Life sucks, but death doesn't put out at all....
--Thomas J. Kopp
Hmm, how are we doing today?
"News": Well, Martin Gardner wrote about Poe's Eureka as cosmology in an article entitled "The Irrelevance Of Everything", reprinted in his excellent The Night Is Large: Collected Essays 1938-1995 . Maybe it was news 7 years ago...
"For Nerds": Real nerds don't click through links requiring "Free Registration" to get at pulpy science "news" articles. They are also conversant with the work of Martin Gardner.
"Stuff That Matters": Uh, yeah.
Look, fellows, if I want to read the NYT Science section, I'll subscribe to the NYT. Could we please quit recycling it all on /.?
Three Cheers for Poe for imagining the Big Bang, black holes, and coming up with a solution to Olber's Paradox. But honestly, whenever I read about Olber's Paradox I wonder if I'm missing something. So go off on that tangent with me for just a minute...
Olber said basically that an infinite number of stars should produce an infinite amount of starlight, so why does it get dark at night? Paradox.
Sorry, but no. The brightness of the sky would depend on how much of that infinite starlight has had time to reach the Earth. The fact that the sky isn't infinitely bright right now doesn't mean it won't get that way someday. No paradox. The only paradox is that this is called Olber's Paradox instead of Olber's Idle Musing.
Don't know why Olber's Paradox gets me going, but it always does. Or am I missing something really simple and obvious, and just being a complete jackass about this?
>If the universe was infinite, as 19th-century astronomers believed, there should be an infinite number of stars as well, plenty, in other words, to illuminate the sky at all times.
That's somewhat misleading because, although there aren't an infinite number of stars (and other luminant stellar objects), there are enough stars to "illuminate the sky at all times." It's just that the amount of light isn't quite perceptable to humans. There are other (mostly nocternal) animals that can see just fine at night, and with light amplification devices (a.k.a nightvision goggles) so can we. So it's not a matter of it being dark at night, it's just a matter of us not being able to see with that level of light.
Of course there's also the matter of there being a finite number of stars and light that hasn't reached us yet, but that's besides the point.
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