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Search for Copernicus Over
blamanj writes "Nikolaus Kopernik, aka Copernicus, father of modern heliocentric theory, was buried in Frombork Cathedral (Poland) after he died in 1543. However, the cathedral's tombs were a mess, and it was unclear exactly where he was. Archaeologists now believe they've found his remains, and are planning to do DNA testing to verify. The search began in 2004."
I've seen two photos of the reconstructed head over at German "Spiegel online" and I the first thing that came to my mind was: "That's James Cromwell". Just compare some photos on your own. The similarity is really amazing:-)
Regards,
Stirz
Seeing that they claim to be able to extract DNA from these bones, I imagine they could raid the burial sites of his known relatives of the day, and their descendants, right up to the present day.
That way you would get a trail of DNA from the past to the present, which would make matching easier.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
I'm Pole, and obviously we had more focus on Copernicus in our schools than the US kids (not to mention our schools serve about thrice the amount of knowledge...)
So we were taught the life and findings of Copernicus, and as for his death, we were informed that his corpse lies in the Frombork Cathedral.
Now I wonder if any kid on a visit to Frombork asked the teacher to see Copernicus' tomb, what would they do? "ups... well, we KNOW he is in the cathedral... somewhere..."
Anagram("United States of America") == "Dine out, taste a Mac, fries"
Der Himmel nicht die Erde umgeht
Wie die Gelehrten meynen
Muss jeden Mann sein Wurm gewiss
Kopernikus des seinen
(roughly The heavens do not go round the Earth as the learned held. Every man will get eaten by worms, even Copernicus)
Pining for the fjords
...and Leopold von Sacher-Masoch
grew up on Copernicus Street in Lvov,
which I think was part of Austria-Hungary at the time.
We have a 6-m wide paraboloid for space comms right atop the condo here.
Time to plan a street party.
Who do I write to if I want to borrow a relic for the occasion?
A phalanx or a pair of teeth would do fine.
Having read both Ptolemy's Almagest (the name given to his work by future Arabic scholars, meaning "The Greatest" IIRC) and Copernicus's work, I have a LOT more respect for Ptolemy. Ptolemy built up a system of practical geometry that explained the data available. His system got very complex, but it was consistent, and he addressed far more than Coperincus did. Everything from the shape of the Earth (Sphere? Ellipsoid? Cylinder?) to the movements of the planets, to how far Alexandria was from Rome.
Copernicus, on the other hand, just kind of said "No, the planets revolve around the sun because it's easier that way". Which is true--only he didn't even show WHY it was easier, because he didn't grok the advanced geometry and trig that goes into figuring stuff like this out. Copernicus wasn't even the first to posit that the Earth revolved around the sun (the idea is briefly addressed in Almagest), and he certainly didn't offer any convincing models--those would come with Brahe and especially Kepler. But he was connected reasonably and for some reason is celebrated by history. Sort of the Columbus of math and science.
Two final points: 1) At the time of Copernicus, if you were actually going to use a celestial model to navigate, Ptolemy's system worked much better, because it explained what we observe. Copernicus just drew some circles and cribbed it to roughly match up with real results--he didn't do the work, didn't understand that the data showed elliptical orbits in a heliocentric model, and if you'd used a heliocentric model to navigate you'd have been lost at sea. Which is one of the main reasons the heliocentric model wasn't adopted earlier.
2) You can construct a fully robust mathematical model of the motion of the solar system that puts Mercury at the center, or yourself, or some asteroid. It's just very complex. Think about it long enough, maybe draw some figures, and blow your mind.
Anyway, Ptolemy should be taught after Euclid in high school geometry.
"Someone somewhere had to wear pants for the first time. The meek and indecisive do not change our world." -Montville
Citing the Wikipedia at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sphaera_Mundi
"Tractatus de sphaera, or simply De sphaera) is a medieval astronomy textbook written by Johannes de Sacrobosco c. 1230. Based heavily on Ptolemy's Almagest"
Of course this work was important: it was the manual to track the celestial objects for astrological junk. But that work was no way the origin of Copernicus ideas! He did not stole anything from it, in opposite, he was have to think in new ways than the Ptolemy way.
Just as Einstein found a better description in his relativity theori for the Newtownian physics and he had other works he used it do not mean that he made a very unique work.
Stating that Copernicus stole his ideas from a geocentric work is just absurd! He circulated the manuscript of his work in 1514. Five years later Magellan had proved that the Earth is a globe and that fact must have been something to think about! http://www.phy.hr/~dpaar/fizicari/xcopern.html
Denying his archievement is falsifying history!