Search For the Tomb of Copernicus Reaches an End

duh P3rf3ss3r writes "The Associated Press reports that after 200 years of speculation and investigation, the tomb of Nicolaus Copernicus has been found. Although the heliocentric concept had been suggested earlier, Copernicus is widely thought of as the father of the scientific theory of the heliocentric solar system. The positive identification was made by comparing the DNA from a skeleton's teeth with that from hairs in a book known to have belonged to Copernicus. A computer-generated facial reconstruction is said to also bear a resemblance to contemporary portraits of the scientist."

Comments

Copernicus

[Anonymous Coward]

He realized that the world did not revolve around him.

From TFA:

[mcgrew]

The findings could put an end to centuries of speculation about the exact resting spot of Copernicus, a priest and astronomer whose theories identified the Sun, not the Earth, as the center of the universe.

The sun is the center of the universe? I though the sun orbited the Milkey Way Galaxy's central black hole?

A question for you math geeks: can an object of infinite size even HAVE a center?

I would posit that I am the center of the universe. No matter where I am, I'm here. As I walk, the world moves beneath my feet.

You could construct an accurately moving model of the solar system, have the earth as the center, and still have it be accurate. The moon doesn't orbit the earth, both bodies orbit a spot somewhere beneath the earth's crust.

It's all a matter of how you look at it.

Copernicus is believed to have come up with his main idea of the Sun at the center of the universe between 1508 and 1514, and during those years wrote a manuscript commonly known as Commentariolus (Little Commentary).

His final thesis was only published, however, in the year of his death. His ideas challenged the Bible, the church and past theories, and they had important consequences for future thinkers, including Galileo, Descartes and Newton.

I'm going to have to reread Genesis. I don't recall seeing anywhere where it says the earth is the center of anything, let alone the universe.

1: In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.
2: And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.
3: And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.
4: And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness.
5: And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day.
6: And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters.
7: And God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament: and it was so.
8: And God called the firmament Heaven. And the evening and the morning were the second day.
9: And God said, Let the waters under the heaven be gathered together unto one place, and let the dry land appear: and it was so.
10: And God called the dry land Earth; and the gathering together of the waters called he Seas: and God saw that it was good.
11: And God said, Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit tree yielding fruit after his kind, whose seed is in itself, upon the earth: and it was so.
12: And the earth brought forth grass, and herb yielding seed after his kind, and the tree yielding fruit, whose seed was in itself, after his kind: and God saw that it was good.
13: And the evening and the morning were the third day.
14: And God said, Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years:
15: And let them be for lights in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth: and it was so.
16: And God made two great lights; the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night: he made the stars also.
17: And God set them in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth,
18: And to rule over the day and over the night, and to divide the light from the darkness: and God saw that it was good.
19: And the evening and the morning were the fourth day.

The part where the earth was created before the stars is a bit hard to believe. Maybe it means that the subatomic particles that it's made of?.

Re:From TFA:

[jonnythan]

Yes, Copernicus claimed that the sun, and not the earth, was the center of the universe.

Obviously, in the past 475 years we have figured out that the sun is only the center of the solar system and not the universe.

Re:From TFA:

[rhsanborn]

The part where the earth was created before the stars is a bit hard to believe. Maybe it means that the subatomic particles that it's made of?

Or maybe it's a story made up by early tribes in the mid-east not unlike other creation myths by African tribes, Native Americans, and pretty much everywhere else there have ever been humans.

Re:From TFA:

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe you can try and read what is there instead of what you want to read.

1: In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.

So here we have the original creation. Who knows how long ago. It does not say.

2: And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.

The part "was without form, void" is a bad translation and should say "became without form, and void;". So apparently something happened, and who knows how much time went by, between the first creation and the second "re-creation" of the surface of the earth.

In any case when you read what is actually says there is nothing there that disagrees with what modern science has observed.

Re:From TFA:

[zindorsky]

The sun is the center of the universe? I though the sun orbited the Milkey Way Galaxy's central black hole?

So Copernicus was not 100% correct. But his theory was still more right than the one it replaced (Ptolemaic geocentrism). Newton wasn't 100% correct either, and I'm sure that Einstein's theories will also be shown to be only approximations. But so what? All these theories have advanced science, even if they are not the final word.

A question for you math geeks: can an object of infinite size even HAVE a center?

Well, you can certainly come up with an infinite space that has a "natural" center. For example, an infinite 3-space curved in higher dimensions might have only one point where the curvature is zero. That would be a natural center.

Not that our universe necessarily has that structure.

Re:From TFA:

[Anonymous Coward]

what is your point

Re:From TFA:

[rocketman768]

No object in the universe is at the center because space itself is expanding, and if you stand at any point, it appears that everything is moving away from you. So, no matter where you are, it looks like you're at the center of the universe.

Ecclesiastes 1:5
The sun rises and the sun goes down, and hastens to the place where it rises.

Joshua 10:12-13
Then spoke Joshua to the Lord in the day when the Lord gave the Amorites over to the men of Israel; and he said in the sight of Israel, "Sun, stand thou still at Gibeon, and thou Moon in the valley of Aijalon." And the sun stood still, and the moon stayed, until the nation took vengeance on their enemies. Is this not written in the Book of Jashar? The sun stayed in the midst of heaven, and did not hasten to go down for about a whole day.

So, it's not very good evidence that the Earth was the center of everything, but it was good enough to get the Church to believe it. When Copernicus challenged this belief, he was challenging a VERY VERY old imbedded belief.

What _I_ want to know is how the heck did the computer model figure out what his clothes looked like?!

Re:From TFA:

[Metasquares]

The geocentric model is usually attributed to Ptolemy. I have no idea what people believed before then.

Re:From TFA:

[billius]

I don't believe Genesis is cited as the source of the geocentric theory of the universe. It's never quite written out in black and white to my knowledge, but it'd definitely alluded to several places in the Old Testament:
1 Chronicles 16:30

Tremble before him, all the earth! The world is firmly established; it cannot be moved.

Ecclesiastes 1:5

The sun rises and the sun sets, and hurries back to where it rises.

When dealing with religious issues, it's important to remember that what people actually believe can be quite different from what their scripture says, especially in periods of high illiteracy.

Re:From TFA:

[TheModelEskimo]

>he made the stars also.

Where does it say *when* he made them?

Re:From TFA:

[MaxwellEdison]

First they believed that the universe was a like a truck. Then they though it was like a series of tubes. Now its believed to be like a cloud, although with the points able to connect to any other point.

So sayeth the wise Alaundo.

Re:From TFA:

[Jason Levine]

When dealing with religious issues, it's important to remember that what people actually believe can be quite different from what their scripture says, especially in periods of high illiteracy.

Not only that, but mistranslations can lead to beliefs and practices which don't correspond to the original text. Give those beliefs and practices enough time and they'll become so entrenched that the followers won't care that they are basing their ideas on a mistake.

Re:From TFA:

[Anonymous Coward]

He proved that Sol, our sun, was the center of our solar system. Every scientist and religious theologian at the time passionately believed that the Earth was the center of the solar system. So much so, in fact, that people like Galileo Galilei, were imprisoned and threatened with execution by the church for stating otherwise.

E pur si muove! (And, yet it moves.)

Re:From TFA:

[Anonymous Coward]

What _I_ want to know is how the heck did the computer model figure out what his clothes looked like?!

Time travel and quantum computing...

Re:From TFA:

[EvilBudMan]

--The part where the earth was created before the stars is a bit hard to believe.--

What verse does it even say that? I think Heaven meant sky right there.

http://www.eliyah.com/cgi-bin/strongs.cgi?file=hebrewlexicon&isindex=heaven

Re:From TFA:

[mcgrew]

The sun rises and the sun goes down, and hastens to the place where it rises

Don't meterologists talk of sunrise and sunset? Don't modern day astronomers say things like "wow, what a beautiful sunrise?"

it was good enough to get the Church to believe it

The various churches have believed a whole lot of stuff that isn't supported by the bible. Look at the Baptists' hatred of drunkenness and dancing. There's an old joke that goes "Why won't Baptists have sex standing up? They don't want anyone to think they're dancing!"

Why any Christian would think that capital punishment or war can be a good thing is beyond my comprehension.

What _I_ want to know is how the heck did the computer model figure out what his clothes looked like?!

They have paintings of him, that's where the clothes come from. What I want to know is in the posters of the evolution of man you see in all the museums, why do the cave men have long hair and beards while the modern man has no facial hair (lacking a secondary sexual characteristic) and have short hair? Bald I can see, but short? I've never met a human with naturally short, doglike hair like you see on those posters. I mean, my hair's short but I was at the barbershop the other day.

Re:From TFA:

[nategoose]

The Milky Way is the center of the Universe because it is both the creamiest and chewiest part of the Universe.

Re:From TFA:

[Anonymous Coward]

so where was he?

Re:From TFA:

[Kagura]

Hmm... I expect his body was hidden in the last place they looked. It always seems to work out that way for me.

Re:From TFA:

[Hatta]

I would posit that I am the center of the universe. No matter where I am, I'm here. As I walk, the world moves beneath my feet.

You could construct an accurately moving model of the solar system, have the earth as the center, and still have it be accurate. The moon doesn't orbit the earth, both bodies orbit a spot somewhere beneath the earth's crust.

It's all a matter of how you look at it.

All points in space are the center of the universe. No matter where you are in the universe, you can look around and see everything moving away from you. Trace that backwards and you'll find that the big bang occurred right where you are, no matter where you are.

I'm going to have to reread Genesis. I don't recall seeing anywhere where it says the earth is the center of anything, let alone the universe.

And what, you expected religious folk to have a rational explanation for what they believe?

Re:From TFA:

[O('_')O_Bush]

"A question for you math geeks: can an object of infinite size even HAVE a center?"

It's commonly accepted that the universe is of finite size and has a defined shape.

Re:From TFA:

[Chris Burke]

I would posit that I am the center of the universe. No matter where I am, I'm here. As I walk, the world moves beneath my feet.

Yes, that's known as the "egocentric model", in competition with the "geocentric model" popular before Copernicus, and the "heliocentric" model he championed. This is all covered in this highly informative book, which is sadly out of print.

Re:From TFA:

[Anonymous Coward]

What is wrong with that first quoted statement? It's true: that's what Copernicus claimed. It wasn't ultimately right but proved less wrong than Ptolemy's model.

Re:From TFA:

[nsayer]

Hubble's Law says that every point is, indeed, the center of expansion of the universe, since every other point in the universe is retreating at a distance proportional to its distance.

As for Genesis, it said nothing even about the earth even being round, much less being the center of anything. Assorted fruitcakes have been arguing against that notion even hundreds of years after the earth was circumnavigated which (invoking Occam's razor) leads you to the conclusion that the earth is round (never mind the fact that several hundred human beings have actually seen the round Earth with their own eyes from outside its atmosphere and have essentially testified to its appearance the same way).

Re:From TFA:

[Anonymous Coward]

from an observer on earth, the stars would not have been visible until the plants cleared up our CO2 atmostphere.

Re:From TFA:

[nsayer]

Every time I hide a body, it always turns up in the last place they look. That is, if it turns up.

Perhaps I've said too much.

Re:From TFA:

[JonathanBoyd]

So, it's not very good evidence that the Earth was the center of everything, but it was good enough to get the Church to believe it. When Copernicus challenged this belief, he was challenging a VERY VERY old imbedded belief.

Have you ever talking about sunset or sunrise, or the ? I don't imagine that when you do, you're making a scientific statement. Similarly, poetic and narrative descriptions of the location or procession of the sun should not be taken as scientific descriptions. People back then had no great reason to think that heliocentrism was better than geocentrism, but the Bible doesn't come out and endorse any position, or even raise it as a subject.

Re:From TFA:

[qualidafial]

Hmm... I expect his body was hidden in the last place they looked. It always seems to work out that way for me.

It is customary to stop searching for something after you've found it.

Re:From TFA:

[JonathanBoyd]

I don't believe Genesis is cited as the source of the geocentric theory of the universe. It's never quite written out in black and white to my knowledge, but it'd definitely alluded to several places in the Old Testament:

I'm curious, how often do you read a piece of poetry and assume that the author was making a scientific statement? In the absence of scientific absence, it is understandable that people might read more into a statement than they should, as has happened, but there is no requirement for poetry to be interpreted literally, so while it might be accurate to say that these statements were taken to mean geocentric thinking was correct, it is not accurate to say that they actually endorse such thinking or even have the subject in mind.

Re:From TFA:

[aLEczapKA]

The sun is the center of the universe? I though the sun orbited the Milkey Way Galaxy's central black hole?

Well, almost 500 years ago, people thought our Solar System was the Universe.
The geocentric view had been dominant since the time of Aristotle.
He wasn't the first to come up with the idea that our system is heliocentric.
However he was the first one who came out with the mathematical model of a heliocentric system.
The idea which was later picked up Kepler, who laid foundation for the Newton's theory of universal gravitation, which was picked up by Einstein later. (really really big generalization here, but you get the point)

You may say that what Copernicus had predicted on paper using math, Galileo Galilei saw with his own telescope, thus his famous words 'eppur si muove' (and yet it moves).

Re:From TFA:

[void*]

I'm going to have to reread Genesis. [virginia.edu] I don't recall seeing anywhere where it says the earth is the center of anything, let alone the universe.

Genesis doesn't. However, there are verses in other books of the Bible that state things like (paraphrased) "God established the Earth such that it cannot move".

Such verses used to be interpreted to mean the Earth did not, in fact, move, which would mean that everything that looked like it was circling the Earth actually was - which logically means the Earth would be the center of the Universe.

Those verses are now interpreted differently.

Re:From TFA:

[JLF65]

Not me! If you find one, there's bound to be more!! :)

On a more serious note, the phrase "always the last place you look" means that no matter where you start or the order you search in, the item is always in the final place on the list of places to look. It's a corollary of Murphy's Law.

Re:From TFA:

[JLF65]

Or maybe it refers to the speed of light and that one wouldn't see the creation of the stars until well after they were created. ;)

Re:From TFA:

[Barradrewda]

I believe the geocentric model was based on some story about god stopping the sun in the sky to help some biblical hero's army win some war. It was thought that because god stopped the sun revolving around the Earth and not the earth's revolution yaddayaddaya... Earth is the center of everything. I have bored myself...

Re:From TFA:

[Beardo the Bearded]

I think it was something to do with Gods living on Mt. Olympus, and the sun was some kind of chariot.

Before we had a lot of civilization, we followed more of a Food? / Yikes! mode of thought; we didn't have a lot of spare time to look up and wonder, "Hmm, what's it all about..."

Re:From TFA:

[thatskinnyguy]

I am the center of the universe! Look in all directions around me. How much universe is there? Infinite. Yes?

Re:From TFA:

[eat here_get gas]

It's commonly accepted that the universe is of finite size and has a defined shape.

so after you define for me the size (or shape) of the Universe, please tell all of us what's on the other side (or outside the boundries of your definition)...

Re:From TFA:

[MadnessASAP]

Especially if they found said body in a graveyard. They may not want to go looking for more though.

Re:From TFA:

[Ungrounded Lightning]

Copernicus claimed that the sun, and not the earth, was the center of the universe.

I was under the impression that his claim was a smaller - and more nearly correct - one: That the Earth orbited the Sun rather than the other way around, not that the sun was the center of the entire universe.

(Though it does a good job of approximating the center of the collection of readily observable heavenly bodies distinguishable from the "fixed stars".)

Does anyone have a link that would disambiguate his claim between "Earth orbits Sun" and "Sun is the center of the universe."?

Re:From TFA:

[Anonymous Coward]

define center. if you define it as the (or a) point from which you have teh same amount of stuff in all directions then all points are the center.

much like a sphere. where is the center of the spheres surface, not considering the volume within the sphere? every point on the surface qualifies.

now they're both right and nobody's feelings get hurt. lets go play tee ball with the mercy rule and snow cones.

Re:From TFA:

[maglor_83]

Hmm... I expect his body was hidden in the last place they looked. It always seems to work out that way for me.

Not me. I always keep looking after I've found the body. Just in case you know?

Re:From TFA:

[billius]

I don't believe Genesis is cited as the source of the geocentric theory of the universe. It's never quite written out in black and white to my knowledge, but it'd definitely alluded to several places in the Old Testament:

I'm curious, how often do you read a piece of poetry and assume that the author was making a scientific statement? In the absence of scientific absence, it is understandable that people might read more into a statement than they should, as has happened, but there is no requirement for poetry to be interpreted literally, so while it might be accurate to say that these statements were taken to mean geocentric thinking was correct, it is not accurate to say that they actually endorse such thinking or even have the subject in mind.

(emphasis added)

I'm sorry if you misunderstood my post, but I wasn't trying to say anything about my beliefs but rather how people in the past attempted to justify the idea that the earth was the center of the universe by citing the bible.

it is not accurate to say that they actually endorse such thinking or even have the subject in mind.

Which was why I ended my original post with:

When dealing with religious issues, it's important to remember that what people actually believe can be quite different from what their scripture says, especially in periods of high illiteracy.

Back in the day when people had questions about the nature of the universe, they turned to the Bible. The Bible was considered the final authority on *all* matters, even ones that weren't particularly related to anything said in the book, an attitude that is dangerously carried into the present by people declaring that "all the answers" are in the Bible.

So when someone asked "What is the structure of the universe?" they frantically tore through the Bible looking for any clues related to how God created the Universe since Genesis is rather vague on the subject from what I can recall. It was not my intent to say that I agree with this line of reasoning but rather to explain it given the original poster's comment that geocentricity was not mentioned in Genesis.

Re:From TFA:

[Hoi Polloi]

The sun is the center of the universe? I though the sun orbited the Milkey [sic] Way Galaxy's central black hole?

At the time of Copernicus the ancient Greeks were considered the last word on all things concerning nature and they belived the earth was the center of everything. You can't really blame Copernicus for not being aware of galaxies and black holes, or quantum mechanics or lasers or all that other stuff that was discovered hundreds of years after him.

can an object of infinite size even HAVE a center?

It is believed that the universe has a finite size.

You could construct an accurately moving model of the solar system, have the earth as the center, and still have it be accurate.

Nope, they tried that already. Having the earth at the center of a model of the solar system required having all sorts of ugly planetary epicycles and such and pretty much didn't work as observations got better.

I'm going to have to reread Genesis. I don't recall seeing anywhere where it says the earth is the center of anything, let alone the universe.

Actually Genesis has more than one description of the origins of the world (1:1-2:3 and 2:4b-2:25). It was assumed that since the earth is created first in the bible that it was the center of things.

Re:From TFA:

[dontmakemethink]

A question for you math geeks: can an object of infinite size even HAVE a center?

Well infinite is not the term I'd use here. The potential size of the universe is infinite, but there is a distinct perimeter that is constantly expanding, thank you Edwin Hubble. If you measure the directions of expansion from various parts of the galaxy, they have a distinct point of origin, give or take a really bad Star Trek movie.

The basis of the Copernican Principle is that there is no 'preferred' position in the universe, i.e. no center. The parent article is wrong. So was Copernicus on that small detail. Everything else was bang on and contradicted religious scripture. It's amazing he wasn't burned at the stake for heresy.

Re:From TFA:

[Anonymous Coward]

Is that you Hans?

Re:From TFA:

[JonathanBoyd]

(emphasis added)

I'm sorry if you misunderstood my post, but I wasn't trying to say anything about my beliefs but rather how people in the past attempted to justify the idea that the earth was the center of the universe by citing the bible.

I think we actually agree, but by saying that the OT alludes to geocentrism, it looked like you were saying that the Bible suggests geocentrism as a scientific model, which it doesn't. It can be mistakenly read in that way, but if it's a mistake, then you can't say to alludes to the idea. Grammar pedantry really.

Re:From TFA:

[Anonymous Coward]

Why do I get the sense that you were raised Catholic?

This coming from an athiest raised Catholic.

Re:From TFA:

[Mipsalawishus]

Copernicus must have missed this one:
Psalm 19:6; His going forth is from the end of the heaven, and his circuit unto the ends of it: and there is nothing hid from the heat thereof.

Re:From TFA:

[5of0]

The sun is the center of the universe? I though the sun orbited the Milkey Way Galaxy's central black hole?

Umm, Copernicus did say that the sun, not earth, was the center of the universe. Granted, he was still wrong, but he was more right than anyone else at that point, so he revolutionized stuff.

A question for you math geeks: can an object of infinite size even HAVE a center?

I would posit that I am the center of the universe. No matter where I am, I'm here. As I walk, the world moves beneath my feet.

Nope. If my Physics' teacher's overview of the universe is correct, the universe doesn't have a center. Everywhere is the center, and nowhere is the center. That's the paradox of relativity. So, in a way, your posit is actually correct.

You could construct an accurately moving model of the solar system, have the earth as the center, and still have it be accurate. The moon doesn't orbit the earth, both bodies orbit a spot somewhere beneath the earth's crust.

It's all a matter of how you look at it.

Yep. That's what Tycho Brahe did, actually. He simply couldn't concieve that the earth moved, so he came up with a system where the earth was still stationary, but the planets rotated around the sun, and the sun and the moon rotated around the earth. You can picture if you took one of those rotating solar system models and picked it up by the earth, it would still spin - just everything would spin around the earth. That was Tycho's theory. It may have been more popular except that Tycho died and Copernicus took over.

I'm going to have to reread Genesis. I don't recall seeing anywhere where it says the earth is the center of anything, let alone the universe.

The passages that got Copernicus in trouble weren't in Genesis, but in other places:

The sun also ariseth, and the sun goeth down, and hasteth to his place where he arose
Ecclesiastes 1:5

Then spake Joshua to the LORD in the day when the LORD delivered up the Amorites before the children of Israel, and he said in the sight of Israel, Sun, stand thou still upon Gibeon; and thou, Moon, in the valley of Ajalon. And the sun stood still, and the moon stayed, until the people had avenged themselves upon their enemies. Is not this written in the book of Jasher? So the sun stood still in the midst of heaven, and hasted not to go down about a whole day.
--Joshua 10:12-13

Fear before him, all the earth: the world also shall be stable, that it be not moved.
--1 Chronicles 16:30

[God] (w)ho laid the foundations of the Earth, that it should not be removed for ever.
--Psalm 104:5

Verses like these claimed nothing about the centricity of the earth, but that the earth was stationary. By extension, this implies that everything moves around it, but Copernicus got in trouble for saying that the earth moved, not that it wasn't the center of the universe.

Re:From TFA:

[jacquesm]

That's a bad translation ? Ok, I'll believe you mr. A.C.

Since you now see that modern science and religion agree would you be so kind as to remove all the 'equal time' bullshit so we can get on with progress ?

Re:From TFA:

[cyberfunkr]

How does the old joke go? Last week I found Jesus; he fell behind the cushions in the couch.

Re:From TFA:

[Attila Dimedici]

The geocentric model was developed by the Ancient Greeks (Aristotle was a proponent). If many Anthropogenic Global Warming proponents had the same amount of political power as Galileo's rivals, they would do the same to those scientists who disagree with them.

Re:From TFA:

[Anonymous Coward]

> The part where the earth was created before the stars is a bit hard to believe.

It doesn't.

If you'll notice (even in the original Hebrew), "the heavens and the earth" (i.e. everything) was created on line one.
The rest of the story takes place from the perspective on the earth. First water covered the earth, in line 2. Then, in line 3,
light was allowed on earth (supposedly the earth was covered with a dust cloud at that time), then water vapour started to appear
in the atmosphere (line 6), then the continents started to form (line 10), then plans started to form (line 11), then the sky
became clear enough that the moon and stars began to be visible (line 15, 16), then animals started to form, then man.

Evolution at it's finest.

Re:From TFA:

[jhol13]

Actually ... Sun is in the centre of the universe (by current understanding).

It has been mathematically proven.

So are you, btw, and everything else, as amazing as it sounds.

Re:From TFA:

[ignavus]

Hmm... I expect his body was hidden in the last place they looked. It always seems to work out that way for me.

Have you tried running your search algorithm in reverse?

Re:From TFA:

[Teilo]

The part "was without form, void" is a bad translation and should say "became without form, and void;"

That is what we call a "theological translation". You believe that only because somebody told you that. It could just as well mean that in the process of creating the earth, it was, at the particular point in time we are noting, formless and empty.

The verb is hayah. In Gen. 2:1, it's just your basic "be" verb, in the Qal 3rd person form. "At that point in time, it so was". If it was speaking of a future event, it would be "it will be".

The verb has no connotation of some process of becoming, nor does it imply some transitional state that proceeded it. It merely means that at this particular point in time, whatever may have been, it is this way now.

This is Hebrew 101. It's just a "be" verb. This is simple stuff, dude. And that is why any major translation you care to name: KJV, NKJV, RSV, NRSV, NIV, ESV, NASB, JPS, NJB, the Greek Septuagint, the Latin Vulgate, Luther's 1545 German, translate it: "the earth was ...". But of course, they must all have been inept translators . . .

Re:From TFA:

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, that could be done by putting the region in a time compression field so that only a fraction of a second would pass for everyone else for every hundred years that pass on the battlefield. That way, the sun (and everything else) would appear to have stopped for those inside. It would require compensating for red (or mabye blue?) shifting but that should be relatively easy compared to controlling the rate at which time passes over an area of miles.

Re:From TFA:

[Rog-Mahal]

Actually, there are some real predictive problems with geocentric models. Epicycles and eccentric circles (Ptolemy's inventions for planetary motion) can predict where bodies will be in relation to both the sun and the zodiac, but they cannot predict *when* they will be there. I agree with you on the point that his system does not directly contradict the Bible, but it's not the Bible he had to worry about, it was the Church.

Re:From TFA:

[freeweed]

What I want to know is in the posters of the evolution of man you see in all the museums, why do the cave men have long hair and beards while the modern man has no facial hair (lacking a secondary sexual characteristic) and have short hair? Bald I can see, but short? I've never met a human with naturally short, doglike hair like you see on those posters.

We had (have?) much more sophisticated tools than Neandethals. Try shaving (or getting a buzz cut) with a stone axe sometime.

That's the general idea, anyway.

Re:From TFA:

[JoshuaZ]

I don't recall seeing anywhere where it says the earth is the center of anything, let alone the universe.

The argument that the Bible requires a geocentrist universe is not generally connected to Genesis but rather verses like that in Joshua where God makes the Sun stand still at the battle at Gibeon. See Joshua chapter 10. The argument is that it doesn't make sense for the Sun to stop in the middle of the sky if the Earth is really stopping. But the verse talks about the Sun stopping, not about the Earth stopping its rotation. There are a variety of other verses but that is one of the most blatant. If you want see other Biblical arguments for geocentrism (as well as Christian theological arguments) you should look at http://www.geocentricity.com/ which is run by sincere modern geocentrists.

Re:From TFA:

[Omestes]

The universe is not infinite.

Re:From TFA:

[Anonymous Coward]

Hmm since we cannot really see the edges of the universe and have only vague theories as to its shape ... Guess Earth and the Sun are both still in the race in a weird tumbling universe ;)

Re:From TFA:

[D-Cypell]

You are about 30 years behind the curve with your questions.

Re:From TFA:

[laejoh]

Go back writing file systems!

Re:From TFA:

[Anonymous Coward]

I wish the cops were the same about the body's I dumped.

Re:From TFA:

[krou]

Don't read Genesis, read elsewhere. For example, the following indicate that it was the sun that moved in the heavens, and that it was the earth that stood still, implying its position in the centre of the universe.

Joshua 10:12-13
Then spoke Joshua to the Lord in the day when the Lord gave the Amorites over to the men of Israel; and he said in the sight of Israel, "Sun, stand thou still at Gibeon, and thou Moon in the valley of Aijalon." And the sun stood still, and the moon stayed, until the nation took vengeance on their enemies. Is this not written in the Book of Jashar? The sun stayed in the midst of heaven, and did not hasten to go down for about a whole day.

Habakkuk 3:11
The sun and moon stood still in their habitation at the light of thine arrows as they sped, at the flash of thy glittering spear.

Psalms 19:4-6
yet their voice goes out through all the earth, and their words to the end of the world. In them he has set a tent for the sun, which comes forth like a bridegroom leaving his chamber, and like a strong man runs his course with joy. Its rising is from the end of the heavens, and its circuit to the end of them; and there is nothing hid from its heat.

Ecclesiastes 1:5
The sun rises and the sun goes down, and hastens to the place where it rises.

The following all indicate that the earth did not move:

1 Chronicles 16:30
tremble before him, all earth; yea, the world stands firm, never to be moved.

Psalms 93:1
The Lord reigns; he is robbed in majesty; the lord is robbed, he is girded with strength. Yea, the world is established; it shall never be moved.

Psalms 96:10
Say among the nations, "The Lord reigns! Yea, the world is established, it shall never be moved; he will judge the peoples with equity."

These were taken from here, where there are a few more references.

Re:From TFA:

[mcgrew]

really bad Star Trek movie

Blasphemy! Stone the blasphemer!

Re:From TFA:

[Anonymous Coward]

A question for you math geeks: can an object of infinite size even HAVE a center?

Yes. Every point is the center.

Re:From TFA:

[vegiVamp]

I always find it wonderful when people know exactly what connotations a given word had in some context in a language that hasn't been spoken for over a thousand years.

Re:From TFA:

[Eddy Luten]

Wow. You have no idea what you are talking about, do you?

Re:From TFA:

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, Copernicus claimed that the sun, and not the earth, was the center of the universe.

Obviously, in the past 475 years we have figured out that the sun is only the center of the solar system and not the universe.

Aristarchus was the originator of this idea borrowed some 1600 years later.

Re:From TFA:

[operagost]

This comment was invented by Shampoo.

Re:From TFA:

[Veggiesama]

I would posit that I am the center of the universe. No matter where I am, I'm here. As I walk, the world moves beneath my feet.

You could construct an accurately moving model of the solar system, have the earth as the center, and still have it be accurate. The moon doesn't orbit the earth, both bodies orbit a spot somewhere beneath the earth's crust.

It's all a matter of how you look at it.

Let's just invoke the cosmological principle and leave it at that:

"On large spatial scales, the Universe is homogeneous and isotropic. Or simply put, the universe is the same everywhere on a large scale."

Re:From TFA:

[Ginger Unicorn]

Apart from where it says fruit bearing plants existed before fish. and all the other things it says that disagree with established science. So you have a choice of dismissing the science, or accepting that the bible is either fallible or allegorical. But you can't say the bible is literal and infallible, and the science is sound, since they contradict one another.

Re:From TFA:

[eat here_get gas]

and you obfuscated your ignorance in not answering my question. good job!

Re:From TFA:

[geekoid]

Joshua 10

  12 On the day the LORD gave the Amorites over to Israel, Joshua said to the LORD in the presence of Israel:
              "O sun, stand still over Gibeon,
              O moon, over the Valley of Aijalon."

  13 So the sun stood still,
              and the moon stopped,
              till the nation avenged itself on [b] its enemies,
            as it is written in the Book of Jashar.
            The sun stopped in the middle of the sky and delayed going down about a full day. 14 There has never been a day like it before or since, a day when the LORD listened to a man. Surely the LORD was fighting for Israel!

Psalm 93

  1 The LORD reigns, he is robed in majesty;
              the LORD is robed in majesty
              and is armed with strength.
              The world is firmly established;
              it cannot be moved.

Add to that the religios dogma, it stuck. There are people who, in this very day and age, believe the sun revolves arounf the earth..

Yes I know, bunch of stupid fucks.
I hope that don't work in anything that needs circles, because according to the bible, pi is exactly 3.

Re:From TFA:

[geekoid]

The last 475 years of growing knowledge supporting his thoery.

This is how science works. I love it.

Re:From TFA:

[geekoid]

because modern man has razors, scissors and a comb?
The removal of facial hair is a social product. A recent one at that.

Re:From TFA:

[geekoid]

Yes it does. in Psalms and in Joshua.
That period strongly held onto the belief that the earth is the center of the universe.
There are church papers supporting this. In all fairness the church did reverse it's position....in 1985.

Re:From TFA:

[GaryPatterson]

They should have looked there first then.

That always works for me.

Re:From TFA:

[D-Cypell]

Thank you :)

Slightly less sarcastically, it should be fairly obvious that in theories that predict a finite universe that there is nothing on the 'other side' of any boundary, as the other side, would be, part of the universe. You are partially right about my ignorance actually, I have some basic ideas on this stuff based on my layman reading but I am no cosmologist. As I understand it, the primary suggestion is that it would work a lot like the surface of earth, start out in a straight line in a given direction and you can quite happily travel in that direction indefinitely, but you will return to your origin an infinite amount of times also.

Of course it is much more difficult to imagine this situation in 3 (spacial and perceivable) dimensions rather than 2, and I believe even Hawkings suggests that it is effectively impossible for the human brain to visualize this situation which is why things such as this tend to be represented mathematically.

It is a bit like when people ask, "So what was there before the big bang?". Well, there is no before, the big bang was an 'explosion' of both space *and* time. The arrows of time as we know them did not exist before the big bang, there simply was no *before*.

The problem that you are having (and most people, including myself have) is that you are using a brain that has evolved for the purposes of 'hunt, eat and fuck', to understand something that was never in our evolutionary benefit to understand. The fact that we even have the capability to understand the slightest amount of this stuff is only really a side effect of genetic mutation that was chosen to remain in our genome for other, more beneficial reasons.

My view point is that in reality the universe may be beyond our comprehension in the same way that the nature of the planet is beyond the comprehension of an ant. We might have uncovered 10% of the workings of the universe, we might have uncovered 0.0000000000000000000000000000001%. There is no limit to the potential complexity after all. In fact, believing that the nature of the universe must be within our comprehension pretty much leaves us with an intelligent design theory. If it is definately within our understanding... somebody must have made it that way :o).

What I can tell you however, is that scientists who study cosmology for their entire career and have proposed the idea of a finite universe have not overlooked the question of... "Yes, but what is over the wall?" :o).

Hopefully that is a better answer!

Re:From TFA:

[eat here_get gas]

actually, it IS! while not giving me a "definite" (or definitive) answer, it DID explain why such an answer isn't possible.
and thanks for rising above my sarcasm...

Re:From TFA:

[D-Cypell]

Absolutely no problem at all. My original reply to your post was unfair anyway. I was having one of 'those days', sorry.

Re:From TFA:

[JonathanBoyd]

Yes it does. in Psalms and in Joshua.

As I've already pointed out, the Psalms are poetic so claiming that via a literal interpretation, they make scientific statements, is ludicrous. Similarly, the inicdent in Joshua seems a figure of speech we still use today, hence my references to sunset and sunrise. From the perspective of those watch, the sun appeared to stop in the sky. It wasn't a scientific statement regarding heliocentrism or geocentrism.

That period strongly held onto the belief that the earth is the center of the universe.
There are church papers supporting this.

It was commonly believed at the time by the overwhelming majority of people, including a big chunk of astronomers, that the sun moved round the earth. After all, it didn't feel like the earth was moving and it looked like the sun was. When they read those passages, they would have seen then as consistent with such a view, but they were mishandling scripture. The Wikipedia article on Modern Geocentrism is quite good on this.

In all fairness the church did reverse it's position....in 1985.

Are you talking about the Roman Catholic church? I have no great interest in their position of matters, but I doubt that they were still holding geocentric views in 1984.

Re:From TFA:

[eat here_get gas]

no problem. I will admit (if I haven't already) that I am a Windows ab/user (of 8 copies of Windows, only my sole x64 version is legal!). I will further admit it takes a person of orders of magnitude of intelligence greater to (successfully) operate Linux/etc (I obtained a CompSci degree on a Mac!), and don't find that OS difficult at all. I did however bristle at your assertion that Windows users were "newbies".
Kudos to all that took the time, had the patience, and the wherewithal to learn the ins, outs, and in-betweens of Linux. And besides, your icon (the penguin) is much, much cooler than mine! A stupid flag! I mean, c'mon- who's idea was that!?
:)

Re:From TFA:

[D-Cypell]

I think you might have meant to type this reply to another thread you are involved with. We were discussion finite universe theory rather than the relative merits of Windows/Linux. I have my views on this too, but I will catch you in some other thread to go through those! ;o)

Re:From TFA:

[O('_')O_Bush]

It has a defined shape and finite size, but we are not yet sure what those are. I am not a mathematician, but I do know that cosmologists have found predictions for these things. Research is being done into finding the shape (spherical, flat, curved, toroidal, or a geodesic of some kind). I don't know if we'll be able to find a size in miles, because as far as we know, the observable universe hasn't filled the space that it occupies yet.

As for what lies beyond those boundaries, to my understanding, it's the other side of the universe. It's kinda like how you can roll a marble on a table, and to the table there is one continuous line, but to us, we can see that the marble isn't an infinitely long line, but rather a short line that is looping around.

Those are just my simplistic views of physics. I am a computer engineer after all, not a physicist.

Re:From TFA:

[Anonymous Coward]

It'll be a wonderful day for everyone when the entire creation/evolution debate gets put back where it belongs - in the realm of mythic vs scientific language.

How do you tell a pre-scientific community how it got there? "In the beginning..." So Moses (or whomever) did a relatively good job of describing what happened. Right up until it got taken too literally by the fundamentalists.

Re:From TFA:

[mcgrew]

according to the bible, pi is exactly 3

Isaac Asimov made that assertion in one of his books ("Asimov on Numbers" maybe?) but he misunderstood the passage. It concerned the diameter/circimfrance of a something or other, some sore of temple vessel, I don't remember what, but the passage said to make it n1 circumfrance and n2 diameter. Asimov said that it would result in an octagonal shape (iirc), but it was clear to me that Asimov negleted to remember that there are no two-dimentional objects in our three (plus time) dimentional world. He forgot to take the thickness of the vessel's walls into account. The measurement in circumfrance was the outside of the vessel, while the other measurement was the inside of the vessel.

He was correct, however, in saying that the ancient Jews were ignorant of pi. Yet they still got their vessel built.

Re:From TFA:

[mcgrew]

Biologically speaking, a woman who is turned off by a beard is like a man who is turned off by titties. Shaving is a passing fad (and the museaum pictures could have the modern man bald headed).

What's the difference between a man shaving facial hair and a woman getting a radical mastectomy? Tits don't grow back. But breasts on a woman and facial hair on men are secondary sexual characteristics.

A woman who likes clean shaven men is probably a closet lesbian.

Heretics

[Anonymous Coward]

by Andrew Bird:

Bored holes through our tongues
So sing a song about it
Held our breath for too long
'Til we're half sick about it
Tell us what we did wrong
And you can blame us for it
Turn a clamp on our thumbs
We'll sew a doll about it
And tell us all about it

How 'bout some credit now
Where credit is due
For the damage that we've done?
Wrought upon ourselves and others
With a slow and vicious gun
And although pratfalls can be fun
Encores can be fatal
And then I hear you say

"Thank god it's fatal
Not shy
Not shy of fatal
Thank god."

Wait just a second now
It's not all that bad
Are we not having fun?
You're making mountains of handkerchiefs
Where the mascara always runs
So be careful when you're done
You're bound to get post-natal
What, did I just hear you say?

"Thank god it's fatal."
We don't want to hear the sound of a door
And we don't want to read the signs that you bore
You know, the kind of sign you hang on the door
Saying, "we'll be back"--what a crack
Now don't you think we might have heard that before?

Bored holes through our tongues
So sing a song about it
Held our breath for too long
'Til we're half sick about it
Tell us what we did wrong
And you can blame us for it
Turn a clamp on our thumbs
We'll sew a doll about it

a better title: the lost tomb of copernicus

[ed.han]

i'll take "indiana jones 4 movies i would actually have liked" for $2000, alex.

ed

Re:a better title: the lost tomb of copernicus

[SoupGuru]

I'm trying to repress any memories of seeing that movie. Thanks for sending me back to square one. Jerk.

Re:a better title: the lost tomb of copernicus

[Repton]

Hmm, maybe the Nazis are looking for the skull of Copernicus which they can use in a ritual to undo physics, causing the sun to start revolving around the earth. But they'll vary the ritual, putting the sun into an eliptic orbit that will slingshot closely around the earth. This will have two effects: firstly, the proximity of the sun will burn America to a cinder. Secondly, slingshotting the sun around the earth will catapult the earth back in time to before the end of the second world war. With America burnt to a crisp, there will be nothing stopping the Nazis from winning the war!

...whaddya reckon, should I pitch it to George?

Re:a better title: the lost tomb of copernicus

[Anonymous Coward]

It's okay, we all saw it, but we shouldn't push it out of our minds, we should bring those bastards to justice!

Re:a better title: the lost tomb of copernicus

[ildon]

You failed to state your thread title in the form of a question.

Wow

[Anonymous Coward]

The longest journey beings with a single step, and Copernicus took a big step on the road to a modern understanding of the universe. He wasn't right about the sun being the center of the universe, but he was correct about it being the center of the solar system. Newton theories of motion aren't correct, but we still consider him to have made a contribution, no?

This is good news for the church

[fredrated]

Now they can properly burn him at the stake for his heresy.

Re:This is good news for the church

[Shin-LaC]

Copernicus was a Catholic cleric. He was buried inside a cathedral. The church didn't take objection to his work until six decades after his death, under a changing political and cultural climate.

Re:This is good news for the church

[MagusSlurpy]

Now they can properly burn him at the stake for his heresy.

Oh, god, that's disgusting. Haven't you ever smelled burning jerky before?!

Re:This is good news for the church

[dedazo]

Next up is Kepler's mother, who was accused of being a witched and nearly also burned at the stake for that. Maybe they still hold a grudge.

Lord, protect me from thy followers...

Re:This is good news for the church

[mog007]

They didn't take objection to HIS work because his work was published posthumously. The unfortunate bastard who came after Copernicus, Galileo, was the one who received the ire of the church. Not just because he was contradicting church doctrine, but because he was also using evidence to support his claims.

Re:This is good news for the church

[smoker2]

That's right, they thought his stuff was great. It meant they could work out exactly when easter was which made life much easier for them. Previously, easter kept migrating through the year because their calculations were based on the moon (or something like that). It was the greater issue of people using his work to fight the churches control of ideas that caused the crackdown.

Re:This is good news for the church

[Anonymous Coward]

Not just because he was contradicting church doctrine, but because he was also using evidence to support his claims.

Actually, it was mostly because he called the Pope an idiot and actually wasn't showing as much evidence as the some would have liked. The myth is that he proved the earth wasn't the center of the universe, and them them big meanie Catholics came down to ruin his day, because, for unexplained reasons, they hate all thing factual.

Re:This is good news for the church

[akozakie]

They also didn't object, because was resonably careful. He didn't discuss whether the Earth or the Sun is the center of the universe. He just promoted a useful "mathematical trick" - if you base the calculations on the position of the Sun rather than the Earth, the calculations are simpler. Worded like this, the theory was useful and didn't contradict anything. Of course, the simpler calculations may suggest that the central Sun might be more than just a trick, but Copernicus didn't really advocate adapting that view. Why should he - he wasn't studying the structure of the universe as such, he just wanted to simplify calculations in astronomy.

Actually, this is a good approach to science. If some model gives simpler results, it's certainly worth using, but that doesn't mean its how reality works. As we learn, we can begin to treat the good models as "real", but they are still just models and defending them against contradicting experiments wouldn't be scientific. Look at the quantum theories - the main criteria for selection of the good ones are "do the results agree with experiments" and "is it simple enough, with nice symmetries etc." - we still don't know enough to claim that one is "closer to reality" than the other.

Re:This is good news for the church

[geekoid]

in all fairness, there were other things going on between him and the church.

Always Jumping to Conclusions

[eldavojohn]

The sun is the center of the universe? I though the sun orbited the Milky Way Galaxy's central black hole?

You're right. Copernicus didn't know this at the time (or at least if he did, he didn't tell anyone). He came up with a model that was simply better than the norm. Whether he and he alone did this or not is probably up for debate but he sure stuck his neck out there for it.

I would posit that I am the center of the universe. No matter where I am, I'm here. As I walk, the world moves beneath my feet.

And I would simply posit that you are a unique frame of reference. But that would just begin a pedantic physics discussion (more to come!).

A question for you math geeks: can an object of infinite size even HAVE a center?

I don't think the universe is an object of infinite size. It's constantly expanding, though ... and if you want to get technical, we can look at the red light shift of things moving away all around us and their velocity. Doing this, we can trace their vectors backwards to an intersection point--the point of the event theorized to be the Big Bang. The true center of the universe.

I'm going to have to reread Genesis. I don't recall seeing anywhere where it says the earth is the center of anything, let alone the universe.

Of that whole list you wrote, it sure does concentrate predominately on the earth. If you think about it, there's a whole lot more to talk about than merely the earth ... so in a way, it does give all the attention to the earth. The fact that it was created before the stars just makes it all that much more central. Also, where else would God put beings made in his likeness? If you're going to defend The Bible's creation story, I don't recommend Slashdot.

Re:Always Jumping to Conclusions

[MozeeToby]

we can look at the red light shift of things moving away all around us and their velocity. Doing this, we can trace their vectors backwards to an intersection point--the point of the event theorized to be the Big Bang. The true center of the universe.

No you can't actually, because all the the vectors show everything moving away from us at the same velocity. The way it was explained to me way back when: Imagine a loaf of bread with raisins spaced equally throughout. As the bread rises, the raisins get farther apart from one another. From the point of view of any raisin, all the other raisins are moving away from it at the same speed. The same thing happens in the big bang, the universe vastely increased in size.

It's important to remember that the Big Bang "wasn't an explosion in space, it was an explosion of space". You can't trace the origin back to a specific point because when the big bang happened that single point was the entire universe.

Re:Always Jumping to Conclusions

[mcgrew]

And I would simply posit that you are a unique frame of reference

I posit that everywhere is the center of the universe, especially the sentient parts of it.

If you're going to defend The Bible's creation story, I don't recommend Slashdot.

Discussion isn't defense. I only said that it doesn't state that the earth is the center of the universe. I doubt the ancient Jews/Muslims (both were the same then, descended from Abraham) even knew there WAS a universe. I'd posit that nobody BC had the slightest idea that those things in the night sky were big enough to walk on.

Re:Always Jumping to Conclusions

[genner]

Of that whole list you wrote, it sure does concentrate predominately on the earth. If you think about it, there's a whole lot more to talk about than merely the earth ... so in a way, it does give all the attention to the earth. The fact that it was created before the stars just makes it all that much more central. Also, where else would God put beings made in his likeness? If you're going to defend The Bible's creation story, I don't recommend Slashdot.

Meh...a lot of conjecture that proves nothing. Of course it mentions the earth a lot it was written for humanity's benefit. If aliens are out there God may very have given them a book that talks mostly about Riegel 7.

Re:Always Jumping to Conclusions

[Monkier]

we can trace their vectors backwards to an intersection point--the point of the event theorized to be the Big Bang. The true center of the universe.

I just pictured someone 100s of generations from now taking their offspring to a really boring tacky gift shop at "The true center of the universe".

Re:Always Jumping to Conclusions

[blueg3]

Of course, a loaf of bread does have a center.

An expanding space embedded in a higher-dimensional space, however, does not. I prefer the following analogy:

Imagine the stars are dots drawn on a surface of a balloon. The universe is the two-dimensional surface. As the three-dimensional balloon expands, all of the points in the "universe" appear to receding from one another. Yet there is no way to agree upon a "center".

Re:Always Jumping to Conclusions

[Anonymous Coward]

Meh...a lot of conjecture that proves nothing. Of course it mentions the earth a lot it was written for humanity's benefit. If aliens are out there God may very have given them a book that talks mostly about Riegel 7.

Meh ... a lot of conjecture that proves nothing. Were they also created in his likeness? What determined where he created you? Why did he tell us we are in his likeness? Why would you choose to leave either side out of either side's primer? I suppose that falls in line with a lot of the rest of The Bible--no logical sense whatsoever.

I hope I'm not living in some alien's Sodom & Gomorrah.

Re:Always Jumping to Conclusions

[Anonymous Coward]

If you're going to defend The Bible's creation story, I don't recommend Slashdot.

I can think of few places where it would be MORE appropriate than on Slashdot....

Re:Always Jumping to Conclusions

[genner]

Meh...a lot of conjecture that proves nothing. Of course it mentions the earth a lot it was written for humanity's benefit. If aliens are out there God may very have given them a book that talks mostly about Riegel 7.

Meh ... a lot of conjecture that proves nothing. Were they also created in his likeness? What determined where he created you? Why did he tell us we are in his likeness? Why would you choose to leave either side out of either side's primer? I suppose that falls in line with a lot of the rest of The Bible--no logical sense whatsoever. I hope I'm not living in some alien's Sodom & Gomorrah.

Hey I'm just saying the Bible doesn't say we're the center of the universe. I never claimed to have all the answers. More importantly why would aliens have their orgies in your home town?

Re:Always Jumping to Conclusions

[KenAndCorey]

All the the vectors show everything moving away from us at the same velocity... all the other raisins are moving away from it at the same speed.

No, they are not all moving away at the same velocity, or even the same speed. They are just all moving away from each other.

Re:Always Jumping to Conclusions

[dollargonzo]

I slightly better analogy (same idea, though)--

Imagine an infinite checker board. At the time of the big bang, the size of each square is 0. The size of each square grows with time. So, it can be said to be expanding, infinite and without a center.

Re:Always Jumping to Conclusions

[Oqnet]

You could say that the centre of the universe is the point at which the big bang started and is expanding from. This might be a flawed theory as there might be multiple points that the universe expands from as well as multiple points of original origin. Maybe there was millions or billions of big bangs in the universe that caused the formation that we see today. I doubt we know enough to have a solid theory we can't even see far enough away to help us make perfect analysis of entire Universe, just the observable one. This is just my belief I'm pretty much making stuff up on what I think is possible based on what I know.

Re:Always Jumping to Conclusions

[Anonymous Coward]

we can look at the red light shift of things moving away all around us and their velocity. Doing this, we can trace their vectors backwards to an intersection point--the point of the event theorized to be the Big Bang. The true center of the universe.

No you can't actually, because all the the vectors show everything moving away from us at the same velocity. The way it was explained to me way back when: Imagine a loaf of bread with raisins spaced equally throughout. As the bread rises, the raisins get farther apart from one another. From the point of view of any raisin, all the other raisins are moving away from it at the same speed. The same thing happens in the big bang, the universe vastely increased in size.

It's important to remember that the Big Bang "wasn't an explosion in space, it was an explosion of space". You can't trace the origin back to a specific point because when the big bang happened that single point was the entire universe.

But is the Oven not the universe in this example - the bread is just in the oven and the raisens in the bread - earth is a current in the solar system bread in the universe oven

Re:Always Jumping to Conclusions

[Whorhay]

Surely this could be better explained with a car analogy than some silly loaf of raisin bread!?!?!?

Re:Always Jumping to Conclusions

[Anonymous Coward]

>If aliens are out there God may very have given them a book that talks mostly about Riegel 7.

It's Dominar Rygel XVI and a single book would be clearly insufficient.

Re:Always Jumping to Conclusions

[stuffeh]

So based on the idea that the big bang was an explosions of space and all matter being from that small space, it is possible to state that everywhere you look you're looking at the center of the universe.

Re:Always Jumping to Conclusions

[Chris Burke]

Imagine the stars are dots drawn on a surface of a balloon. The universe is the two-dimensional surface. As the three-dimensional balloon expands, all of the points in the "universe" appear to receding from one another. Yet there is no way to agree upon a "center".

Sure there is, the nozzle. So all we have to do is find the nozzle of the universe, where all the stuff gets in to make it expand, and that's the center.

Re:Always Jumping to Conclusions

[Iamthecheese]

why would aliens have their orgies in your home town

I am intriegued by your ideas and wish to subscribe to your newsletter.

Re:Always Jumping to Conclusions

[blueg3]

It's a hypothetical balloon that has no hole in it. :-)

Re:Always Jumping to Conclusions

[RancidPeanutOil]

If we can't find the nozzle itself, just look for the rolled-up part, then work your way from that end to the tip. I always do that with toothpaste when it's dark.

Re:Always Jumping to Conclusions

[walshy007]

You could say that the centre of the universe is the point at which the big bang started and is expanding from.

point that the big bang started from? remember, everything was a singularity, so everything was at a single point... so everywhere you can possibly see right now at some point, was one essentially, so there is no 'starting point' per se relative to it all, since everything was one point. On a side note I'm horrible at explaining things.

Re:Always Jumping to Conclusions

[VShael]

If aliens are out there God may very have given them a book that talks mostly about Riegel 7.

Man, that will really piss off the aliens on Betelgeuse 3.

Re:Always Jumping to Conclusions

[operator_error]

Of course this can't be true! If the hypothetical balloon had a hole in it, it would not be a balloon. Duh.

Re:Always Jumping to Conclusions

[Bazer]

Such a universe has a centre and it can be agreed upon: the centre is placed beyond that universe. Just like the centre of a balloon is inside it and not on it's surface.

Re:Always Jumping to Conclusions

[blueg3]

The 3d object is bounded and has a center, but the 2d "universe" is unbounded (though of finite size) and has no center.

Re:Always Jumping to Conclusions

[geekoid]

You can posit all you want, you are measurably wrong.

Yse, it does state it. Google is your friend(the true center of the internet~)

Yes they knew ther was a universe, it was just based on speculation. They were certianly aware of the sun moon and stars.
in BC it was reasonable to believe the sun rotated around the earth. All the way up until people started coming up with repeatable tests showing proof that the earth does revolve around the sun.
Anybody saying otherwise after that is a loon.
Unless the have testable hypothesis to the contrary.
Which would be cool, btw.

OUCH!

[jfengel]

From TFA:

the skull bears a cut mark above the left eye that corresponds with a scar shown in the painting.

Scars are one thing, but a wound that leaves a mark all the way down to the skull... that's gotta sting.

TFA also says that the reconstruction shows a broken nose. Is it even possible to have evidence of a broken nose on the skull? "Broken nose" as shown in the painting is cartilage damage, which would probably all be gone by now.

I'm sure you can add in a broken nose to the reconstruction, but in context, it was being cited as evidence. Just bad journalism, or dubious research?

Re:OUCH!

[Anonymous Coward]

The article says the scar was over his left eye, but in the picture we can see a mark over his right eye and nothing over his left. I think that's a sign of bad journalism too.

Re:OUCH!

[Number6.2]

That scar and broken nose just proves he was Fighting for Science!

Today is a great day to be alive! :D

Re:OUCH!

[IndustrialComplex]

Scars are one thing, but a wound that leaves a mark all the way down to the skull... that's gotta sting.

No kidding, but on the fact it isn't as if there is much more than skin to cut through, even the muscles there are pretty thin.

TFA also says that the reconstruction shows a broken nose. Is it even possible to have evidence of a broken nose on the skull? "Broken nose" as shown in the painting is cartilage damage, which would probably all be gone by now.

I'm sure you can add in a broken nose to the reconstruction, but in context, it was being cited as evidence. Just bad journalism, or dubious research?

Given that he seems quite the badass, what with scars that go all the way to his bone, I wouldn't be surprised if the broken nose was actually a true broken nose and had fractures on the bone that the cartilage connects to.

Re:OUCH!

[Anonymous Coward]

And the scar is over the right eye. Not sure why the article says left. Unless he painted that using a mirror...

The article has too many flaws. I am a little suspicious. Especially when it mentions that the grave has been sought for 200 years when it says she started only a 2 or 3 ago.

Re:OUCH!

[Anonymous Coward]

I asked the same question at first and did some research. Cartilage damage? No. But the nose is only cartilage in the septum. The upper region is made up of the nasal bone; if it was broken you could probably tell. And it would be one helluva break (like the one pictured in the reconstruction).

the price of fame

[bugs2squash]

Can they not leave the man in peace. What possible value is there is disturbing him.

Re:the price of fame

[Anonymous Coward]

If you can show a gravesite has significant historical interest, you can help stop a hotel/casino/resort/mall from being built over it.

Re:the price of fame

[Anonymous Coward]

Well I don't know about you, but I want his long-rotten corpse reanimated and questioned about his thoughts on the Time Cube.

Re:the price of fame

[Anonymous Coward]

The value is in knowing that he may have been smarter than us, but he had a hideous huge nose!

Re:the price of fame

[Anonymous Coward]

Disturbing him? You do realize that the person in question is DEAD?

Re:the price of fame

[Anonymous Coward]

What value is there in leaving him? They didn't disturb a man. They disturbed a heap of calcium.

Re:the price of fame

[Anonymous Coward]

You're right, we shouldn't, um... wake him up?
Seriously if he'd say, "Stop it," people would probably stop; I just don't see that happening.

Re:the price of fame

[geekoid]

Apparently there is a a lot. Who cares? he is DEAD. regardless if you believe ion magic sky faeries, or a zombie savior, or nothing, he is gone.

This odd sanctity to the dead needs to stop.
There gone, it was very sad to there friends and family and a funeral should be held to help the surviving members grieve. But after words why would we care?

I understand anthropologically why we have that knee jerk reaction, but lets set that aside.

That is a DEAD astronomer.

So can they finally find Earth now?

[jollyreaper]

Or do they have to wait around for another Bob Dylan track and more surprise skinjob revelations?

Re:So can they finally find Earth now?

[Anonymous Coward]

They already did, geez.

check out that portrait

[Anonymous Coward]

Do you get the impression that old Kopernick was the sort of chap that would run down the street screaming pretty much anything, and maybe he got the heliocentric theory thing right just by coincidence?

"Apples will set your house on fire!"

"Birds and dogs mate and give birth to lizards!"

"By rubbing together two sticks, I created cheese!"

"The Earth revolves around the sun!"

"Bannanas are SATAN!!! SATAN!!!"

"Abolish underwear!!!"
---
by Anonymous Coward on Fri Nov 04, '05 03:29 AM (#13948561)

Re:check out that portrait

[SoCalChris]

Hey, Apples can set your house on fire.

http://www.tuaw.com/2007/10/10/goodness-gracious-great-balls-of-powerbook-fire/

Center of the universe

[klapaucjusz]

The sun is the center of the universe? I though the sun orbited the Milkey Way Galaxy's central black hole?

A scientific theory isn't judged on whether it's ``true''; we leave the concept of ``truth'' to theologians, creationists and other amateurs.

A scientific theory is judged on how useful it is. What Copernicus showed is that by using a model in which the referential is attached to the sun, rather than the earth (as in the earlier Ptolemean model), many computations become easier.

Note that all of these models are useful under some circumstances. When you compute the distance from your home to the butcher's, you disregard the rotation of the earth, and hence use the Ptolemean model. When you compute the date of Easter next, you use the Copernican model. But if you need to compute the position of our Galaxy in a few billion years, you'll likely want a different model.

Re:Center of the universe

[genner]

A scientific theory isn't judged on whether it's ``true''; we leave the concept of ``truth'' to theologians, creationists and other amateurs.

A scientific theory is judged on how useful it is.

I love this statement.
Not because it's true
but because it's useful.

Re:Center of the universe

[operagost]

Ah, this explains the "global warming" hysteria, then. The theory is being foisted on us not because it's true, but because it's useful for someone's agenda.

Re:Center of the universe

[treeves]

Wow. No reactions to this? I'd at least mod up as Interesting if I had points now.

Re:Center of the universe

[OwnedByTwoCats]

I love this statement.
Not because it is true but
because it's useful.

Now it's Haiku!

Re:Center of the universe

[geekoid]

Truth implies permanency.
In science, a falsifiable test can show a previous theory wrong.
Science changes and adjusts.
It's useful becasue it works.,
Copernicus theory is useful becasue it was able to prove a foundation for more hypothesis and theory.

Science is what we know at the moment.
Plus "truth" has a lot of philosophical baggage that doesn't really help.

It's Nick's, all Nick's

[fm6]

Although the heliocentric concept had been suggested earlier, Copernicus is widely thought of as the father of the scientific theory of the heliocentric solar system.

Please. All these qualifications are unnecessary.
Copernicus is not considered a great scientist because he woke up one day and said, "Gee, maybe the earth revolves around the sun and not the other way around!" His greatness came from all the insight, creativity, and mind-boggling hard work he put in to make this idea objectively sound.

Being the first to have an idea doesn't give you precedence. It's inventing the scientific structure that allows people to validate (and, more importantly, invalidate) your ideas that matters. That's what separates real science from mere speculation.

Re:It's Nick's, all Nick's

[3waygeek]

You've overlooked Nick's greatest contribution to humanity.

Re:It's Nick's, all Nick's

[fm6]

Cute story, not very plausible. Both bread and butter have been around for thousands of years. Do you really think that before 1519, nobody thought to spread one on the other?

Re:It's Nick's, all Nick's

[$tring]

Please. All these qualifications are unnecessary.

While those qualifications are not necessary, they certainly are worth to be mentioned. Let me elaborate:

Copernicus is not considered a great scientist because he woke up one day and said, "Gee, maybe the earth revolves around the sun and not the other way around!"

This would imply that earlier heliocentric models where just that, i.e. wild speculations. It doesn't seem to me that the advances of astronomy in the hellenistic period can be described and explained that way. There is however a ...wild speculation in the historiography of science, which goes like this:

In the 3rd century BCE, Aristarchus of Samos proposed an alternate cosmology (arrangement of the universe): a heliocentric model of the solar system, placing the Sun, not the Earth, at the center of the known universe (hence he is sometimes known as the "Greek Copernicus"). His astronomical ideas were not well-received, however, and only a few brief references to them are preserved. We know the name of one follower of Aristarchus: Seleucus of Seleucia.

The argument that we can estimate the reception of the heliocentric model from the references known to us is rather weak. On the contrary, there are far more hints that indicate the following: it is not the case that the heliocentric model was somehow forgotten, instead, because of the instrumentalistic outlook of hellenistic astronomy, astronomers didn't enter into a cosmological dispute over which model was more "real" and regarded both models as equivalent regarding the purpose of predicting celestial phenomena (this is known today as underdetermination of scientific theories). The choice of one model other another was dictated by convenience and it changed from one computational context to another.

His greatness came from all the insight, creativity, and mind-boggling hard work he put in to make this idea objectively sound.

Being the first to have an idea doesn't give you precedence. It's inventing the scientific structure that allows people to validate (and, more importantly, invalidate) your ideas that matters. That's what separates real science from mere speculation.

I totally agree with you. But: You seem to conflate this view with an hidden misconception, i.e. that we can determine the scientific advancement just by looking at the temporal relations between to points in this development (If point A precedes temporally the point B, then the point A denotates a less advanced step in the development of science). While this rule of thumb generally holds for the period starting with the 17th century up to now, we have to be careful to extend this rule inductively to other historical periods. It seems to be the case that this rule doesn't hold for the hellenistic period as compared to later periods, because we have evidence that the "invention of scientific structures that people to validate (and, more importantly, invalidate) your ideas" must be dated to the hellenistic period. Just by saying that this cannot be, exactly because of the rule of thumb, you are transforming this empirical rule of thumb (which is open to falsification by historians of science) into an analytic statement... and this, for one, doesn't fit into a scientific attitude.

Re:It's Nick's, all Nick's

[fm6]

This would imply that earlier heliocentric models where just that, i.e. wild speculations. It doesn't seem to me that the advances of astronomy in the hellenistic period can be described and explained that way.

You're right, they can't. But you're imposing a false dichotomy here. I see at least 3 levels of reasoning.

1. Somebody who doesn't really know what he's talking about posits that the Earth revolves around the sun.
2. An intelligent natural philospher assembles observation, conjecture, and deduction to argue that the Earth revolves around the sun.
3. A scientist posits a theory that involves the earth revolving around the sun, and shows how other scientists can perform objective observations that confirm or deny this theory.

The first level is the only one that deserves the label "wild speculation". The second level is intelligent speculation, but it's still just speculation, because there's no real way to test the argument. Only the third level counts as science.

Of course, by reducing this all to the question of who revolves around who, I'm oversimplifying the scientific argument, as your comment on models shows. But I don't think that matters. My point here is that science is not about facts, it's about the structure of reason that surrounds the facts. In science, the first person to have an idea is less important that the first person to erect a scientific structure to validate the idea.

Re:It's Nick's, all Nick's

[jenik]

This seems like the only bit of discussion where people actually know something about the history of science and know that things weren't as clear cut then as we seem to think now. Anyway, I guess you're suggesting that Copernicus was the third case, i.e. he proposed a theory that could be empirically validated/falsified and was (presumably) better than the previous model. Well, in fact Copernicus' system was significantly worse in empirical adequacy (correspondence to observation) than Ptolemy's (at that time), wasn't really all that simpler (Copernicus assumed, with Aristotle, that planets have circular orbits and therefore needed epicycles too). Copernicus' system only received `real scientific' support much later from Newton's mechanics (but that was based on Copernicus so it's a bit circular). From several historical studies (Kuhn's for one) it seems that Copernicus' motivation for a heliocentric theory was a) that Ptolemaic system verged too far from Aristotle (orbits of planets weren't circular any more with all those epicycles) and b) the worship of the Sun in the renaissance period. Doesn't sound like `science' (as you define it) to me...

Re:It's Nick's, all Nick's

[fm6]

You make some interesting points that I'd like to read more about. Can you point me at your sources?

Re:It's Nick's, all Nick's

[jenik]

The most relevant is T.S.Kuhn's The Copernican Revolution. The most interesting (and with a much larger scope) is Paul Feyerabend's Against Method.

Re:It's Nick's, all Nick's

[geekoid]

That last chapter is a wild leap away from the story.
It doesn't mean he was the first, it means that his friend suggested doing that...probably becasue he was spreading butter on a piece of bread while he read the letter.

The sun is the center of the universe?

[RickRussellTX]

Copernicus' realization that the Sun was the center of the universe was revolutionary, even if not mathematically correct by modern standards. The prevailing cosmology, which the church was more than happy to throw people in jail for questioning, was that the Earth was the center of the universe because it was created by God as the divine home for Man. The stars were not known to be like the Sun; they were believed to be lights pinned into the divine firmament.

The history of science is littered with theories that are known to be incorrect, but were more correct than their predecessors. Most of the time, the center of rotation of the solar system lies within the surface of the Sun, so the Sun can be truly said to be the center of the solar system. At the time, Copernicus would have believed that it was therefore the center of the universe.

Re:The sun is the center of the universe?

[JonathanBoyd]

The prevailing cosmology, which the church was more than happy to throw people in jail for questioning, was that the Earth was the center of the universe because it was created by God as the divine home for Man.

Happy to throw people in jail? Really? That's a bit odd when you consider that On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres was prefaced by a Lutheran theologian, dedicated to the Pope and been prompted to be written by the Archbishop of Capua. Even a cursory glance at Wikipedia would make that clear. Why do you think the church was throwing people in jail? over astronomy? A big chunk of astronomers were clerics or funded by the church.

Re:The sun is the center of the universe?

[PacoCheezdom]

Mod parent up.

Re:The sun is the center of the universe?

[Anonymous Coward]

Happy to throw people in jail? Really? That's a bit odd when you consider that On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres was prefaced by a Lutheran theologian, dedicated to the Pope and been prompted to be written by the Archbishop of Capua. Even a cursory glance at Wikipedia [wikipedia.org] would make that clear. Why do you think the church was throwing people in jail? over astronomy? A big chunk of astronomers were clerics or funded by the church.

Gee, a big chunk of scientists in the USSR were communists and were funded by the Communist Party.

I suppose by your logic they were perfectly free to come to scientific conclusions that conflicted with core party doctrine, without having to worry about any repercussions.

OF COURSE the book was dedicated to a bunch of theocrats; that's who was running things in those days and back then you damned well knew who you had to suck up to.

Re:The sun is the center of the universe?

[JonathanBoyd]

If you're so certain about this, why not provide evidence? 'you damned well know' isn't a logical argument and sounds more like the rantings of a conspiracy theorist than someone with a genuine interest in the truth of historical events (or scientific ones for that matter).

Clone the dude !!

[Anonymous Coward]

Why not clone the dude?

Re:Clone the dude !!

[mcgrew]

Why not clone the dude?

First, we can't yet clone humans. But mostly it would be futile. A person is more than his genes, he is his upbringing and experience and training. Clone him or Einstein and the slightest misstep in his growth, particularly prebirth, and he might become severely retarded.

My youngest daughter has an IQ of 132. My oldest had complications at birth and has a measured IQ of 65. Take some kid living in the ghetto or prison who has an IQ of 85 and give his zygote two loving, educated, wealthy parents instead of a whore and an absent junkie and he may well turn out to be smarter than Einstein.

Re:Clone the dude !!

[Anonymous Coward]

You obviously live in a cave, or a jail, or in the ghetto (hmm, mac davis). Clones are here, and living amongst us. You can't tell them from regulars except by the lack of a belly button.

http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2008/11/17/article-1086567-027B7FE0000005DC-361_233x553.jpg

is an example of a clone. Notice the lack of a belly button.

Re:Clone the dude !!

[nsayer]

Why? So he can tell us again that the Earth revolves around the Sun?

People often posit that famous thinkers of the past, if reconstituted in today's world might lend their genius to contemporary problems. But who's to say that genius is measurable outside of its own context?

Hitting the genetic lottery by itself doesn't lead to greatness.

Two Centuries? Try 4 years

[Marxist Hacker 42]

The headlines and the facts seem to be at odds- the search took 4 years, not 200, and the tomb was unmarked, thus it has been lost for 500 years or so, if being known to be in a given church yet unmarked would count a tomb as "lost".

I fail to see how facial reconstruction...

[franois-do]

... can give, from a skull, any hint about the size of the nose and the shape of the ear, both of which are made of just cartilage.

Any hint ?

Re:I fail to see how facial reconstruction...

[IndustrialComplex]

... can give, from a skull, any hint about the size of the nose and the shape of the ear, both of which are made of just cartilage.

Any hint ?

It's a bit of an art, but even artists use models.

In this case, with facial recontstruction you have a lot of data to work from. We have been cataloging human anatomy for a long time, as such we have a lot of evidence for what certain bones look like. We have also are able to combine those bones with pictures of the actual person, or at least compare to facial features of that person's ethnic background.

Bones give a lot of clues to the soft tissue that used to surround them. Ligaments will leave 'scars' on the bones which indicate a whole slew of factors. Did that person use the muscle a lot, was it ever torn. By measuring the size and condition of the 'scar' you can extrapolate what the muscle that connected to it would have been like. The same way you can tell the joint of a 50yr old that ran a lot from a 30 yr old that was just a scribe.

Now the face is a bit different, but for the most part, you know what muscles go where, and they don't vary much. As for noses and ears, look at where the cartilage was attached and you will see similar effects as due to the ligaments. Combine that shape with what you have measured on 1000s of skulls before, and you select the shape of the nose or ear that corresponds to those markings.

And pictures help too ;)

Re:I fail to see how facial reconstruction...

[eclectro]

... can give, from a skull, any hint about the size of the nose and the shape of the ear, both of which are made of just cartilage.

Any hint ?

Derived from what a grumpy math/physics professor looks like. Heck, he probably even wore a ratty old sweater too.

Re:I fail to see how facial reconstruction...

[felipekk]

Yes. They also found his mugshot by the skeleton. Apparently TFA left that detail behind.

Re:I fail to see how facial reconstruction...

[Markimedes]

I fail to see how mathematical deduction can prove the earth isn't the center of the universe.

Re:I fail to see how facial reconstruction...

[glwtta]

That's nothing, judging by that picture they can also reconstruct hair styles and generic period costumes!

Re:I fail to see how facial reconstruction...

[mdielmann]

There was a fiction novel, Gorky Park, in which facial reconstruction was a key element of the novel. Some interesting reading on the technique.

Ironic?

[u8i9o0]

Is it ironic that the scientists of today chose to revolve the DNA evidence around him (his hair), instead of the son (his heir)?
:)

(AFAIK he had no children - jokes don't need to be accurate.)

Re:Ironic?

[Anonymous Coward]

jokes don't need to be accurate.

Nor funny, apparently.

How much artist's conception there?

[PingXao]

The science of reconstructing what a person looked like from only their skull is a fascinating one and one I admire. I have no doubt they get at least 80% of it right. I have to wonder, though, how much of the Copernicus work is artist's conception, as opposed to scientifically supported by the evidence? There are no bones in the nose and cartilage doesn't last like bone. How did they determine the size and shape of the nose? It looks more like a caricature or a video game nose. I know people with big noses and I've never seen one that odd looking. And what about the ears? Those would be bigger, I imagine, again based on my experience with people who have long heads like our old friend here. Outsized ears, like prince Charles, or Chris Kraft. I bring up Kraft because I just saw him in a NASA documentary and, if anything, his ears today seem to have grown larger if that's humanyly possible.

Anyway, this is a cool development. Copernicus is the first example I use when I hear people telling stereotypical "dumb Polack" jokes. A truly revolutionary genius and one of my favorite historical figures.

So where's Jimmy Hoffa?

[Anonymous Coward]

Should be a piece of cake now right?

Re:So where's Jimmy Hoffa?

[HexaByte]

No, more like a piece of bridge abutment!

Why?

[rev_sanchez]

I'm usually up for most kinds of humane scientific inquiry without question and I'm not squeamish about desecrating graves but this seems sort of pointless.

Did they expect to find something special about his remains?
Where burial rites of astronomers of his time a mystery?
Was he buried with an antique text that could shed light on his discoveries?
Were gold doubloons involved?
Was this part of a wacky bet or some bizarre clause in an eccentric rich person's will?
Could "I found Copernicus' tomb" be a new Polish pickup line?
Did they think it would make a neat geocache?

I just can't quite think of a great reason to go to this much effort for the scientific equivalent of adding a stop on a map of hollywood star's homes that happens to be especially run down and dirty.

Re:Why?

[jd]

Well, if they're going to do DNA analysis, there's various indexes of famous dead people's DNA that you can compare yourself to. On the historic side, it adds credibility to contemporary accounts. (You thought they were more honest than today's newspapers?) On the tourism side, local authorities always love being able to nail signs up saying "so-and-so is buried here" (helps them to increase taxes) and local thieves can sell Copernicus-themed junk to gullible visitors. On the science side, it is probably worthless.

Re:Why?

[gaderael]

I'd chalk it up to what starts most scientific ideas: I wonder what if..?

Re:Why?

[tekrat]

You left out "Reality TV Show".

Ah, Hans, I have been expecting you!

[PolygamousRanchKid]

I would posit that I am the center of the universe. No matter where I am, I'm here. As I walk, the world moves beneath my feet.

Yes, Hans, but you don't have much walking room these days.

I think this applies here...

[Anonymous Coward]

WHOOOOOOOSH!

Re:Two Centuries? Try 4 years

[Hojima]

The positive identification was made by comparing the DNA from a skeleton's teeth with that from hairs in a book known to have belonged to Copernicus

All this proves is that he bit Copernicus. Get back to work.
-The Management

    (just_kidding)

It's called a broken chain of evidence ...

[Zero__Kelvin]

Unless they can prove the hair in the book belonged to Copernicus , they merely proved that they found the remains of someone who may have had contact with the book. For all we know Copernicus had a Gay lover, or took a piece of hair from a stranger and planted it in his book :-)

[The second option brought to you by the TinFoilHatSociety ].

Man, if Copernicus knew about this...

[davidbrit2]

...his grave would be spinning about him.

Reaches my comfort level

[tsotha]

A computer-generated facial reconstruction is said to also bear a resemblance to contemporary portraits of the scientist."

Oh, really? Generated by an actual computer? Well then, that's good enough for me.

if I were sub-editing teh summary

[toby]

s/bear a resemblance/resemble/

In other scientists-from-the-grave news ...

[SpinyNorman]

Einstein has been cloned from a skidmark in a pair of his underpants kept by his family.

A skull-bong found in an MIT dormitary has been DNA identified as belonging to Isaac Newton. The DNA came from fingerprints on the bong, confirming rumors of Newton being a pothead.

A frozen turd found in Craig Venter's kitchen fridge, formally believed to have come from a pygmy marmoset, has been identified and carbon dated as the last movement of Wolfgang Armadeus Mozart.

OK, so I lied. Mozart wasn't a scientist.

Beer?

[bluefoxlucid]

So what kind of beverages was he buried with? The liquid probably has evaporated by now, so get to work doing chemical analysis on the residue left inside some of the pots he's got with him.

Don't ask Why, ask Why Not !!

[Anonymous Coward]

Why not !!

The next search is on

[Hoi Polloi]

Now the search is on for Copernicus' car keys. They are starting with between the couch cushions.

Bible says the earth is stationary, not center

[Anonymous Coward]

Anon cause I don't wanna be seen as defending the church.

See here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galileo_Galilei#Church_controversy

The most important is the method...

[Anonymous Coward]

The most important in Copernic's work is the fact that he stood up against hundreds of years
of reliance on religion, ancients or senses (we see the Sun moving )...

He has shown that the world can be different from the beliefs and to learn its true nature one has to use reason...
and not relay on religion, senses or previous works...

It is the birth of modern science...

P.S. Earth is made from particles from older stars - so they were created before our Sun... we are made
of matter older than our Sun..

My own personal Genesis

[Star Particle]

1: In the beginning God created the Heaven and the Universe.
2: And the Universe was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the vacuum.
3: And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.
4: And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the energy.
5: And God called the light Radiation, and the energy he called Matter.
6: And God said, Let there be galaxies in the midst of the vacuum, and let it divide the vacuum from the vacuum.
7: And God made the galaxies, and divided the vacuum which was within the galaxies from the vacuum which was between the galaxies: and it was so.

In how many dimensions?

[Anonymous Coward]

> No you can't actually, because all the the vectors show everything moving away from us at the same velocity.

Sure, if you use 3D vectors. If you use _4D_ vectors, though, you trace them backwards in time to the Big Bang, when everything was a lot closer together. Like you say, you have to take ALL the dimensions into account (and with some string theories, we may have to take even more than 4 dimensions into account, but I'm ignoring that for now).

Also, an infinitely large space only has a center if you define one, like we do with the origin in a Cartesian plane. But remember, you can always just define a different origin (like you do when you change coordinates for an equation to take advantage of symmetry), so any point is just as good as any other.

Geo-Station

[Anonymous Coward]

To bad the far bigger mystery REMAINS UNSOLVED as to why the worldwide scientific community still accepts the myth of Heliocentrism: Copernicusâ(TM) UNPROVEN theory of the earth revolving around the Sun.
(bet you thought it was proved & put to bed)

Particularly when Geocentrism has significantly greater scientific evidence to support it.

The 16th century mathematician/astronomer Tycho Braheâ(TM)s Earth-centric theory, with some 20th century modifications, is still the scientifically superior theory.

Heliocentrism - for those who actually care to delve into it, is such a convoluted, flaw-ridden theory that it is widely considered by physicists as 'problematic' but are quick to point out that science is continuously searching for new data to support it. (after HOW long ??)

With such faint praise by even those who consider it the de-facto truth, and with the incredible data-gathering capabilities available to physicists today - that it yet remains a theory - and an acknowledged flawed one at that, should be enough for scientists to perform a re-evaluation of others.

But, like any other discipline, no-one wants to be the first one to risk public aprobation, just as Galileo's & Copernicus paradigm-shattering pronouncements were taken so negatively in their time, taking generations for their theories to become dominant (warts & all)

From experience, it hurts like hell.

[Anonymous Coward]

> Scars are one thing, but a wound that leaves a mark all the way down to the skull... that's gotta sting.

As someone who has fractured his skull (though the skin wasn't broken), I can confirm that it hurts like hell. In my case, I had a gigantic goose egg for quite a while and I skipped college the day I got it.

The good thing is that I still don't remember exactly how I got it. At least, I think that's good. I didn't get any medical treatment, either (maybe I should have), though I might have taken some aspirin. I'm only sure it's a fracture because I could feel a bone chip slide around up there for a while. It finally fused with the rest of the skull after being left alone for several months, though I still have a dent up there that I can feel.

In summary, no. It's not fun. There's not a whole lot of skin up there, though, so all a cut would mean is that you'd have to get stitches as well. You can lose a lot of blood from untreated head wounds, after all.

Copernicus far from the first

[LifesRoadie]

It bugs me that people say, "the first in the world to do this, or the first ever to do that", when in reality they're merely among the first in Europe. Other cultures (eg Indian & Chinese) didn't have the political blinkers forced on them, and explored these idea hundreds of years before Europeans. http://www.crystalinks.com/indiastronomy.html

Re:Copernicus far from the first

[shutdown -p now]

Heliocentrism in Europe predates Copernicus as well - some of the Ancient Greek philosophers also held this position.

Does not work.

[DrYak]

As for noses and ears, look at where the cartilage was attached and you will see similar effects as due to the ligaments.

Basic Anatomy Failure.

The ears are mobile and aren't connected to the skull. The shape of the ear won't alter at all the surface of the skull (well except for elephant-sized ears. Those would require proper musculature which in turn will leave a mark on the skull).

The cartilage giving a shape to the nose is very distant for the bone structure. Bone marks won't give a lot of details about shape of nose. (Except for some obvious exceptions like broken nose, etc.) Ethnic origin may somewhat help to restrict to a narrower list of possible shapes.

Re:Does not work.

[IndustrialComplex]

Basic Anatomy Failure.

I'm glad to see that the proper response to a criticism is opening with an insult.

That aside, I had contemplated making an exception for my statement regarding the ears. Those are definitely a different beast than the nose. For the ears, you just have to get close, and for them, selecting a standard style based on the ethnic group and sizing it for the age of the person will get you close enough that most people won't care if the upper part of the lobe is curved just a hair too much.

The cartilage giving a shape to the nose is very distant for the bone structure. Bone marks won't give a lot of details about shape of nose. (Except for some obvious exceptions like broken nose, etc.) Ethnic origin may somewhat help to restrict to a narrower list of possible shapes.

You are correct about the distant end. But you can get a basic idea of where the cartilage would have started based on the size of the nasal cavity, its position on the face, and the results that those factors would have played on the shape of the nose based on the documented examples that you have access to.

My apologies for not being as perfectly accurate with my description as I could have been. Next time I'll defer to the resident phrenologist.

Re:Does not work.

[geekoid]

First, it's not a basic anatomy class rolled into the post.
Second: You fail facial reconstruction.

Idiot.

"Copernicus Park"

[DrYak]

The positive identification was made by comparing the DNA from a skeleton's teeth with that from hairs in a book known to have belonged to Copernicus

All this proves is that he bit Copernicus. Get back to work.

Aw. To bad.
I was just rejoicing that, with now teeth in addition to hair, we might have enough genetic material, so the Copernicus would be the next resurrected specie after the Wholly Mammoth.

I guess this is too bad for my plan to open a "Copernicus Park" theme park.

Re:"Copernicus Park"

[shokk]

Great Zombie Copernicus!!!

results wouldn't be possible without paper books

[Anonymous Coward]

They found hairs trapped in the crevasses of books he owned. So, one more reason to not completely abandon books for electronic media.

We EACH have a head of Copernicus...

[Mingco]

Where do we turn in our heads of Copernicus to collect our uber loot?

Fashion Forward

[foo fighter]

That's a nice vest. Scientific proof that geek fashion has been in decline for the past several hundred years.

To reveal the next clue

[MorePower]

I think they had to find Copernicus' tomb to look for the next clue to find the Holy Grail or the Illuminati or something like that.

Please do computer reconstruction of JS Bach too!

[Swordfish]

I'd like to see this technique applied to the supposed bones of JS Bach, of whom the surviving pictures are unreliable and unconvincing. It's impressive that they could reconstruct even the facial stubble from the bones of Copernicus. It would be great to have such a high-resolution photo of Johann Sebastian also!

unless this work was done

[circletimessquare]

by a buxom british chick in spandex holding two pistols, i'm not interested

Re:Please do computer reconstruction of JS Bach to

[4D6963]

And after they're done I'd like to see this technique applied on Jesus of Nazareth as well. That whole shroud thing looks too creepy.

To hell with the mighty mammoth ...

[BenBoy]

we got DNA here; let's just resurrect this Copernicus dude ... assuming, of course, that we have his hair, horns, or what have you ...

The same technology could be applied to any other extinct species from which one can obtain hair, horn, hooves, fur or feathers, and which went extinct within the last 60,000 years, the effective age limit for DNA."

-- Oh, for [gG]od's sake, it's a joke, ok?

Nut cracker

[G3ckoG33k]

Yes, he realized it revolved only around his nose; read more at http://books.google.com/books?id=tvRp1whVFUsC&pg=PA812&lpg=PA812&dq=slang+%22curved+nose%22

Re:Please do computer reconstruction of JS Bach to

[plantman-the-womb-st]

Well, if you're going to stretch it to Jesus, toss in a few other fables too. I'd like to see a facial reconstruction of Snow White and perhaps one of Anansi also.

Re:Please do computer reconstruction of JS Bach to

[Petrushka]

I'd like to see this technique applied to the supposed bones of JS Bach, of whom the surviving pictures are unreliable and unconvincing.

Done. The Haussmann portrait is basically corroborated.

Bad joke or just retarded?

[justinlee37]

I can't decide.

Copernicus, James Cromwell/Zefram Cochrane

[Tekoneiric]

Does anyone else think that he looked like James Cromwell (Zefram Cochrane)?

He was a Catholic priest.

[jotaeleemeese]

Celibacy is a bitch, so lots of hair but heirs are more unlikely (not really, but I will not start on this topic).

Because it is bloody interesting and fun.

[jotaeleemeese]

Why do we need to have practical reasons for everything?

Probably too late, I'm going to add

[Kupfernigk]

As a Copernicus fan (just look at my nick...and find out what his actual name was) some of the posts above miss quite a lot of the point. Copernicus knew his views would be unpopular with the Church and had them printed posthumously, since he did not want to be kicked out of his canonry, or worse. His mother had already been accused of witchcraft, in a period when that was often a cover up for someone being seen as being too clever (Gerber, despite being Pope, was accused of witchcraft because he could divide one number by another.)

His knowledge of the Universe was limited by optical astronomy; there was simply no way he could have guessed the Sun was not the largest thing in the Universe. And his system was not actually simpler than Ptolemy's, because although he had reduced the number of epicycles by correcting the basic mistake (i.e. the Sun is a better point of reference than the Earth) he had better observations to go on, and so had to deal with discrepancies in the Ptolemaic model than Ptolemy did not. Until Kepler and Newton, the more accurate observations were, the worse a system based on epicycles would look in terms of complexity.

Copernicus was a true nerd, doing difficult maths because he wanted to satisfy himself on a matter that was important to him and to very few other people. The location of his tomb doesn't ultimately matter, because (as it says on Wren's monument) si monumentum requiris circumspice. But for Copernicus and Kepler and Galileo and Newton and a few others like them, we might live in a very different society.

Sorry.

[DrYak]

Basic Anatomy Failure.

I'm glad to see that the proper response to a criticism is opening with an insult.

Sorry you took this as a personal insult. I wanted to produce more a "error message" pastiche.

Next time I'll defer to the resident phrenologist.

As long as it is not a retrophrenologist .

It kinda bugs me...

[Anonymous Coward]

...when people get all uptight. Lets bow down to Indian and Chinese culture because it's sooooo superior. Their governments and rulers never did anything to stifle science or art. Why, in fact, they were positively enlightened. /sarcasm

btw, Ashoka is like one of my favs, so dont think I'm hatin.

Probably too late too, but still.

[Janek Kozicki]

You might want to see 15 slides concerning Copernicus. There are even screenshots of software used for DNA recognition!

This is in a polish newspaper, but there's not too much too translate just click "Nastepny" which means "Next" too view all the slides. An interesting view nontheless.

http://portalwiedzy.onet.pl/109896,1,1,0,galeria_media.html

Evidence? What evidence?

[Estanislao Mart�nez]

The unfortunate bastard who came after Copernicus, Galileo, was the one who received the ire of the church. Not just because he was contradicting church doctrine, but because he was also using evidence to support his claims.

Galileo's theory wasn't predictively superior to contemporary geocentrism, by his own admission. However, it was worse off in comparison, because it required a major revision of mechanics; it contradicted Aristotelian mechanics, which was as firmly entrenched as today's physics is for us. Galileo didn't have anything near a worked out theory of mechanics that rejected the idea of an absolute reference frame, and therefore, the idea of the relativity of all motion. This objection, if you note, was not biblical: it's a technical physical objection. (A modern day analogy would be if somebody proposed a theory that blatantly violated the law of inertia.)

The most important new kind of evidence Galileo brought into the picture were telescopic observations, and those weren't straightforward to interpret. The telescopes of the day were pretty awful devices, and more importantly, he didn't have a theory of optics that allowed him to justify his interpretations of what he did observe. Again, this is a technical objection, not a biblical one.

There were also other serious problems posed by other, very good astronomers of the day (by their and our standards), for which Galileo didn't have satisfactory answers. Things like the relative brightness of the planets at various points of their trajectories. These were not cosmological or biblical objections: they were technical, astronomical objections.

The church wasn't a biblical fundamentalist institution. It can be easily demonstrated that in many places, it accepted the scientific theories of the ancient Greeks in spite of apparent contradiction to the bible. There are biblical verses that the church read as seemingly implying that the Earth is flat; but the arguments for the Earth being a sphere were firmly accepted. In a sense, the world was seen as the work of God just as the bible was the word of God, so solid scientific arguments about the world had serious theological standing, and could not be shot down by appeal to the bible.

The church judged Galileo's astronomical theory, which seemingly contradicted the bible, on the basis of the professional opinions of astronomers of the day. The theory was found wanting on those grounds, so therefore, because it contradicted the word of God as interpreted by the Church, Galileo was forbidden from teaching it as a truth, while still being allowed to teach it "as a hypothesis." And in actual fact, many figures in the church, including the pope himself and some cardinals, encouraged Galileo in his studies.

At the end, you just can't conclude that Galileo's trial was as simple of an affair as people normally describe it. Yes, the church held too strong of a leash on science back then, but it wasn't nearly as reactionary as people like to portray it. In the actual facts of what happened, the political, interpersonal, scientific and biblical aspects of the Galileo affair were all very important. Galileo proposed an interesting but still very incomplete theory that contradicted the bible, and then went and publically humiliated the powerful sponsors that were shielding him from his biggest critics.

Re:Evidence? What evidence?

[geekoid]

So they brought up a bunch of non sequitors and ad reductum logical fallacies to argues against him instead of testing.

Yeha, that's great.

Any theory that is complete is fact.

Giordano Bruno

[ErkDemon]

Don't forget Giordano_Bruno

Casting call

[uberdrake]

I guess James Cromwell gets to play Copernicus in the movie.