Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Search For the Tomb of Copernicus Reaches an End

Posted by timothy on from the always-the-last-place-you-look dept.

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."

7 of 243 comments (clear)

  1. Re:From TFA: by jonnythan · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.

  2. Always Jumping to Conclusions by eldavojohn · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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.

    --
    My work here is dung.
    1. Re:Always Jumping to Conclusions by MozeeToby · · Score: 5, Interesting

      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.

    2. Re:Always Jumping to Conclusions by blueg3 · · Score: 3, Interesting

      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".

  3. Re:From TFA: by MaxwellEdison · · Score: 3, Interesting

    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.

    --
    -=Bang Bang=-
  4. Re:Center of the universe by genner · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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.

  5. Copernicus far from the first by LifesRoadie · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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