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

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.

This is good news for the church

[fredrated]

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

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: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: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.