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."

a better title: the lost tomb of copernicus

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

ed

This is good news for the church

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

Re:This is good news for the church

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

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.

OUCH!

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:

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.

So can they finally find Earth now?

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

It's Nick's, all Nick's

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.

I fail to see how facial reconstruction...

... 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...

... 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 ;)

Man, if Copernicus knew about this...

...his grave would be spinning about him.

Copernicus far from the first

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 [crystalinks.com]

Re:From TFA:

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:

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?

Always Jumping to Conclusions

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

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

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

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:

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 t

Re:Always Jumping to Conclusions

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.

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 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

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:From TFA:

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:The sun is the center of the universe?

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 [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.

Re:From TFA:

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 . . .