First Mathematical Model of 13th Century 'Big Bang' Cosmology 60
KentuckyFC writes "The 13th century thinker Robert Grosseteste is sometimes credited with predicting the Big Bang theory of cosmological expansion some eight centuries ahead of modern cosmologists. His theory, written in about 1225, is that the Universe began with a Big Bang-like explosion in which light expands in all directions giving matter its three-dimensional form. The expansion eventually stops when matter reaches a minimum density and this sets the boundary of the Universe. The boundary itself emits light towards the center of the universe and this interacts with matter, causing other nested spheres to form, corresponding to the fixed stars, the elements of earth, fire, water and so on. Now a team of physicists and experts on medieval philosophy have translated Grosseteste's theory into the modern language of mathematics and simulated it on computer. They say Grosseteste's theory produces universes of remarkable complexity but that only a tiny fraction of the parameter space corresponds to a universe of nested spheres like the one he predicted. What's interesting is that modern cosmologists face exactly the same problem. Their models predict many different kinds of universes and have to be fine-tuned to fit the universe we actually live in. 'The sensitivity to initial conditions resonates with contemporary cosmological discussion and reveals a subtlety of the medieval model which historians of science could never have deduced from the text alone,' conclude the team."
Models (Score:5, Informative)
What they're saying isn't that his model is excitingly accurate, but that his model amazingly exhibits the same fundamental sensitivities to parameters as our current ones.
While Robert Grosseteste had a very crude model in terms of how he saw the universe (concentric spheres), his Big Bang idea was damn good and more importantly, his model is just like what we have now: for his model to work the way he specified it, he would need a very narrow band of parameters. He didn't know it back then, but by changing the parameters he would have had massively different implementations that are quite amusing. Anyway, looks like a fun exercise for those involved.
Language geek details on French nouns and gender (Score:5, Informative)
Wouldn't that be "grosstete"?
The first "e" in the French word tête has that funny hat on it, technically called a circumflex. This tells us that this vowel used to be followed by an "s" in earlier stages of the French language. So tête derives from older form teste.
The word tête is also feminine, so any adjectives must also use the feminine form. French gros (from Latin grossus) in the feminine form becomes grosse.
So, just as expected, gros + tête == grosse tête as spelled in modern French, and grosse teste in Old French, whence the Norman French language and names of 1200s England, courtesy William the Conqueror.
Cheers,