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Bianca
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« on: October 09, 2007, 08:42:15 am »









                                    Copernicus's remains found under floor of Polish cathedral





Luke Harding in Berlin
The Guardian
Saturday November 5 2005


He revolutionised astronomy, but for more than four centuries the last resting place of Nicolaus Copernicus - the man who developed the theory that the planets circle the sun - was a mystery. Yesterday, however, a team of Polish archaeologists revealed that they had discovered Copernicus's remains beneath the floor of a medieval cathedral.

His body had been discovered under Frombork cathedral, where he was a canon, on Poland's Baltic coast. The great astronomer had been buried under one of 16 altars on the south side of the building, Jerzy Gassowski, the head of the archaeology and anthropology institute in the Polish town of Pultusk, told the Guardian. "We have a skull and a few bones. We are 97% certain it's him," he said. "The only way to be absolutely certain would be to do a DNA test. But since Copernicus didn't have any children, this is tricky."

The team began searching for the astronomer, who lived from 1473 to 1543, after a request from the local bishop. They found the skull in August after a year-long search. A police laboratory in Warsaw then used it to make a virtual reconstruction of the man's face.

"The reconstruction matched contemporary portraits. We know that Copernicus had a wonky nose after an accident as a child. Our skull had a similar scar. We also know that Copernicus died at the age of 70 - an exceptional age for the time," Professor Gassowski said. "It fits."

An astronomer, mathematician and economist, Copernicus's famous treatise, On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres, demolished the Ptolemaic theory that the earth was the centre of the universe.

Instead, he insisted that the planets circle the sun. Unlike Galileo, who was forced to recant his heliocentric views by the Inquisition, Copernicus had no problems with the religious authorities. Later, however, the Catholic church banned his work until the mid-19th century. The astronomer - who wrote entirely in Latin - hit the headlines last year following a row over whether he was German or Polish.

Asked why the Polish Church had asked him to dig up Copernicus, Prof Gassowski said: "I think the bishop wanted to make amends. The church now wants to celebrate him. At the moment there is no monument to show the thousands of tourists who visit the cathedral where he is buried."

He added: "We don't know whether Copernicus spoke German or Polish. The only thing we can say with certainty is that he was a European."



http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2005/nov/05/spaceexploration.internationalnews
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« Reply #1 on: October 09, 2007, 08:51:01 am »






                                  Development of the Heliocentric Solar System





At the end of the medieval age, a re-birth of human thought provoked a new look at the solar system.






This Renaissance-era woodcut symbolizes the breaking through of the crystal spheres to a new concept of the Universe. (From http://www.concord.org/intec/tools/lck/overview.html, The International Netcourse Teacher Enhancement Coalition.






Nicolaus Copernicus took the first steps. He was a well-educated Polish churchman who lived from 1473 until 1543


(From Copernicus Museum in Frombork http://www.frombork.art.pl/Ang01.htm). See  http://www.phy.bg.ac.yu/web_projects/giants/copernicus.html   and http://www.bj.uj.edu.pl/bjmanus/revol/titlpg_e.html   
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« Reply #2 on: October 09, 2007, 08:56:32 am »










He was disturbed at the complexities that had been introduced into the Ptolemaic system to improve its fitting of the planetary motions.

In addition, errors in the Ptolemaic system had accumulated to over 2 degrees from time to time and had been removed by "re-adjusting" the planets' positions. This need for adjustment was not an attribute of a good theory! He hoped to solve this problem with better calculations.




To try to improve the fit to the positions of the planets, many complications had been added:



Astronomers


* had moved the earth slightly off the center of the solar system to avoid needing to have the planets move at varying speeds along their orbits.

* had used a different type of epicycle to explain the motions of Mercury and Venus than were used for Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn.

* The model got extremely complex for Mercury (and Mars). The figure to the right shows Mercury riding on an epicycle on an epicycle on an epicycle with constant speed measured from a point well off-center! (From Scientific American)




"Hereafter, when they come to model Heav'n, And calculate the Stars, How will they wield The mighty frame, how build, unbuild, contrive, To save appearances, how grid the Sphere With Centric and Eccentric scribbl'd o'er, Cycle and Epicycle, Orb in Orb."
- John Milton, Paradise Lost
 
 
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« Reply #3 on: October 09, 2007, 08:57:52 am »








Copernicus realized that a few of the complexities would be removed if the earth and planets moved

around the sun. This idea was a huge leap philosophically, since he treated the earth as one of the

planets rather than as a unique body - previous scientific doctrine had held the earth to be unique.
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« Reply #4 on: October 09, 2007, 09:01:40 am »








                                       Essentials of the Copernican Solar System





The daily motion of the sun and stars is the result of the earth turning on its axis. Copernicus assumed that the air near the surface of the earth shares in its rotation thus preventing any "wind" from arising (this argument had also been made by Nicole Oresme two centuries previously) .

The sun lies at the center of the solar system with the earth being the third planet orbiting the sun. The moon orbits the earth. Copernicus reconciled placing the sun at the center of the solar system with his religious beliefs by noting that the sun is the source of light and life, a logical choice for the center of the universe.

All the planets orbit the sun in the same direction with the planets closer to the sun going around faster. A retrograde event then becomes the result of an inner planet overtaking and passing an outer planet.

Copernicus assumed that the shapes of the orbits are circles and that the planets move at constant speed. (same as Ptolemy)
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« Reply #5 on: October 09, 2007, 09:03:01 am »








Copernicus' drawing of his system. He notes that Mars is far from its predicted position.

From Marian Zwiercan http://www.bj.uj.edu.pl/bjmanus/revol/intro_e.html
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« Reply #6 on: October 09, 2007, 09:06:09 am »








A retrograde event in the Copernican model (from Journey Through Astronomy,

http://csep10.phys.utk.edu/):
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« Reply #7 on: October 09, 2007, 09:09:30 am »







Was the Copernican theory able to make any new predictions

How well did this model work?

Did not actually fit the positions of the planets any better than the Ptolemaic system. Because of assumption of circular orbits at constant speed, it was geometrically nearly identical to Ptolemy's model!


THE SKETCH WOULD NOT COME UP NORMAL SIZE - PLEASE SEE HERE:

http://ircamera.as.arizona.edu/NatSci102/NatSci102/lectures/copernicus.htm


The dashed line is a comparison of the calculated position of Mars with the Ptolemy/Copernicus systems, as carried out by Origanus, and its true position, as calculated by Kepler.



The errors were plenty large enough to be obvious:

4 degrees is 8 times the diameter of the moon! (from Owen Gingerich, "Johannes Kepler and the Rudolphine Tables," Sky and Telescope, December, 1971, page 328
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« Reply #8 on: October 09, 2007, 09:13:24 am »









If the earth is moving around the sun, then the nearest stars should exhibit parallax relative to stars. No one had been able to observe any stellar parallaxes. So the model violated a basic observation.





 The parallax is smaller if the nearest stars are far from the earth, but there was no compelling reason to put them so far away that it could not be observed. (from Journey Through Astronomy,  http://csep10.phys.utk.edu/).

The model wasn't even significantly simpler than the Ptolemaic one!

Copernicus was able to calculate the relative distances of the planets from the sun to far greater accuracy than ever before (although this was not confirmed until much, much later).

But the Copernican system was more aesthetically pleasing -- all the planets could be treated on an equal footing with no need to treat Mercury and Venus differently.




Copernicus' system was attractive to him more for philosophical reasons than scientific ones, and his disregard for observations is made clear by the simple instruments in his study.
(From Astronomy, Fred Hoyle)



Copernicus' system was attractive to him more for philosophical reasons than scientific ones, and his disregard for observations is made clear by the simple instruments in his study.
(From Astronomy, Fred Hoyle)


http://ircamera.as.arizona.edu/NatSci102/NatSci102/lectures/copernicus.htm
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« Reply #9 on: October 09, 2007, 09:24:10 am »

                             







                                                Copernicus, Nicolaus (1473 - 1543)





Polish astronomer who advanced the theory that the Earth and other planets revolve around the Sun (the "heliocentric" theory).

This was highly controversial at the time, since the prevailing Ptolemaic model held that the Earth was the center of the universe, and all objects, including the sun, circle it. The Ptolemaic model had been widely accepted in Europe for 1000 years when Copernicus proposed his model.

It should be noted, however, that the heliocentric idea was first put forth by Aristarcus of Samos in the 3rd century B.C., a fact known to Copernicus but long ignored by others prior to him.


http://imagine.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/dict_ad.html
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« Reply #10 on: October 09, 2007, 02:00:36 pm »








                                                   Nicolaus Copernicus




(February 19, 1473 – May 24, 1543)


was the first European astronomer to formulate a scientifically based heliocentric cosmology, and displaced the Earth from its center. His epochal book, De revolutionibus orbium coelestium (On the Revolutions of the Celestial Spheres), is often regarded as the starting point of modern astronomy, as well as a defining epiphany in the history of science.

Although Greek, Indian, and Muslim savants, centuries before Copernicus, had published heliocentric hypotheses, Copernicus's publication of a scientific theory of heliocentrism, demonstrating that the Sun is at the center of what is now called the solar system, was a landmark in the history of modern science.

Among the great polymaths of the Scientific Revolution and the Renaissance, Copernicus was a mathematician, astronomer, jurist, physician, classical scholar, Catholic cleric, governor, administrator, military leader, diplomat and economist. Amid his extensive responsibilities, astronomy figured as little more than an avocation—yet it was in that field that he made his mark upon the world.
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« Reply #11 on: October 09, 2007, 02:10:29 pm »










Nicolaus Copernicus was born in 1473 in the city of Toruń (Thorn) in the Royal Prussia region of the Kingdom of Poland.

 He was educated at Kraków, Bologna, Padua and Ferrara, and spent most of his working life within the prince-bishopric of Warmia (Ermeland), in the town of Frombork (Frauenburg), where he died in 1543.


Copernicus' birthplace.


Nicolaus Copernicus' father — a wealthy businessman, copper trader, and respected citizen of Toruń — died when Nicolaus was ten years old. Little is known of Nicolaus' mother, Barbara Watzenrode, except that she was born into a rich merchant family and appears to have predeceased her husband. After the elder Copernicus' death, Nicolaus' maternal uncle, Lucas Watzenrode, a church canon and later Prince-Bishop governor of the Archbishopric of Warmia, reared Nicolaus and his three siblings. The uncle's position facilitated Nicolaus' pursuit of a career within the church, enabling him to devote much time to his astronomy studies.

Copernicus had a brother and two sisters:

Andreas became an Augustinian canon at Frombork.

Barbara became a Benedictine nun.

Katharina married Barthel Gertner, a businessman and city councillor.





                                                          Education



 



Courtyard of Kraków University's Collegium Maius.


In 1491 Copernicus enrolled at the Kraków Academy (now Jagiellonian University), where he probably first encountered astronomy with Professor Albert Brudzewski. Astronomy soon fascinated him, and he began collecting a large library on the subject. Copernicus' library would later be carried off as war booty by the Swedes during "the Deluge" and is now at the Uppsala University Library.

After four years in Kraków, followed by a brief stay back home in Toruń, Copernicus went to study law and medicine at the universities of Bologna and Padua.

Copernicus' uncle financed his education and hoped that Copernicus too would become a bishop. Copernicus, however, while studying canon and civil law at Bologna, met the famous astronomer, Domenico Maria Novara da Ferrara. Copernicus attended Novara's lectures and became his disciple and assistant. The first observations that Copernicus made in 1497, together with Novara, are recorded in Copernicus' epochal book, De revolutionibus orbium coelestium.


 
Statue of a seated Copernicus holding an armillary sphere, before the Polish Academy of Sciences in Warsaw.In 1497 Copernicus' uncle was ordained Bishop of Warmia, and Copernicus was named a canon at Frombork Cathedral, but he waited in Italy for the great Jubilee of 1500. Copernicus went to Rome, where he observed a lunar eclipse and gave some lectures in astronomy and mathematics.

He would thus have visited Frombork only in 1501. As soon as he arrived, he requested and obtained permission to complete his studies in Padua, where he studied medicine (with Guarico and Fracastoro), including astrological medicine, and at Ferrara, where in 1503 he received his doctorate in canon law. It has been surmised that it was in Padua that he encountered passages from Cicero and Plato about opinions of the ancients on the movement of the Earth, and formed the first intuition of his own future theory. In 1504 Copernicus began collecting observations and ideas pertinent to his theory.
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« Reply #12 on: October 09, 2007, 02:22:48 pm »








Work



Having left Italy at the end of his studies, he came to live and work at Frombork. Some time before his return to Warmia, he received a position at the Collegiate Church of the Holy Cross in Wrocław (Breslau), Silesia, Bohemia, which he held for many years and only resigned for health reasons shortly before his death. Through the rest of his life, he performed astronomical observations and calculations, but only as time permitted and never in a professional capacity.





Copernicus and coin reform



Copernicus worked for years with the Royal Prussian Diet, with Albert, Duke of Prussia and advised the Polish king Sigismund I the Old on monetary reform. In 1526 Copernicus wrote a study on the value of money Monetae Cudendae Ratio. In it, Copernicus formulated an early iteration of the theory, now called "Gresham's Law," that "bad" (debased) coinage drives "good" (un-debased) coinage out of circulation, 70 years before Gresham. He also formulated a version of quantity theory of money. As governor of Warmia, he administered taxes and dealt out justice.

During these years, Copernicus also traveled extensively on government business and as a diplomat, on behalf of the Prince-Bishop of Warmia.
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« Reply #13 on: October 09, 2007, 02:27:28 pm »








                                                          Heliocentrism





In 1514 Copernicus made available to friends his Commentariolus (Little Commentary), a short handwritten text describing his ideas about the heliocentric hypothesis. Thereafter he continued gathering data for a more detailed work.

 
In 1533, Johann Albrecht Widmannstetter delivered in Rome a series of lectures outlining Copernicus' theory. The lectures were heard with interest by Pope Clement VII and several Catholic cardinals.

On 1 November 1536, Archbishop of Capua Nicholas Schönberg wrote a letter to Copernicus from Rome:

"Some years ago word reached me concerning your proficiency, of which everybody constantly spoke. At that time I began to have a very high regard for you... For I had learned that you had not merely mastered the discoveries of the ancient astronomers uncommonly well but had also formulated a new cosmology. In it you maintain that the earth moves; that the sun occupies the lowest, and thus the central, place in the universe... Therefore with the utmost earnestness I entreat you, most learned sir, unless I inconvenience you, to communicate this discovery of yours to scholars, and at the earliest possible moment to send me your writings on the sphere of the universe together with the tables and whatever else you have that is relevant to this subject..."

By then Copernicus' work was nearing its definitive form, and rumors about his theory had reached educated people all over Europe. Despite urgings from many quarters, Copernicus delayed with the publication of his book, perhaps from fear of criticism — a fear delicately expressed in the subsequent Dedication of his masterpiece to Pope Paul III. About this, historians of science David Lindberg and Ronald Numbers have written:

"If Copernicus had any genuine fear of publication, it was the reaction of scientists, not clerics, that worried him. Other churchmen before him — Nicole Oresme (a French bishop) in the fourteenth century and Nicolaus Cusanus (a German cardinal) in the fifteenth — had freely discussed the possible motion of the earth, and there was no reason to suppose that the reappearance of this idea in the sixteenth century would cause a religious stir."

In connection with the Galileo affair, Copernicus' book was suspended until corrected by the Index of the Catholic Church in 1616, because the Pythagorean doctrine of the motion of the Earth and the immobility of the Sun "is false and altogether opposed to the Holy Scripture".

These corrections were indicated in 1620, and nine sentences had to be either omitted or changed. 

The book stayed on the Index until 1758. In that period Galileo Galilei was found guilty in 1633 for "following the position of Copernicus, which [is] contrary to the true sense and authority of Holy Scripture ...", and was sent to his home near Florence where he was to be under house arrest for the remainder of his life in 1638.
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« Reply #14 on: October 09, 2007, 02:30:03 pm »










                                                            The book








Title page of the 2nd edition of De revolutionibus, printed 1566 in Basel



Copernicus was still working on De revolutionibus orbium coelestium (even if not convinced that he wanted
to publish it) when in 1539 Georg Joachim Rheticus, a Wittenberg mathematician, arrived in Frombork.

Philipp Melanchthon had arranged for Rheticus to visit several astronomers and study with them. Rheticus
became Copernicus' pupil, staying with him for two years, during which he wrote a book, Narratio prima
(First Account), outlining the essence of Copernicus' theory.

In 1542 Rheticus published a treatise on trigonometry by Copernicus (later included in the second book of De revolutionibus). Under strong pressure from Rheticus, and having seen the favorable first general reception of
his work, Copernicus finally agreed to give the book to his close friend, Tiedemann Giese, bishop of Chełmno
(Kulm), to be delivered to Rheticus for printing by Johannes Petreius at Nuremberg (Nürnberg).

Legend has it that the first printed copy of De revolutionibus was placed in Copernicus' hands on the very day
he died, allowing him to take farewell of his opus vitae (life's work). He is reputed to have woken from a stroke-induced coma, looked at his book, and died peacefully.
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