COLUMN ONE Ptolemy Tilted Off His Axis Studying a Statue of Atlas Holding the Sky, an American Astronomer Finds Key Evidence Of

COLUMN ONE You might call Brad Schaefer a detective to the stars. Ptolemy Tilted Off His Axis That's Antares, not Aniston. Betelgeuse, not Studying a statue of Atlas holding the sky, an Michael Keaton. American astronomer finds key evidence of what could be a major fraud in science history. When Schaefer's not cramming Astronomy 101 By John Johnson into his students at Louisiana State University in Times Staff Writer Baton Rouge, he is chasing his quarry across the starry landscape like a celestial Sherlock Holmes. March 30, 2005 Over the course of his career, he has written more In a sunlit gallery of the Museo Archeologico than 250 articles on such quirky subjects as how the Nazionale in Italy, astronomer Brad Schaefer came stars influenced Egyptian civilization and why face to face with an ancient statue known as the people seem to kill themselves when Halley's comet Farnese Atlas. comes around. For centuries, the 7-foot marble figure of the "I like to tell stories," he said. mythological Atlas has bent in stoic agony with a sphere of the cosmos crushing his shoulders. Dressed casually in tennis shoes and loose clothing, he looks younger than his 48 years. Backyard Carved on the sphere — one of only three celestial inventor, chess expert and former world-ranked globes that have survived from Greco-Roman times tiddlywinks player, the MIT graduate can seem the — are figures representing 41 of the 48 stereotypical absent-minded professor and perpetual constellations of classical antiquity, as well as the adolescent. celestial equator, tropics and meridians. But behind that mop of blond hair and the twitchy Historians have long looked on the Atlas as a mannerisms is the bulldog temperament of a big- postcard from the past — interesting largely as city homicide detective. astronomical art. A few years ago, he decided to try to determine the But as Schaefer approached, he began to notice actual date of Christ's Crucifixion using purely subtle details in the arrangement of the scientific methods. He wrote a computer program constellations. It wasn't that anything was wrong that factored in all the astronomical data he could with the statue. If anything, the positions of the unearth from the time. Then, because the constellations were too perfect to be mere Crucifixion is thought to have taken place 14 or 15 decoration. days after a crescent moon first became visible, he added in thousands of modern records of He was more than a little intrigued. No, this was no atmospheric haze to approximate periods of high mere piece of art. Taking out his camera, he was and low visibility in the ancient Middle East. about to take a journey through the centuries to unravel one of the great mysteries of the ancient Rolling back the calendar more than 1,900 years, world and uncover key evidence in what may be he came up with two dates: AD 30 and 33. one of the biggest cases of fraud in the history of science. Bible scholars, comparing biblical texts with historical records, have arrived at similar dates. Schaefer thinks his results are more reliable. "People in the past never tried doing physics-based The world's oldest constellation is thought to be the research," he said. Big Bear, which we know as the Big Dipper. Schaefer traced it to an Ice Age bear cult from Schaefer wasn't looking for another mystery when 14,000 years ago. he and his wife, a planetary geologist, took a Mediterranean cruise in June. A few hundred years before Christ, a handful of stargazers began looking beyond the pictures in the The purpose was to view the transit of Venus — a sky to the actual mechanics of the cosmos. rare astronomical event in which the planet crosses the face of the sun. The most famous of the ancients was Hipparchus, born in what is now Turkey in 190 BC. He Schaefer decided to pay a visit to the Museo calculated the length of a year to within 6 1/2 Archeologico Nazionale in Naples. minutes and was the first to explain the Earth's rotation on its axis. He also compiled the first He knew something of the Farnese Atlas, named comprehensive catalog of the stars. for Cardinal Alessandro Farnese, who purchased it in the 16th century. The statue, probably a Roman Today, only one work by Hipparchus remains, his copy made about AD 150 of an earlier Greek statue, Commentary, a criticism of an earlier poet- is the oldest representation of the original Western astronomer, Aratus. Everything else, including his constellations. famed star catalog and globe, was presumed lost in the great fire that consumed the Library of There are no stars on the globe, just the Alexandria sometime before AD 400. constellations themselves, represented by earthly forms such as a ram, a bull or a huntsman. Even so, Looming over the ancient scientists like the he could tell that they were laid out with great Colossus of Rhodes is Claudius Ptolemy, who is precision. If the globe was accurate, he realized, the still studied in modern classrooms as one of the heavenly scene depicted on its surface would greatest scientists of all time. conform to only one moment in history. And thus reveal for the first time its origins. About 250 years after Hipparchus, Ptolemy charted the positions and movements of a thousand stars, as But how to find that moment? It wasn't as simple as well as the motions of the sun, the moon and the rewinding the celestial clock. This time, he had to planets out to Saturn. His most famous work, the guess the position of the stars within those earthly Almagest, roughly translated as "the Greatest forms, from the position of a horn or a hoof. Compilation," was published around AD 128 and became one of the most influential scientific texts in Few astronomers would have thought it possible. history. To Schaefer, that just made the task more Despite being wrong about the Earth being the interesting. He returned to Louisiana to begin the center of the universe, the Almagest was the final painstaking work of finding his way back through word on the comings and goings of the stars for the fog of time. 1,400 years. In antiquity, man tried to make the night sky Ptolemy was not dethroned until the 16th century, familiar by stitching stars into constellations. when Copernicus determined that the Earth traveled around the sun. Mesopotamians created zodiac signs as early as 1100 BC. Some Chinese constellations are 2,000 At that point, critics began to reevaluate Ptolemy. years older than that. His math was suspect, they said. Some of his findings were flat-out wrong. Those that weren't wrong, they suspected, had been pilfered. Some was someone unknown to the modern world. scientists and authors wondered openly what once would have been considered blasphemy: Had The first step was dating the statue. Despite a hole Ptolemy stolen his masterwork from someone else? in the top that obliterated Ursa Minor and Ursa Perhaps from Hipparchus? Major, the globe provided several hints that quickly placed an upper date on the sculpture. The fight continues today. Robert Newton, in his 1977 book "The Crime of Claudius Ptolemy," called It was missing the later-devised Greek him "the most successful fraud in the history of constellations of Equuleus, Coma Berenices and science." Antinous. Hercules is also depicted as a kneeling, naked man instead of as a hero, as in latter Greek In the usually restrained world of astronomy, times. passions ran high at a 1999 debate at the University of Notre Dame. Advocates agreed that Ptolemy One last tip placed the sculpture well before borrowed liberally from Hipparchus and others, but Ptolemy. The carving of Aquarius on the Atlas they said plenty of scientists did that. contained the outline of a water jar. In the Almagest, Aquarius has no water jar. "Some want to make it a moral issue," said James Evans of the University of Puget Sound. The answer had to lie deeper in the past. "To impose on the ancients the same standards we One clue put a lower limit on the star chart. The expect today is a little naive." summer solstice on the statue is shown at the start of Cancer. Eudoxus and Aratus, who lived before Rubbish, say critics. This is no minor tinkerer. This 245 BC, described it as being in Leo. But that could is one of the world's most illustrious scientists who not be, because the solstice, which gradually moves could be a faker. A crime of that magnitude should through the centuries, hadn't been in Leo since 1250 not stand. BC. Schaefer also noted that the head of Andromeda did not overlay the navel of Pegasus, as "Ptolemy stole, fabricated and mutilated data," it would have in the time of Eudoxus and Aratus. thundered the International Journal of Scientific History. All this placed the star map between Eudoxus and Aratus, and Ptolemy — roughly 245 BC to AD 200. "The Ptolemy-Hipparchus feud has led to many unprofessional acts," Schaefer wrote in a 2002 Hipparchus lived in that time. Schaefer's article in Sky & Telescope magazine. "These excitement rose. He turned to Hipparchus' sole include shunning of people at conferences and surviving work, the Commentary, which contained spammed hate mail." enough specific references to stars for a comparison with the statue. He soon discovered a surprisingly exact match: The positions of Auriga the Charioteer, Centaurus and Schaefer knew as he began work in Louisiana that Draco all matched Hipparchus' descriptions.

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