Giordano Bruno
"Giordano Bruno (born Filippo Bruno, 1548 – 17 February 1600) was an Italian Dominican friar, philosopher, mathematician, poet, and cosmological theorist. He is known for his cosmological theories, which conceptually extended the then-novel Copernican model. He proposed that the stars were distant suns surrounded by their own exoplanets and raised the possibility that these planets could foster life of their own, a philosophical position known as cosmic pluralism. He also insisted that the universe is infinite and could have no celestial body at its "center".
Starting in 1593, Bruno was tried for heresy by the Roman Inquisition on charges of denial of several core Catholic doctrines, including eternal damnation, the Trinity, the divinity of Christ, the virginity of Mary, and transubstantiation. Bruno's pantheism was also a matter of grave concern, as was his teaching of the transmigration of the soul. The Inquisition found him guilty, and he was burned at the stake in Rome's Campo de' Fiori in 1600. After his death, he gained considerable fame, being particularly celebrated by 19th- and early 20th-century commentators who regarded him as a martyr for science,[5] although historians have debated the extent to which his heresy trial was a response to his astronomical views or to other aspects of his philosophy and theology. Bruno's case is still considered a landmark in the history of free thought and the emerging sciences.
In addition to cosmology, Bruno also wrote extensively on the art of memory, a loosely organized group of mnemonic techniques and principles. Historian Frances Yates argues that Bruno was deeply influenced by Arab astrology (particularly the philosophy of Averroes[14]), Neoplatonism, Renaissance Hermeticism, and Genesis-like legends surrounding the Egyptian god Thoth. Other studies of Bruno have focused on his qualitative approach to mathematics and his application of the spatial concepts of geometry to language...
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Imprisonment, trial and execution, 1593–1600
During the seven years of his trial in Rome, Bruno was held in confinement, lastly in the Tower of Nona. Some important documents about the trial are lost, but others have been preserved, among them a summary of the proceedings that was rediscovered in 1940. The numerous charges against Bruno, based on some of his books as well as on witness accounts, included blasphemy, immoral conduct, and heresy in matters of dogmatic theology, and involved some of the basic doctrines of his philosophy and cosmology. Luigi Firpo speculates the charges made against Bruno by the Roman Inquisition were:
holding opinions contrary to the Catholic faith and speaking against it and its ministers;
holding opinions contrary to the Catholic faith about the Trinity, divinity of Christ, and Incarnation;
holding opinions contrary to the Catholic faith pertaining to Jesus as Christ;
holding opinions contrary to the Catholic faith regarding the virginity of Mary, mother of Jesus;
holding opinions contrary to the Catholic faith about both Transubstantiation and Mass;
claiming the existence of a plurality of worlds and their eternity;
believing in metempsychosis and in the transmigration of the human soul into brutes;
dealing in magics and divination.
Bruno defended himself as he had in Venice, insisting that he accepted the Church's dogmatic teachings, but trying to preserve the basis of his philosophy. In particular, he held firm to his belief in the plurality of worlds, although he was admonished to abandon it. His trial was overseen by the Inquisitor Cardinal Bellarmine, who demanded a full recantation, which Bruno eventually refused. On 20 January 1600, Pope Clement VIII declared Bruno a heretic and the Inquisition issued a sentence of death. According to the correspondence of Gaspar Schopp of Breslau, he is said to have made a threatening gesture towards his judges and to have replied: Maiori forsan cum timore sententiam in me fertis quam ego accipiam ("Perhaps you pronounce this sentence against me with greater fear than I receive it").
He was turned over to the secular authorities. On Ash Wednesday, 17 February 1600, in the Campo de' Fiori (a central Roman market square), with his "tongue imprisoned because of his wicked words". He was hung upside down naked before he was finally burned at the stake.[34][35] His ashes were thrown into the Tiber river. All of Bruno's works were placed on the Index Librorum Prohibitorum in 1603. The inquisition cardinals who judged Giordano Bruno were Cardinal Bellarmino (Bellarmine), Cardinal Madruzzo (Madruzzi), Cardinal Camillo Borghese (later Pope Paul V), Domenico Cardinal Pinelli, Pompeio Cardinal Arrigoni, Cardinal Sfondrati, Pedro Cardinal De Deza Manuel and Cardinal Santorio (Archbishop of Santa Severina, Cardinal-Bishop of Palestrina)."
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The Statue
The statue of a stretched human figure standing on its head, designed by Alexander Polzin and depicting Bruno's death at the stake, was placed in Potsdamer Platz station in Berlin on 2 March 2008. The statue is near to the escalators in the northern entrance to the S-Bahn railway.
The base of the statue has a quote of Giordano.
>>It seems to me ridiculous to say, that nothing exists beyond the sky. There is no single world, no single earth, no single sun: there aree many worlds, as many as the radiant lights we see around us.«
Giordano Bruno
Born in 1548 in Nola by Naples
On the 17th of February 1600 burned at the stake as a heretic-in Rome
Asteroid 5148 Giordano
"5148 Giordano, provisional designation 5557 P-L, is a background asteroid from the outer regions of the asteroid belt, approximately 8 kilometers (5 miles) in diameter. It was discovered on 17 October 1960, by Dutch astronomer couple Ingrid and Cornelis van Houten on photographic plates taken by Dutch–American astronomer Tom Gehrels at the Palomar Observatory in California, United States. It was named for Italian friar and heretic Giordano Bruno, who was burned at the stake in Rome in 1600. The presumably carbonaceous Themistian asteroid has a rotation period of 7.8 hours and possibly an elongated shape.
Giordano is a non-family asteroid of the main belt's background population when applying the hierarchical clustering method to its proper orbital elements. Based on osculating Keplerian orbital elements, the asteroid has also been classified as a Themistian asteroid that belongs to the Themis family (602), a very large family of carbonaceous asteroids, named after 24 Themis.
It orbits the Sun in the outer asteroid belt at a distance of 2.7–3.6 AU once every 5 years and 6 months (2,008 days; semi-major axis of 3.11 AU). Its orbit has an eccentricity of 0.15 and an inclination of 1° with respect to the ecliptic.[5] The body's observation arc begins at Palomar on 24 September 1960, less than a month prior to its official discovery observation.
Giordano is an assumed carbonaceous C-type asteroid derived from the overall spectral type for Themistian asteroids.
In September 2010, a rotational lightcurve of Giordano was obtained from photometric observations in the R-band by astronomers at the Palomar Transient Factory in California. Lightcurve analysis gave a rotation period of 7.824 hours with a brightness amplitude of 0.60 magnitude, indicative for an elongated shape (U=2).
According to the survey carried out by the NEOWISE mission of NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, Giordano measures 8.112 and 8.5 kilometers in diameter and its surface has an albedo of 0.089 and 0.07, respectively. The Collaborative Asteroid Lightcurve Link assumes an albedo of 0.08 and calculates a diameter of 6.06 kilometers based on an absolute magnitude of 14.45.
The survey designation "P-L" stands for Palomar–Leiden, named after Palomar Observatory and Leiden Observatory, which collaborated on the fruitful Palomar–Leiden survey in the 1960s. Gehrels used Palomar's Samuel Oschin telescope (also known as the 48-inch Schmidt Telescope), and shipped the photographic plates to Ingrid and Cornelis van Houten at Leiden Observatory where astrometry was carried out. The trio are credited with the discovery of several thousand asteroid discoveries.
This minor planet was named after an Italian Dominican friar Giordano Bruno (1548–1600), a philosopher, mathematician, poet, and cosmological theorist who spent who spent many years in London, where several of his papers were published.
Bruno was convinced that the Copernican heliocentric rather than the Geocentric model was correct, and proposed that other worlds, on which people could live, might exist around other stars. This brought him in conflict with the church. He was found guilty of heresy by the Roman Inquisition and was burned at the stake in Rome in 1600. The official naming citation was published by the Minor Planet Center on 1 September 1993 (M.P.C. 22507). The asteroid's number, 5148, is a permutation of his birth year (1548).
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Lunar Carter Giordano Bruno
"Giordano Bruno is a 22-kilometre (14 mi) lunar impact crater on the far side of the Moon, just beyond the northeastern limb. It lies in an area that can be viewed during a favorable libration, although the area is viewed from the side and not much detail can be seen. It lies between the craters Harkhebi to the northwest and Szilard to the southeast.
When viewed from orbit, Giordano Bruno is at the center of a symmetrical ray system of ejecta that has a higher albedo than the surrounding surface. The ray material extends for over 150 kilometres (93 mi) and has not been significantly darkened by space erosion. Some of the ejecta appear to extend as far as the crater Boss, over 300 kilometres (190 mi) to the northwest. The outer rim of the crater is especially bright compared to its surroundings. To all appearances, this is a young formation that was created in the relatively recent past, geologically speaking. Based on photos from a lunar orbiter, the crater's age has been estimated at 4 million years.
This feature was named after Italian intellectual Giordano Bruno."
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