title: Tycho Brahe

text: In April 1567, Tycho returned home from his travels, with a firm intention of becoming an astrologer. Although he had been expected to go into politics and the law, like most of his kinsmen, and although Denmark was still at war with Sweden, his family supported his decision to dedicate himself to the sciences. His father wanted him to take up law, but Tycho was allowed to travel to Rostock and then to Augsburg (where he built a great quadrant), Basel, and Freiburg. In 1568, he was appointed a canon at the Cathedral of Roskilde, a largely honorary position that would allow him to focus on his studies. At the end of 1570, he was informed of his father's ill health, so he returned to Knutstorp Castle, where his father died on 9 May 1571. The war was over, and the Danish lords soon returned to prosperity. Soon, another uncle, Steen Bille, helped him build an observatory and alchemical laboratory at Herrevad Abbey. Tycho was acknowledged by King Frederick II who proposed to him that an observatory be built to better study the night sky. After accepting this proposal, the location for the Uraniborg's construction took place at a remote island called Hven in the Sont near Copenhagen, which made a name for itself as the most promising observatory in Europe at the time.


title: Tycho Brahe

text: Towards the end of 1571, Tycho fell in love with Kirsten, daughter of Jørgen Hansen, the Lutheran minister in Knudstrup. As she was a commoner, Tycho never formally married her, since if he did he would lose his noble privileges. However, Danish law permitted morganatic marriage, which meant that a nobleman and a common woman could live together openly as husband and wife for three years, and their alliance then became a legally binding marriage. However, each would maintain their social status, and any children they had together would be considered commoners, with no rights to titles, landholdings, coat of arms, or even their father's noble name. While King Frederick respected Tycho's choice of wife, himself having been unable to marry the woman he loved, many of Tycho's family members disagreed, and many churchmen would continue to hold the lack of a divinely sanctioned marriage against him. Kirsten Jørgensdatter gave birth to their first daughter, Kirstine (named after Tycho's late sister) on 12October 1573. Kirstine died from the plague in 1576, and Tycho wrote a heartfelt elegy for her tombstone. In 1574, they moved to Copenhagen where their daughter Magdalene was born, and later the family followed him into exile. Kirsten and Tycho lived together for almost thirty years until Tycho's death. Together, they had eight children, six of whom lived to adulthood.


title: Tycho Brahe

text: On 11 November 1572, Tycho observed (from Herrevad Abbey) a very bright star, now numbered SN 1572, which had unexpectedly appeared in the constellation Cassiopeia. Because it had been maintained since antiquity that the world beyond the Moon's orbit was eternally unchangeable (celestial immutability was a fundamental axiom of the Aristotelian world-view), other observers held that the phenomenon was something in the terrestrial sphere below the Moon. However, Tycho observed that the object showed no daily parallax against the background of the fixed stars. This implied that it was at least farther away than the Moon and those planets that do show such parallax. He also found that the object did not change its position relative to the fixed stars over several months, as all planets did in their periodic orbital motions, even the outer planets, for which no daily parallax was detectable. This suggested that it was not even a planet, but a fixed star in the stellar sphere beyond all the planets. In 1573, he published a small book "De nova stella", thereby coining the term nova for a "new" star (we now classify this star as a supernova and know that it is 7,500 light-years from Earth). This discovery was decisive for his choice of astronomy as a profession. Tycho was strongly critical of those who dismissed the implications of the astronomical appearance, writing in the preface to "De nova stella": ""O crassa ingenia. O caecos coeli spectatores"" ("Oh thick wits. Oh blind watchers of the sky"). The publication of his discovery made him a well-known name among scientists in Europe.


title: Tycho Brahe

text: Tycho continued with his detailed observations, often assisted by his first assistant and student, his younger sister Sophie. In 1574, Tycho published the observations made in 1572 from his first observatory at Herrevad Abbey. He then started lecturing on astronomy, but gave it up and left Denmark in spring 1575 to tour abroad. He first visited William IV, Landgrave of Hesse-Kassel's observatory at Kassel, then went on to Frankfurt, Basel, and Venice, where he acted as an agent for the Danish king, contacting artisans and craftsmen whom the king wanted to work on his new palace at Elsinore. Upon his return, the King wished to repay Tycho's service by offering him a position worthy of his family; he offered him a choice of lordships of militarily and economically important estates, such as the castles of Hammershus or Helsingborg. But Tycho was reluctant to take up a position as a lord of the realm, preferring to focus on his science. He wrote to his friend Johannes Pratensis, "I did not want to take possession of any of the castles our benevolent king so graciously offered me. I am displeased with society here, customary forms and the whole rubbish". Tycho secretly began to plan to move to Basel, wishing to participate in the burgeoning academic and scientific life there. But the King heard of Tycho's plans, and desiring to keep the distinguished scientist, he offered Tycho the island of Hven in Øresund and funding to set up an observatory.


title: Tycho Brahe

text: Until then, Hven had been property directly under the Crown, and the 50 families on the island considered themselves to be freeholding farmers, but with Tycho's appointment as Feudal Lord of Hven, this changed. Tycho took control of agricultural planning, requiring the peasants to cultivate twice as much as they had done before, and he also exacted corvée labor from the peasants for the construction of his new castle. The peasants complained about Tycho's excessive taxation and took him to court. The court established Tycho's right to levy taxes and labor, and the result was a contract detailing the mutual obligations of lord and peasants on the island.


title: Tycho Brahe

text: Tycho envisioned his castle Uraniborg as a temple dedicated to the muses of arts and sciences, rather than as a military fortress; indeed, it was named after Urania, the muse of astronomy. Construction began in 1576 (with a laboratory for his alchemical experiments in the cellar). Uraniborg was inspired by the Venetian architect Andrea Palladio, and was one of the first buildings in northern Europe to show influence from Italian renaissance architecture.


title: Tycho Brahe

text: When he realized that the towers of Uraniborg were not adequate as observatories because of the instruments' exposure to the elements and the movement of the building, he constructed an underground observatory close to Uraniborg called Stjerneborg (Star Castle) in 1584. This consisted of several hemispherical crypts which contained the great equatorial armillary, large azimuth quadrant, zodiacal armillary, largest azimuth quadrant of steel and the trigonal sextant.


title: Tycho Brahe

text: The basement of Uraniborg included an alchemical laboratory with 16 furnaces for conducting distillations and other chemical experiments. Unusually for the time, Tycho established Uraniborg as a research centre, where almost 100 students and artisans worked from 1576 to 1597. Uraniborg also contained a printing press and a paper mill, both among the first in Scandinavia, enabling Tycho to publish his own manuscripts, on locally made paper with his own watermark. He created a system of ponds and canals to run the wheels of the paper mill. Over the years he worked on Uraniborg, Tycho was assisted by a number of students and protegés, many of whom went on to their own careers in astronomy: among them were Christian Sørensen Longomontanus, later one of the main proponents of the Tychonic model and Tycho's replacement as royal Danish astronomer; Peder Flemløse; Elias Olsen Morsing; and Cort Aslakssøn. Tycho's instrument-maker Hans Crol also formed part of the scientific community on the island.


title: Tycho Brahe

text: He observed the great comet that was visible in the Northern sky from November 1577 to January 1578. Within Lutheranism, it was commonly believed that celestial objects like comets were powerful portents, announcing the coming apocalypse, and in addition to Tycho's observations several Danish amateur astronomers observed the object and published prophesies of impending doom. He was able to determine that the comet's distance to Earth was much greater than the distance of the Moon, so that the comet could not have originated in the "earthly sphere", confirming his prior anti-Aristotelian conclusions about the fixed nature of the sky beyond the Moon. He also realized that the comet's tail was always pointing away from the Sun. He calculated its diameter, mass, and the length of its tail, and speculated about the material it was made of. At this point, he had not yet broken with Copernican theory, and observing the comet inspired him to try to develop an alternative Copernican model in which the Earth was immobile. The second half of his manuscript about the comet dealt with the astrological and apocalyptic aspects of the comet, and he rejected the prophesies of his competitors; instead, making his own predictions of dire political events in the near future. Among his predictions was bloodshed in Moscow and the imminent fall of Ivan the Terrible by 1583.


title: Tycho Brahe

text: The support that Tycho received from the Crown was substantial, amounting to 1% of the annual total revenue at one point in the 1580s. Tycho often held large social gatherings in his castle. Pierre Gassendi wrote that Tycho also had a tame elk (moose) and that his mentor the Landgrave Wilhelm of Hesse-Kassel (Hesse-Cassel) asked whether there was an animal faster than a deer. Tycho replied that there was none, but he could send his tame elk. When Wilhelm replied he would accept one in exchange for a horse, Tycho replied with the sad news that the elk had just died on a visit to entertain a nobleman at Landskrona. Apparently, during dinner, the elk had drunk a lot of beer, fallen down the stairs, and died. Among the many noble visitors to Hven was James VI of Scotland, who married the Danish princess Anne. After his visit to Hven in 1590, he wrote a poem comparing Tycho with Apollon and Phaethon.


title: Tycho Brahe

text: As part of Tycho's duties to the Crown in exchange for his estate, he fulfilled the functions of a royal astrologer. At the beginning of each year, he had to present an Almanac to the court, predicting the influence of the stars on the political and economic prospects of the year. And at the birth of each prince, he prepared their horoscopes, predicting their fates. He also worked as a cartographer with his former tutor Anders Sørensen Vedel on mapping out all of the Danish realm. An ally of the king and friendly with Queen Sophie (both his mother Beate Bille and adoptive mother Inger Oxe had been her court maids), he secured a promise from the King that ownership of Hven and Uraniborg would pass to his heirs.


title: Tycho Brahe

text: In 1588, Tycho's royal benefactor died, and a volume of Tycho's great two-volume work "Astronomiae Instauratae Progymnasmata" ("Introduction to the New Astronomy") was published. The first volume, devoted to the new star of 1572, was not ready, because the reduction of the observations of 1572–73 involved much research to correct the stars' positions for refraction, precession, the motion of the Sun etc., and was not completed in Tycho's lifetime (it was published in Prague in 1602/03), but the second volume, titled "De Mundi Aetherei Recentioribus Phaenomenis Liber Secundus" ("Second Book About Recent Phenomena in the Celestial World") and devoted to the comet of 1577, was printed at Uraniborg and some copies were issued in 1588. Besides the comet observations, it included an account of Tycho's system of the world. The third volume was intended to treat the comets of 1580 and following years in a similar manner, but it was never published, nor even written, though a great deal of material about the comet of 1585 was put together and first published in 1845 with the observations of this comet.


title: Tycho Brahe

text: While at Uraniborg, Tycho maintained correspondence with scientists and astronomers across Europe. He inquired about other astronomers' observations and shared his own technological advances to help them achieve more accurate observations. Thus, his correspondence was crucial to his research. Often, correspondence was not just private communication between scholars, but also a way to disseminate results and arguments and to build progress and scientific consensus. Through correspondence, Tycho was involved in several personal disputes with critics of his theories. Prominent among them were John Craig, a Scottish physician who was a strong believer in the authority of the Aristotelian worldview, and Nicolaus Reimers Baer, known as Ursus, an astronomer at the Imperial court in Prague, whom Tycho accused of having plagiarized his cosmological model. Craig refused to accept Tycho's conclusion that the comet of 1577 had to be located within the aetherial sphere rather than within the atmosphere of Earth. Craig tried to contradict Tycho by using his own observations of the comet, and by questioning his methodology. Tycho published an "apologia" (a defense) of his conclusions, in which he provided additional arguments, as well as condemning Craig's ideas in strong language for being incompetent. Another dispute concerned the mathematician Paul Wittich, who, after staying on Hven in 1580, taught Count Wilhelm of Kassel and his astronomer Christoph Rothmann to build copies of Tycho's instruments without permission from Tycho. In turn, Craig, who had studied with Wittich, accused Tycho of minimizing Wittich's role in developing some of the trigonometric methods used by Tycho. In his dealings with these disputes, Tycho made sure to leverage his support in the scientific community, by publishing and disseminating his own answers and arguments.


title: Tycho Brahe

text: When Frederick died in 1588, his son and heir Christian IV was only 11 years old. A regency council was appointed to rule for the young prince-elect until his coronation in 1596. The head of the council (Steward of the Realm) was Christoffer Valkendorff, who disliked Tycho after a conflict between them, and hence Tycho's influence at the Danish court steadily declined. Feeling that his legacy on Hven was in peril, he approached the Dowager Queen Sophie and asked her to affirm in writing her late husband's promise to endow Hven to Tycho's heirs. Nonetheless, he realized that the young king was more interested in war than in science, and was of no mind to keep his father's promise. King Christian IV followed a policy of curbing the power of the nobility by confiscating their estates to minimize their income bases, by accusing nobles of misusing their offices and of heresies against the Lutheran church. Tycho, who was known to sympathize with the Philippists (followers of Philip Melanchthon), was among the nobles who fell out of grace with the new king. The king's unfavorable disposition towards Tycho was likely also a result of efforts by several of his enemies at court to turn the king against him. Tycho's enemies included, in addition to Valkendorff, the king's doctor Peter Severinus, who also had personal gripes with Tycho, and several gnesio-Lutheran Bishops who suspected Tycho of heresy—a suspicion motivated by his known Philippist sympathies, his pursuits in medicine and alchemy (both of which he practiced without the church's approval) and his prohibiting the local priest on Hven to include the exorcism in the baptismal ritual. Among the accusations raised against Tycho were his failure to adequately maintain the royal chapel at Roskilde, and his harshness and exploitation of the Hven peasantry.


title: Tycho Brahe

text: Tycho became even more inclined to leave when a mob of commoners, possibly incited by his enemies at court, rioted in front of his house in Copenhagen. Tycho left Hven in 1597, bringing some of his instruments with him to Copenhagen, and entrusting others to a caretaker on the island. Shortly before leaving, he completed his star catalogue giving the positions of 1,000 stars. After some unsuccessful attempts at influencing the king to let him return; including showcasing his instruments on the wall of the city, he finally acquiesced to exile, but he wrote his most famous poem "Elegy to Dania" in which he chided Denmark for not appreciating his genius. The instruments he had used in Uraniborg and Stjerneborg were depicted and described in detail in his book "Astronomiae instauratae mechanica" or "Instruments for the restoration of astronomy", first published in 1598. The King sent two envoys to Hven to describe the instruments left behind by Tycho. Unversed in astronomy, the envoys reported to the king that the large mechanical contraptions such as his large quadrant and sextant were "useless and even harmful".


title: Tycho Brahe

text: From 1597 to 1598, he spent a year at the castle of his friend Heinrich Rantzau in Wandesburg outside Hamburg, and then they moved for a while to Wittenberg, where they stayed in the former home of Philip Melanchthon.


title: Tycho Brahe

text: In 1599, he obtained the sponsorship of Rudolf II, Holy Roman Emperor and moved to Prague, as Imperial Court Astronomer. Tycho built a new observatory in a castle in Benátky nad Jizerou, 50 km from Prague, and worked there for one year. The emperor then brought him back to Prague, where he stayed until his death. At the imperial court even Tycho's wife and children were treated like nobility, which they had never been at the Danish court.


title: Tycho Brahe

text: Tycho received financial support from several nobles in addition to the emperor, including Oldrich Desiderius Pruskowsky von Pruskow, to whom he dedicated his famous "Mechanica". In return for their support, Tycho's duties included preparing astrological charts and predictions for his patrons at events such as births, weather forecasting, and astrological interpretations of significant astronomical events, such as the supernova of 1572 (sometimes called Tycho's supernova) and the Great Comet of 1577.


title: Tycho Brahe

text: In Prague, Tycho worked closely with Kepler, his assistant. Kepler was a convinced Copernican, and considered Tycho's model to be mistaken, and derived from simple "inversion" of the Sun's and Earth's positions in the Copernican model. Together, the two worked on a new star catalogue based on his own accurate positions—this catalogue became the "Rudolphine Tables". Also at the court in Prague was the mathematician Nicolaus Reimers (Ursus), with whom Tycho had previously corresponded, and who, like Tycho, had developed a geo-heliocentric planetary model, which Tycho considered to have been plagiarized from his own. Kepler had previously spoken highly of Ursus, but now found himself in the problematic position of being employed by Tycho and having to defend his employer against Ursus' accusations, even though he disagreed with both of their planetary models. In 1600, he finished the tract "Apologia pro Tychone contra Ursum" (defense of Tycho against Ursus). Kepler had great respect for Tycho's methods and the accuracy of his observations and considered him to be the new Hipparchus, who would provide the foundation for a restoration of the science of astronomy.


title: Tycho Brahe

text: Tycho suddenly contracted a bladder or kidney ailment after attending a banquet in Prague, and died eleven days later, on 24 October 1601, at the age of 54. According to Kepler's first-hand account, Tycho had refused to leave the banquet to relieve himself because it would have been a breach of etiquette. After he returned home, he was no longer able to urinate, except eventually in very small quantities and with excruciating pain. The night before he died, he suffered from a delirium during which he was frequently heard to exclaim that he hoped he would not seem to have lived in vain. Before dying, he urged Kepler to finish the "Rudolphine Tables" and expressed the hope that he would do so by adopting Tycho's own planetary system, rather than that of Copernicus. It was reported that Tycho had written his own epitaph, "He lived like a sage and died like a fool." A contemporary physician attributed his death to a kidney stone, but no kidney stones were found during an autopsy performed after his body was exhumed in 1901, and modern medical assessment is that his death was more likely caused by either a burst bladder, prostatic hypertrophy, acute prostatitis, or prostate cancer, which lead to urinary retention, overflow incontinence, and uremia.


title: Tycho Brahe

text: Investigations in the 1990s suggested that Tycho may not have died from urinary problems, but instead from mercury poisoning. It was speculated that he had been intentionally poisoned. The two main suspects were his assistant, Johannes Kepler, whose motives would be to gain access to Tycho's laboratory and chemicals, and his cousin, Erik Brahe, at the order of friend-turned-enemy Christian IV, because of rumors that Tycho had had an affair with Christian's mother.


title: Tycho Brahe

text: In February 2010, the Prague city authorities approved a request by Danish scientists to exhume the remains, and in November 2010 a group of Czech and Danish scientists from Aarhus University collected bone, hair and clothing samples for analysis. The scientists, led by Dr Jens Vellev, analyzed Tycho's beard hair once again. The team reported in November 2012 that not only was there not enough mercury present to substantiate murder, but that there were no lethal levels of any poisons present. The team's conclusion was that "it is impossible that Tycho Brahe could have been murdered". The findings were confirmed by scientists from the University of Rostock, who examined a sample of Tycho's beard hairs that had been taken in 1901. Although traces of mercury were found, these were present only in the outer scales. Therefore, mercury poisoning as the cause of death was ruled out, while the study suggests that the accumulation of mercury may have come from the "precipitation of mercury dust from the air during [Tycho's] long-term alchemistic activities". The hair samples contain 20–100 times the natural concentration of gold until 2 months before his death.


title: Tycho Brahe

text: Tycho is buried in the Church of Our Lady before Týn, in Old Town Square near the Prague Astronomical Clock.


title: Tycho Brahe

text: Tycho's view of science was driven by his passion for accurate observations, and the quest for improved instruments of measurement drove his life's work. Tycho was the last major astronomer to work without the aid of a telescope, soon to be turned skyward by Galileo Galilei and others. Given the limitations of the naked eye for making accurate observations, he devoted many of his efforts to improving the accuracy of the existing types of instrument—the sextant and the quadrant. He designed larger versions of these instruments, which allowed him to achieve much higher accuracy. Because of the accuracy of his instruments, he quickly realized the influence of wind and the movement of buildings, and instead opted to mount his instruments underground directly on the bedrock.


title: Tycho Brahe

text: Tycho's observations of stellar and planetary positions were noteworthy both for their accuracy and quantity. With an accuracy approaching one arcminute, his celestial positions were much more accurate than those of any predecessor or contemporary—about five times as accurate as the observations of Wilhelm of Hesse. asserts of Tycho's Star Catalog D, "In it, Tycho achieved, on a mass scale, a precision far beyond that of earlier catalogers. Cat D represents an unprecedented confluence of skills: instrumental, observational, & computational—all of which combined to enable Tycho to place most of his hundreds of recorded stars to an accuracy of ordermag 1'!"


title: Tycho Brahe

text: He aspired to a level of accuracy in his estimated positions of celestial bodies of being consistently within an arcminute of their real celestial locations, and also claimed to have achieved this level. But, in fact, many of the stellar positions in his star catalogues were less accurate than that. The median errors for the stellar positions in his final published catalog were about 1.5', indicating that only half of the entries were more accurate than that, with an overall mean error in each coordinate of around 2'. Although the stellar observations as recorded in his observational logs were more accurate, varying from 32.3" to 48.8" for different instruments, systematic errors of as much as 3' were introduced into some of the stellar positions Tycho published in his star catalog—due, for instance, to his application of an erroneous ancient value of parallax and his neglect of polestar refraction. Incorrect transcription in the final published star catalogue, by scribes in Tycho's employ, was the source of even larger errors, sometimes by many degrees.


title: Tycho Brahe

text: Celestial objects observed near the horizon and above appear with a greater altitude than the real one, due to atmospheric refraction, and one of Tycho's most important innovations was that he worked out and published the very first tables for the systematic correction of this possible source of error. But, as advanced as they were, they attributed no refraction whatever above 45° altitude for solar refraction, and none for starlight above 20° altitude.


title: Tycho Brahe

text: To perform the huge number of multiplications needed to produce much of his astronomical data, Tycho relied heavily on the then-new technique of "prosthaphaeresis", an algorithm for approximating products based on trigonometric identities that predated logarithms.


title: Tycho Brahe

text: Much of Tycho's observations and discoveries were done with the aid of various instruments, many of which he himself made. The process that went into creating and refining his devices was haphazard at first, but were critical in the advancement of his observations. He pioneered an early example while he was a student in Leipzig. While he was gazing at the stars he realized that he needed a better way to write down not just his observations but also the angles and descriptions as well. So, he pioneered the use of the observational notebook. In this notebook, he made his observations and asked himself questions to try and answer later on. Tycho also made sketches of what he saw as well from comets to the motions of planets.


title: Tycho Brahe

text: His astronomical instrument innovation continued after his schooling. When he gained access to his inheritance, he went straight to work creating brand new instruments to replace the ones he used as a student. Tycho created a quadrant that was thirty-nine centimeters in diameter and added a new type of sight to it called a "pinnacidia", or light cutters as it is translated. This brand-new sight meant that the old pinhole style sight was rendered obsolete. When the sights of the pinnacidia were aligned in the correct manner the object that it is lined up with it will look exactly the same from both ends. This instrument was kept still on a heavy duty base and adjusted via a brass plumb line and thumb screws, all of which helped give Tycho Brahe more accurate measurements of the heavens.


title: Tycho Brahe

text: There were times that the instruments Tycho made were for a specific purpose or an event that he was witness to. Such was the case in 1577 when he first started construction of what would be called Uraniborg. In that year a comet was spotted moving across the sky. During this period of time Tycho made many observations, and one of the instruments that he used to make his observations was called a brass azimuthal quadrant. At sixty-five centimeters in radius it was a large instrument built either in 1576 or 1577, just in time for Tycho to use it to observe the path and distance of the 1577 comet. This instrument helped him to accurately track the comet's path as it crossed the orbits of the solar system.


title: Tycho Brahe

text: A great many more instruments were constructed at Tycho Brahe's new manor on Hven called Uraniborg. It was a combination of a home, observatories and laboratory where he made some of his discoveries along with many of his instruments. Several of these instruments were very large, such as a steel azimuth quadrant equipped with a brass arc that was six feet (or 194 centimeters) in diameter. This and other instruments were placed in the two observatories attached to the manor.


title: Tycho Brahe

text: Although Tycho admired Copernicus and was the first to teach his theory in Denmark, he was unable to reconcile Copernican theory with the basic laws of Aristotelian physics, that he considered to be foundational. He was also critical of the observational data that Copernicus built his theory on, which he correctly considered to have a high margin of error. Instead, Tycho proposed a "geo-heliocentric" system in which the Sun and Moon orbited the Earth, while the other planets orbited the Sun. Tycho's system had many of the same observational and computational advantages that Copernicus' system had, and both systems also could accommodate the phases of Venus, although Galilei had yet to discover them. Tycho's system provided a safe position for astronomers who were dissatisfied with older models but were reluctant to accept the heliocentrism and the Earth's motion. It gained a considerable following after 1616 when Rome declared that the heliocentric model was contrary to both philosophy and Scripture, and could be discussed only as a computational convenience that had no connection to fact. Tycho's system also offered a major innovation: while both the purely geocentric model and the heliocentric model as set forth by Copernicus relied on the idea of transparent rotating crystalline spheres to carry the planets in their orbits, Tycho eliminated the spheres entirely. Kepler, as well as other Copernican astronomers, tried to persuade Tycho to adopt the heliocentric model of the Solar System, but he was not persuaded. According to Tycho, the idea of a rotating and revolving Earth would be "in violation not only of all physical truth but also of the authority of Holy Scripture, which ought to be paramount."


title: Tycho Brahe

text: With respect to physics, Tycho held that the Earth was just too sluggish and heavy to be continuously in motion. According to the accepted Aristotelian physics of the time, the heavens (whose motions and cycles were continuous and unending) were made of "Aether" or "Quintessence"; this substance, not found on Earth, was light, strong, unchanging, and its natural state was circular motion. By contrast, the Earth (where objects seem to have motion only when moved) and things on it were composed of substances that were heavy and whose natural state was rest. Accordingly, Tycho said the Earth was a "lazy" body that was not readily moved. Thus while Tycho acknowledged that the daily rising and setting of the Sun and stars could be explained by the Earth's rotation, as Copernicus had said, still such a fast motion could not belong to the earth, a body very heavy and dense and opaque, but rather belongs to the sky itself whose form and subtle and constant matter are better suited to a perpetual motion, however fast.


title: Tycho Brahe

text: With respect to the stars, Tycho also believed that, if the Earth orbited the Sun annually, there should be an observable stellar parallax over any period of six months, during which the angular orientation of a given star would change thanks to Earth's changing position. (This parallax does exist, but is so small it was not detected until 1838, when Friedrich Bessel discovered a parallax of 0.314 arcseconds of the star 61 Cygni.) The Copernican explanation for this lack of parallax was that the stars were such a great distance from Earth that Earth's orbit was almost insignificant by comparison. However, Tycho noted that this explanation introduced another problem: Stars as seen by the naked eye appear small, but of some size, with more prominent stars such as Vega appearing larger than lesser stars such as Polaris, which in turn appear larger than many others. Tycho had determined that a typical star measured approximately a minute of arc in size, with more prominent ones being two or three times as large. In writing to Rothmann, Tycho used basic geometry to show that, assuming a small parallax that just escaped detection, the distance to the stars in the Copernican system would have to be 700 times greater than the distance from the Sun to Saturn. Moreover, the only way the stars could be so distant and still appear the sizes they do in the sky would be if even average stars were gigantic—at least as big as the orbit of the Earth, and of course vastly larger than the Sun. And, Tycho said, the more prominent stars would have to be even larger still. And what if the parallax was even smaller than anyone thought, so the stars were yet more distant? Then they would all have to be even larger still. Tycho saidDeduce these things geometrically if you like, and you will see how many absurdities (not to mention others) accompany this assumption [of the motion of the earth] by inference. Copernicans offered a religious response to Tycho's geometry: titanic, distant stars might seem unreasonable, but they were not, for the Creator could make his creations that large if He wanted. In fact, Rothmann responded to this argument of Tycho's by saying:


title: Tycho Brahe

text: [W]hat is so absurd about [an average star] having size equal to the whole [orbit of the Earth]? What of this is contrary to divine will, or is impossible by divine Nature, or is inadmissible by infinite Nature? These things must be entirely demonstrated by you, if you will wish to infer from here anything of the absurd. These things that vulgar sorts see as absurd at first glance are not easily charged with absurdity, for in fact divine Sapience and Majesty is far greater than they understand. Grant the vastness of the Universe and the sizes of the stars to be as great as you like—these will still bear no proportion to the infinite Creator. It reckons that the greater the king, so much greater and larger the palace befitting his majesty. So how great a palace do you reckon is fitting to GOD?


title: Tycho Brahe

text: Religion played a role in Tycho's geocentrism also—he cited the authority of scripture in portraying the Earth as being at rest. He rarely used Biblical arguments alone (to him they were a secondary objection to the idea of Earth's motion) and over time he came to focus on scientific arguments, but he did take Biblical arguments seriously.


title: Tycho Brahe

text: Tycho's 1587 geo-heliocentric model differed from those of other geo-heliocentric astronomers, such as Wittich, Reimarus Ursus, Helisaeus Roeslin and David Origanus, in that the orbits of Mars and the Sun intersected. This was because Tycho had come to believe the distance of Mars from the Earth at opposition (that is, when Mars is on the opposite side of the sky from the Sun) was less than that of the Sun from the Earth. Tycho believed this because he came to believe Mars had a greater daily parallax than the Sun. But, in 1584, in a letter to a fellow astronomer, Brucaeus, he had claimed that Mars had been further than the Sun at the opposition of 1582, because he had observed that Mars had little or no daily parallax. He said he had therefore rejected Copernicus's model because it predicted Mars would be at only two-thirds the distance of the Sun. But, he apparently later changed his mind to the opinion that Mars at opposition was indeed nearer the Earth than the Sun was, but apparently without any valid observational evidence in any discernible Martian parallax. Such intersecting Martian and solar orbits meant that there could be no solid rotating celestial spheres, because they could not possibly interpenetrate. Arguably, this conclusion was independently supported by the conclusion that the comet of 1577 was superlunary, because it showed less daily parallax than the Moon and thus must pass through any celestial spheres in its transit.


title: Tycho Brahe

text: Tycho's distinctive contributions to lunar theory include his discovery of the variation of the Moon's longitude. This represents the largest inequality of longitude after the equation of the center and the evection. He also discovered librations in the inclination of the plane of the lunar orbit, relative to the ecliptic (which is not a constant of about 5° as had been believed before him, but fluctuates through a range of over a quarter of a degree), and accompanying oscillations in the longitude of the lunar node. These represent perturbations in the Moon's ecliptic latitude. Tycho's lunar theory doubled the number of distinct lunar inequalities, relative to those anciently known, and reduced the discrepancies of lunar theory to about a fifth of their previous amounts. It was published posthumously by Kepler in 1602, and Kepler's own derivative form appears in Kepler's "Rudolphine Tables" of 1627.


title: Tycho Brahe

text: Kepler used Tycho's records of the motion of Mars to deduce laws of planetary motion, enabling calculation of astronomical tables with unprecedented accuracy (the "Rudolphine Tables") and providing powerful support for a heliocentric model of the Solar System.


title: Tycho Brahe

text: Galileo's 1610 telescopic discovery that Venus shows a full set of phases refuted the pure geocentric Ptolemaic model. After that it seems 17th-century astronomy mostly converted to geo-heliocentric planetary models that could explain these phases just as well as the heliocentric model could, but without the latter's disadvantage of the failure to detect any annual stellar parallax that Tycho and others regarded as refuting it. The three main geo-heliocentric models were the Tychonic, the Capellan with just Mercury and Venus orbiting the Sun such as favoured by Francis Bacon, for example, and the extended Capellan model of Riccioli with Mars also orbiting the Sun whilst Saturn and Jupiter orbit the fixed Earth. But the Tychonic model was probably the most popular, albeit probably in what was known as 'the semi-Tychonic' version with a daily rotating Earth. This model was advocated by Tycho's ex-assistant and disciple Longomontanus in his 1622 "Astronomia Danica" that was the intended completion of Tycho's planetary model with his observational data, and which was regarded as the canonical statement of the complete Tychonic planetary system. Longomontanus' work was published in several editions and used by many subsequent astronomers, and through him the Tychonic system was adopted by astronomers as far away as China.


title: Tycho Brahe

text: The ardent anti-heliocentric French astronomer Jean-Baptiste Morin devised a Tychonic planetary model with elliptical orbits published in 1650 in a simplified, Tychonic version of the "Rudolphine Tables". Another geocentric French astronomer, Jacques du Chevreul, rejected Tycho's observations including his description of the heavens and the theory that Mars was below the Sun. Some acceptance of the Tychonic system persisted through the 17th century and in places until the early 18th century; it was supported (after a 1633 decree about the Copernican controversy) by "a flood of pro-Tycho literature" of Jesuit origin. Among pro-Tycho Jesuits, Ignace Pardies declared in 1691 that it was still the commonly accepted system, and Francesco Blanchinus reiterated that as late as 1728. Persistence of the Tychonic system, especially in Catholic countries, has been attributed to its satisfaction of a need (relative to Catholic doctrine) for "a safe synthesis of ancient and modern". After 1670, even many Jesuit writers only thinly disguised their Copernicanism. But in Germany, the Netherlands, and England, the Tychonic system "vanished from the literature much earlier".


title: Tycho Brahe

text: James Bradley's discovery of stellar aberration, published in 1729, eventually gave direct evidence excluding the possibility of all forms of geocentrism including Tycho's. Stellar aberration could only be satisfactorily explained on the basis that the Earth is in annual orbit around the Sun, with an orbital velocity that combines with the finite speed of the light coming from an observed star or planet, to affect the apparent direction of the body observed.


title: Tycho Brahe

text: Tycho also worked in medicine and alchemy. He was strongly influenced by Paracelsus, who considered the human body to be directly influenced by celestial bodies. The paracelsian view of man as a microcosm, and astrology as the science tying together the celestial and bodily universes was also shared by Philip Melanchthon, and was precisely one of the points of contention between Melanchthon and Luther, and hence between the philippists and the gnesio-Lutherans. For Tycho there was a close connection between empiricism and natural science on one hand and religion and astrology on the other. Using his large herbal garden at Uraniborg, Tycho produced several recipes for herbal medicines, using them to treat illnesses such as fever and plague. In his own time, Tycho was also famous for his contributions to medicine; his herbal medicines were in use as late as the 1900s. The expression Tycho Brahe days, in Scandinavian folklore, refers to a number of "unlucky days" that were featured in many almanacs beginning in the 1700s, but which have no direct connection to Tycho or his work. Whether because he realized that astrology was not an empirical science or because he feared religious repercussions Tycho seems to have had a somewhat ambiguous relation to his own astrological work. For example, two of his more astrological treatises, one on weather predictions and an almanac, were published in the names of his assistants, in spite of the fact that he worked on them personally. Some scholars have argued that he lost faith in horoscope astrology over the course of his career, and others that he simply changed his public communication on the topic as he realized that connections with astrology could influence the reception of his empirical astronomical work.


title: Tycho Brahe

text: The first biography of Tycho, which was also the first full-length biography of any scientist, was written by Gassendi in 1654. In 1779, Tycho de Hoffmann wrote of Tycho's life in his history of the Brahe family. In 1913, Dreyer published Tycho's collected works, facilitating further research. Early modern scholarship on Tycho tended to see the shortcomings of his astronomical model, painting him as a mysticist recalcitrant in accepting the Copernican revolution, and valuing mostly his observations that allowed Kepler to formulate his laws of planetary movement. Especially in Danish scholarship, Tycho was depicted as a mediocre scholar and a traitor to the nation—perhaps because of the important role in Danish historiography of Christian IV as a warrior king. In the second half of the 20th century, scholars began reevaluating his significance, and studies by Kristian Peder Moesgaard, Owen Gingerich, Robert Westman, Victor E. Thoren, and John R. Christianson focused on his contributions to science, and demonstrated that while he admired Copernicus he was simply unable to reconcile his basic theory of physics with the Copernican view. Christianson's work showed the influence of Tycho's Uraniborg as a training center for scientists who after studying with Tycho went on to make contributions in various scientific fields.


title: Tycho Brahe

text: Although Tycho's planetary model was soon discredited, his astronomical observations were an essential contribution to the scientific revolution. The traditional view of Tycho is that he was primarily an empiricist who set new standards for precise and objective measurements. This appraisal originated in Gassendi's 1654 biography, "Tychonis Brahe, equitis Dani, astronomorum coryphaei, vita". It was furthered by Dreyer's biography in 1890, which was long the most influential work on Tycho. According to historian of science Helge Kragh, this assessment grew out of Gassendi's opposition to Aristotelianism and Cartesianism, and fails to account for the diversity of Tycho's activities.


title: Tycho Brahe

text: The Tycho Brahe Prize, inaugurated in 2008, is awarded annually by the European Astronomical Society in recognition of the pioneering development or exploitation of European astronomical instrumentation, or major discoveries based largely on such instruments.


title: Tycho Brahe

text: Tycho's discovery of the new star was the inspiration for Edgar Allan Poe's poem "Al Aaraaf". In 1998, "Sky & Telescope" magazine published an article by Donald Olson, Marilynn S. Olson and Russell L. Doescher arguing, in part, that Tycho's supernova was also the same "star that's westward from the pole" in Shakespeare's "Hamlet".


title: Tycho Brahe

text: Tycho is directly referenced in Sarah Williams' poem The Old Astronomer: "Reach me down my Tycho Brahé,—I would know him when we meet". Though, the poem's oft quoted line comes later: "Though my soul may set in darkness, it will rise in perfect light; / I have loved the stars too truly to be fearful of the night." Alfred Noyes also wrote a long biographical poem in honor of Brahe.


title: Tycho Brahe

text: The lunar crater Tycho is named in his honour, as is the crater Tycho Brahe on Mars and the minor planet 1677 Tycho Brahe in the asteroid belt. The bright supernova, SN 1572, is also known as Tycho's Nova and the Tycho Brahe Planetarium in Copenhagen is also named after him, as is the palm genus "Brahea".


title: Laura Donnelly

text: Donnelly grew up in Belfast, Northern Ireland, and graduated from the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama in 2004.


title: Laura Donnelly

text: She made her on-screen debut in 2005 in the Channel 4 drama "Sugar Rush". She is also known for appearing in "Outlander", "Britannia", "The Fall", for her lead role as Amalia True in HBO's "The Nevers" (2021), and as a main character in the Irish film "Insatiable" (2008).


title: Laura Donnelly

text: In April 2018 she won the Best Actress award at the Olivier Awards for her performance in "The Ferryman". In 2019 she was nominated for a Tony Award for Best Actress for the same role on Broadway.


title: Auston Matthews

text: Auston Taylour Matthews (born September 17, 1997) is an American professional ice hockey center and alternate captain for the Toronto Maple Leafs of the National Hockey League (NHL). Born in San Ramon, California, Matthews and his family moved to Scottsdale, Arizona, when he was an infant. After playing baseball and hockey during his childhood, he developed a particular interest in hockey after watching the local Phoenix Coyotes play. A product of the USA Hockey National Team Development Program in the United States Hockey League (USHL), Matthews played for the ZSC Lions of the Swiss National League prior to being drafted into the NHL in 2016, winning a Swiss Cup title that same year. Matthews was widely considered the top prospect of the draft, and was selected first overall by the Toronto Maple Leafs.


title: Auston Matthews

text: Matthews became the first player in modern NHL history to score four goals in his NHL debut. He scored 40 goals in his first season in 2016–17, setting the Maple Leafs rookie record and becoming just the second rookie since the 2004–05 lockout to reach the milestone (along with Alexander Ovechkin); he is just the fourth teenager in league history to accomplish the feat. His performance won him the Calder Memorial Trophy as the NHL's top rookie for the season. In 2020–21, Matthews won the Maurice "Rocket" Richard Trophy as the league's leading goal scorer with 41 goals in 52 games. In 2021–22, Matthews set records for most goals scored in a single season by both an American-born player and a Maple Leaf, reached the 60-goal mark for the first time, and won the Rocket Richard Trophy for the second consecutive season. He was also awarded the Ted Lindsay Award most outstanding player, as voted by his peers, and the Hart Trophy for Most Valuable Player.


title: Auston Matthews

text: Internationally, Matthews has represented the United States on several occasions, including a U17 World Hockey Challenge, two U18 World Championships, two U20 World Championships, and one IIHF World Championship appearance.


title: Auston Matthews

text: Auston Taylour Matthews was born in San Ramon, California to Brian, from California, and Ema, originally from Hermosillo, Mexico. He and his family moved to Scottsdale, Arizona when he was two months old, and he began attending Phoenix Coyotes games at age two. His favorite players to watch were Shane Doan and Daniel Brière. Initially, Matthews did not have much interest in the sport but was captivated by the Zamboni machine that cleaned the ice during intermissions. He first expressed a desire to play hockey shortly after his fifth birthday, and began playing with the Arizona Bobcats minor hockey program. On January 16, 2006, Matthews (who was eight years old at the time) attended a game between the Coyotes and Washington Capitals where he witnessed Alexander Ovechkin's famous goal that would come to be known simply as "The Goal", where Ovechkin scored a goal while lying on his back after having been tripped by the Coyotes' defense. In a 2016 interview, Matthews referred to the goal as "probably one of the best goals ever".


title: Auston Matthews

text: As a child, Matthews played both hockey and baseball. According to his father, baseball was his best sport; Auston's hand-eye coordination made him an excellent hitter. However, Matthews opted to pursue a career in hockey because he disliked the slow pace of baseball. When he first started playing hockey, his parents knew almost nothing of the sport. His main coach during his youth was Boris Dorozhenko, who had previously founded the national ice hockey program of Mexico. During Dorozhenko's first few years in the U.S., he lived with Matthews and his parents. Matthews played in the 2010 Quebec International Pee-Wee Hockey Tournament with the Kharkov minor ice hockey team.


title: Auston Matthews

text: Matthews was drafted 57th overall by the Western Hockey League's (WHL) Everett Silvertips in the 2012 WHL Bantam Draft but opted to play for the USA Hockey National Team Development Program, which participates in the United States Hockey League (USHL). That season, he played for the U.S. National U17 Team (USDP), where he gained national attention from NHL scouts, even being featured on the NHL website, with emphasis put on his unique southwestern background. In his second season with the U.S. National U18 Team (USDP), Matthews finished first in league scoring with 116 points (55 goals and 61 assists), breaking the National Team Development Program record of 102 points set by the Chicago Blackhawks' Patrick Kane in 2005–06 and besting Vegas Golden Knights' Jack Eichel by 29 points. On May 21, 2015, Matthews won the USA Hockey Bob Johnson Award for excellence in international competition.


title: Auston Matthews

text: Matthews trained with the USA Hockey National Team Development Program team during the 2013–14 and 2014–15 seasons. He was named the most valuable player at the 2015 World U18 Championships in addition to being named to the IIHF All-Star Team, and named the IIHF Best Forward after finishing as the tournament's top scorer.


title: Auston Matthews

text: Rather than continue in American amateur hockey or play major junior hockey in the Canadian Hockey League, Matthews chose to play professionally for his last season before he was eligible for the 2016 NHL Entry Draft, having missed the 2015 NHL Entry Draft cutoff date of birth by two days. On August 7, 2015, he signed a one-year contract to play in the Swiss National League A (NLA) for ZSC Lions. Matthews was approached by Lions head coach Marc Crawford, who was awed by his skating and puck possession while scouting the 2015 World U18 Championships. Crawford quickly called Matthews' agent, Pat Brisson, to discuss the proposal of signing the player to the team. Matthews and his family quickly agreed once the tournament had ended and spent the next few months applying for various paperwork. After missing the first four games of the 2015–16 regular season, he made his NLA debut on September 18, 2015, and scored his first goal in the game against goaltender Benjamin Conz of HC Fribourg-Gottéron on home ice at the Hallenstadion. He would spend most of the season on a line with Robert Nilsson, finding chemistry with the veteran forward.


title: Auston Matthews

text: On February 3, 2016, Matthews recorded two assists in a 4–1 win over the Lausanne HC in the 2015–16 Swiss Cup final. He finished the 2015–16 regular season as the second top-scorer on the Lions and tenth in the NLA. His 1.28 points-per-game average was second in the league behind only longtime NHL player Pierre-Marc Bouchard. He also won the NLA Rising Star Award and was second to Bouchard in voting for most valuable player. Matthews' stint in the NLA ended earlier than expected when the top-seeded Lions were swept in the first round of the 2016 playoffs by SC Bern.


title: Auston Matthews

text: In late June, Matthews was selected first overall in the 2016 NHL Entry Draft by the Toronto Maple Leafs, becoming the first American to be picked with the top selection since Patrick Kane in 2007. Matthews had been widely expected to go first overall for several months leading up to the event, consistently topping prospect charts and major scouting report. Media speculation suggested that Matthews and the team had engaged in a minor contract dispute over the issue of performance bonuses; Matthews was asking the team for a contract similar to that of Connor McDavid or Jack Eichel, which were both valued at $3.775 million annually, inclusive of bonuses. Although Maple Leafs general manager Lou Lamoriello had been very open over his disapproval of including bonuses in player contracts in the past, he was clear in stating that performance bonuses were never an issue while negotiating Matthews' contract. Lamoriello had previously been involved in a contract dispute while with the New Jersey Devils with fourth overall pick Adam Larsson over the issue of bonuses; there were no bonus clauses included in Larsson's entry-level contract.


title: Auston Matthews

text: On July 21, the two parties finalized a deal, with Matthews signing a three-year, entry-level contract which included the maximum allocation of performance bonuses. Lamoriello said that the contract was negotiated within ten minutes of sitting down with Matthews' agent, Pat Brisson, and that the deal was done "the Toronto way". Brisson would later confirm that the two parties did not have any issues negotiating the contract. The contract was identical in value to those McDavid and Eichel had signed one year earlier. Two weeks later, Matthews was given the NLA Youngster of the Year award, reserved for the league's top rookie. It was his fifth award from his stint in Switzerland.


title: Auston Matthews

text: Matthews made his NHL debut in the Maple Leafs' first game of the season on October 12, 2016, against the Ottawa Senators. He scored four goals in the game, all against Craig Anderson. This was the first time in modern NHL history a player scored four goals in his debut; previously, Joe Malone and Harry Hyland scored five goals each in their NHL debuts on December 19, 1917 (the first game in the history of the NHL). Four others had scored three goals since then.


title: Auston Matthews

text: Matthews' jersey went on sale following his debut, and it quickly became the highest-selling jersey in the NHL. Two months later, in the NHL Centennial Classic against the Detroit Red Wings, Matthews scored the game-winning goal in overtime, securing a 5–4 victory for the Maple Leafs. He was named NHL's Rookie of the Month for December after leading all rookies with 8 goals and 12 points in 12 games.


title: Auston Matthews

text: On January 10, 2017, Matthews was the only Leafs player selected to participate in the 2017 NHL All-Star Game. On March 28, 2017, Matthews scored his 35th goal of the season, surpassing Wendel Clark's previous record for most goals in a season (34) by a Leafs' rookie. April 3 saw Matthews score his 39th goal and 67th point, breaking the franchise record for most points in a season, as well as the record for most goals by an American-born rookie. A few days later, he scored his 40th goal of the season, becoming the second rookie since the 2004–05 lockout to reach the milestone and the fourth teenager in NHL history to do so. He finished the year with 40 goals, second-most in the NHL.


title: Auston Matthews

text: Matthews' play assisted the Maple Leafs in making the Stanley Cup playoffs for the first time in a full season since 2004, where the team played the top-seeded Washington Capitals in the first round. After going pointless in the first two games of the series, Matthews scored in each of the last four games as the team was eliminated in six games by the Capitals. His four consecutive games with a goal marked the first time since 1986 where a teenager scored in four straight playoff games, when Wendel Clark did it, also with Toronto. Matthews was also the only NHL rookie since the Winnipeg Jets' Teemu Selänne in 1992–93 to record at least one shot on goal in all 82 regular season games. In recognition for his accomplishments throughout the year, Matthews was awarded the Calder Memorial Trophy as the NHL's top rookie, with 164 of 167 first-place votes. He was the first Maple Leafs' rookie to receive the trophy in 50 years since Brit Selby in 1966.


title: Auston Matthews

text: Matthews set the unofficial NHL record for most consecutive games with a shot on goal to start a career. His 103-game streak ended in a 4–1 victory over the Calgary Flames on November 28, 2017. On December 9, after colliding with teammate Morgan Rielly during a game against the Pittsburgh Penguins, Matthews missed six games to recover from a concussion. On January 10, 2018, Matthews was selected as the sole Maple Leaf to participate in the 2018 NHL All-Star Game. On February 24, it was revealed that Matthews had suffered a shoulder injury and would be out for at least ten days. However, he did not return to the Toronto lineup until March 22, 2018, where he scored a goal in the second period to help the Leafs win 5–2 over the Nashville Predators. Despite missing 20 games, Matthews finished the regular season with 34 goals and averaged over one point per game. The Maple Leafs qualified for the Stanley Cup playoffs for the second consecutive season but were eliminated in the first round by the Boston Bruins. He was not particularly productive in his second playoff run, finishing with one goal and one assist in seven games.


title: Auston Matthews

text: The Maple Leafs opened their 2018–19 season on October 3, 2018, against the Montreal Canadiens. In that game, Matthews scored the team's first goal along with the overtime-winning goal in a 3–2 win. After recording five goals and three assists through the first three games of the season, Matthews was named the NHL's First Star of the Week on October 9. His points streak continued, recording four goals over the next two games for a total of 12 points in 5 games. In doing so, he became the youngest player in NHL history to record five multi-point games to open the season, breaking a record set by Wayne Gretzky in 1983. He continued his goal streak the next game against the defending Stanley Cup champions, the Washington Capitals. In scoring his tenth goal of the season, Matthews became only the fifth player since the 1943–44 season to record ten goals in his team's first six games of the season. On October 27, after being hit by Winnipeg Jets defenseman Jacob Trouba in a 3–2 Maple Leafs win, Matthews sustained a left shoulder injury and was set to be sidelined for at least four weeks. After missing 14 games, Matthews returned to the lineup on November 28 against the San Jose Sharks; he recorded two goals and one assist in Toronto's 5–3 win. On December 27, Matthews was voted as captain of the Atlantic Division in the 2019 National Hockey League All-Star Game. While it was his first year as a captain, it was Matthews' third All-Star selection.


title: Auston Matthews

text: On February 5, 2019, Matthews signed a new five-year, $58.17 million contract with Toronto worth an average annual value of $11.634 million, effective from the 2019–20 season. He later scored his 100th and 101st NHL goal on February 14, becoming the third-fastest Maple Leaf who began their career in Toronto to reach the milestone and the first since 1933. Matthews reached the 30-goal mark for the third consecutive season on February 25, 2019, after scoring in a 5–3 win over the Buffalo Sabres. In doing so, he became the first Maple Leaf to score at least 30 goals in each of his first three seasons.


title: Auston Matthews

text: Matthews finished the 2018–19 regular season with a career-high 73 points in 68 games to finish third in team scoring behind Mitch Marner (94) and John Tavares (88), both of whom also finished with career-highs in points. In the 2019 playoffs, Matthews set a playoff career-high with five goals and six points in seven games. However, the Maple Leafs were eliminated by the Boston Bruins in seven games for the second-straight season.


title: Auston Matthews

text: At the start of the 2019–20 season, Matthews was named an alternate captain for the Maple Leafs. He scored two goals in the season opener against the Ottawa Senators on October 3, becoming the fourth player in NHL history to score in each of their first four-season openers. As of that game, Matthews ranked third in the NHL with 116 goals in 215 games since making his debut in 2016. On October 7, Matthews was named the third NHL Star of the Week. He was then named to his fourth straight All-Star appearance, but due to an "ongoing wrist condition", he would not participate in the festivities; he was replaced by Senators winger Brady Tkachuk. Matthews would finish the abbreviated regular season with career-highs in goals (47) and points (80). His 47 goals placed him second in the league, one goal behind Alexander Ovechkin and David Pastrňák for the league lead.


title: Auston Matthews

text: The season ended in disappointment for Matthews and the Leafs, losing in the best-of-five qualifying round against the Columbus Blue Jackets. Matthews scored twice in the five-game series, including the overtime winner to cap off an improbable three-goal rally in the last five minutes of Game 4.


title: Auston Matthews

text: Due to the COVID-19 pandemic and resultant limitations on cross-border travel, the 2020–21 NHL season occurred under a vastly different arrangement than previously, with the Leafs grouped in an all-Canadian North Division and playing exclusively within that division for the regular season. The shortened 2020–21 season was Matthews' most successful to date, recording 41 goals in 56 games (a 60-goal pace over a full season), and 66 total points. He became the first Maple Leaf to win the Maurice "Rocket" Richard Trophy, awarded to the player who scored the most goals in the regular season. He was also the first American winner, and the second to lead the NHL in goals. He was subsequently named as a finalist for the Hart Memorial Trophy, awarded by the Professional Hockey Writers' Association to the league's most valuable player; he was the first Leaf finalist since Doug Gilmour in 1993. Matthews ultimately finished second in Hart voting behind Connor McDavid.


title: Auston Matthews

text: The Maple Leafs finished first in the North Division, and faced the Montreal Canadiens in the first round of the 2021 Stanley Cup playoffs, where they were considered the heavy favourites to win, which would have been the team's first playoff series win since 2004. The Leafs lost the first game of the series, but won the next three to take a seeming stranglehold. However, they went on to lose the next three games, and thus the series 4–3. In a personal disappointment for Matthews, he only recorded one goal and four assists in the Maple Leafs' fifth-straight early exit.


title: Auston Matthews

text: In August, Matthews underwent wrist surgery after experiencing discomfort in training, and it was announced he would miss six weeks. He returned to practice the last week of September.


title: Auston Matthews

text: Due to injury recovery, Matthews missed the first three games of the 2021–22 season. Upon his return, he was slow to start, notching only one goal in his first six games, the worst season-opening pace of his career. However, after this he began scoring at a prodigious pace, eventually overtaking Leon Draisaitl to lead the NHL in goal-scoring by the midpoint of the season. New linemate Michael Bunting remarked "he's the best player in the league. That's just my opinion. Some people might say it’s biased. But in my opinion, he’s the best player by far." Matthews' achievements began to raise discussions of him as a possible frontrunner for the Hart Memorial Trophy. On March 14, 2022, Matthews was suspended for two games after crosschecking Buffalo Sabres defenseman Rasmus Dahlin at the 2022 Heritage Classic the day before.


title: Auston Matthews

text: On March 31, 2022, Matthews scored an empty net goal in a 7–3 Maple Leafs victory over the Winnipeg Jets, reaching 50 goals in a season for the first time in his career. He was only the fourth Maple Leafs player to achieve this, and the first to do so since Dave Andreychuk in the 1993–94 season. He also set a franchise record for the fewest games necessary to score 50, having done so in 62 games. Days later, Matthews scored his seventh career hat-trick in an April 4 game against the Tampa Bay Lightning and tied the franchise record for goals in a season (54), set by Rick Vaive in 1981–82. This also marked the highest goal total for an NHL player in a single season since Lightning captain Steven Stamkos' 60-goal 2011–12 campaign. His offensive spree continued, and in a game against the Dallas Stars on April 7, he first surpassed Vaive's record with his 55th goal of the season in the second period, and then set a new NHL record for most goals in a single season by a United States-born player when he scored his 56th and game-winning goal in overtime, beating the previous record jointly held by Jimmy Carson and Kevin Stevens. In his next game on April 9 against the Montreal Canadiens he scored his 57th and 58th goals of the season, passing Frank Mahovlich for the most even-strength goals in a season by a Maple Leaf, and becoming the first player to score 51 goals in a span of 50 games (at any point during a season) since Mario Lemieux achieved the feat in the 1995–96 season. He reached 100 points in a single season for the first time in his career on April 14. In a game against the Detroit Red Wings on April 26, Matthews scored his 59th and 60th goals of the season, becoming the first player in Maple Leafs history to score 60 goals in a season, and only the third in the post-lockout NHL to score 60 or more, alongside Stamkos and Alexander Ovechkin, who set the modern record with 65. This secured his second straight Rocket Richard trophy, joining Ovechkin and Pavel Bure as the only players to win it consecutively. Matthews was later named a finalist for the Hart Memorial Trophy and Ted Lindsay Award, both for the second consecutive year; Connor McDavid was a finalist alongside Matthews for both awards, as were Igor Shesterkin and Roman Josi for the Hart and Ted Lindsay, respectively. He finished the regular season having played 73 games and scored 60 goals, 46 assists and 106 points, all of which were career highs.


title: Auston Matthews

text: Advancing into the Stanley Cup playoffs, Matthews and the Maple Leafs drew the Tampa Bay Lightning, two-time defending champions, in the first round. Matthews scored twice in the Leafs' 5-0 win in game one, and also scored the game-winning goal as the Leafs came from behind to win game five, 4-3. He led all skaters in the series with 4 goals, 9 points, and 32 hits in the seven-game series. Despite Matthews' career-best playoff output, the Leafs failed to make it past the first round yet again, marking the franchise's eighth consecutive playoff series loss.


title: Auston Matthews

text: On June 21, 2022, Matthews was named the winner of both the Hart Trophy and Ted Lindsay Award, receiving 119 Hart first-place votes to runner-up McDavid's 29. He was the first Leafs player to win the Lindsay, and the third to win the Hart - the first to do so in 67 years. He also finished in the top 10 in voting for the Lady Byng Trophy for sportsmanlike conduct, and the Selke Trophy for his defensive play.


title: Auston Matthews

text: Matthews helped lead the United States men's national under-18 ice hockey team to gold at the 2014 IIHF World U18 Championship. He did so again in the 2015 Championship, leading the tournament in scoring and being named the Most Valuable Player (MVP), as well as earning the top forward slot on the Media All-Star Team. He was also named to the roster for the 2015 Deutschland Cup but was forced to pull out of the tournament due to a back injury.


title: Auston Matthews

text: At the 2016 IIHF World Junior Championships held in Helsinki, Matthews and Matthew Tkachuk each recorded 11 points to lead the United States men's national junior ice hockey team in scoring. After losing in the semifinals, the United States defeated Sweden to win the bronze medal. His seven goals in the tournament were one short of Jeremy Roenick's American record of eight, which was set in 1989. In recognition of his play, Matthews was named to the tournament All-Star Team. Later that year, Matthews played with the United States national men's senior team at the 2016 IIHF World Championship, during which he led the Americans in point scoring.


title: Auston Matthews

text: Later in 2016, Matthews was announced as a member of Team North America for the 2016 World Cup of Hockey. He began the pre-tournament games playing left wing on the third line, playing alongside Ryan Nugent-Hopkins and Nathan MacKinnon. After impressing, he began the tournament on the top line with Jack Eichel and Connor McDavid. The three found chemistry but were unable to help North America to a medal finish. Matthews finished the tournament with three points in three games played. Following the Toronto Maple Leafs' first-round elimination in the 2017 playoffs, he was advised by the team to forego participating in the 2017 IIHF World Championship and to instead rest.


title: Auston Matthews

text: Matthews comes from a family of athletes, with his father having played college baseball and with an uncle, Wes Matthews, who briefly played in the National Football League for the Miami Dolphins. His father is the chief technology officer of a manufacturing company based in New Jersey. He has two sisters: Alexandria, who is three years older, and Breyana, who is five years younger. Due to his mother's Mexican ancestry, Matthews can speak some Spanish.


title: Auston Matthews

text: Off the ice, Matthews was enrolled in several online courses with the University of Nebraska Omaha. In late August 2016, he moved to Toronto and began working out with teammates Mitch Marner and Morgan Rielly. Matthews' favorite athlete growing up was Kobe Bryant, while his favorite sports movie is "The Mighty Ducks". He is a fan of players Jonathan Toews and Anže Kopitar due to their all around offensive and defensive game, has had his playing style compared to them. In recognition of Matthews' four-goal NHL debut, rap artist SVDVM released a song titled "Auston Matthews". At the 2019 NHL Awards, Matthews was named the cover athlete for EA Sports' ice hockey video game "NHL 20".


title: Auston Matthews

text: In September 2019, Matthews was charged with disorderly conduct concerning an incident in his hometown of Scottsdale, Arizona, in May 2019, after he exposed his underwear to a female security guard. Matthews stated it was "an error in judgment" not to advise the Maple Leafs team management of the incident, and there was speculation that the incident contributed to the Leafs' decision to not give Matthews the captaincy of the Maple Leafs. The charges were dismissed on November 13, 2019, after a settlement was reached between Matthews and the complainant.


title: Auston Matthews

text: On June 19, 2020, the "Toronto Sun" reported that Matthews had tested positive for COVID-19 while at home in Scottsdale, Arizona before the start of training camp. Due to privacy concerns, the Toronto Maple Leafs did not comment on Matthews' condition regarding COVID-19, however, on July 13, 2020, the first day of training camp, Matthews confirmed with reporters that he did contract the virus and that he was "mostly asymptomatic".


title: Homo floresiensis

text: Homo floresiensis also known as "Flores Man"; nicknamed "Hobbit") is an extinct species of small archaic human that inhabited the island of Flores, Indonesia, until the arrival of modern humans about 50,000 years ago.


title: Homo floresiensis

text: The remains of an individual who would have stood about in height were discovered in 2003 at Liang Bua on the island of Flores in Indonesia. Partial skeletons of at least nine individuals have been recovered, including one complete skull, referred to as "LB1". These remains have been the subject of intense research to determine whether they were diseased modern humans or a separate species; a 2017 study concludes by phylogenetic analysis that "H. floresiensis" is an early species of "Homo", a sister species of "Homo habilis".


title: Homo floresiensis

text: This hominin was at first considered remarkable for its survival until relatively recent times, initially thought to be only 12,000 years ago. However, more extensive stratigraphic and chronological work has pushed the dating of the most recent evidence of its existence back to 50,000 years ago. The "Homo floresiensis" skeletal material is now dated from 60,000 to 100,000 years ago; stone tools recovered alongside the skeletal remains were from archaeological horizons ranging from 50,000 to 190,000 years ago.


title: Homo floresiensis

text: The first specimens were discovered on the Indonesian island of Flores on 2 September 2003 by a joint Australian-Indonesian team of archaeologists looking for evidence of the original human migration of modern humans from Asia to Australia. They instead recovered a nearly complete, small-statured skeleton, LB1, in the Liang Bua cave, and subsequent excavations in 2003 and 2004 recovered seven additional skeletons, initially dated from 38,000 to 13,000 years ago.


title: Homo floresiensis

text: In 2004, a separate species "Homo floresiensis" was named and described by Peter Brown et al., with LB1 as the holotype. A tooth, LB2, was referred to the species. LB1 is a fairly complete skeleton, including a nearly complete skull, which belonged to a 30-year-old female, and has been nicknamed "Little Lady of Flores" or "Flo". An arm bone provisionally assigned to "H. floresiensis", specimen LB3, is about 74,000 years old. The specimens are not fossilized and have been described as having "the consistency of wet blotting paper". Once exposed, the bones had to be left to dry before they could be dug up.


title: Homo floresiensis

text: In 2009, additional finds were reported, increasing the minimum number of individuals represented by bones to fourteen. In 2015, teeth were referred to a fifteenth individual, LB15.


title: Homo floresiensis

text: Stone implements of a size considered appropriate to these small humans are also widely present in the cave. The implements are at horizons initially dated to 95,000 to 13,000 years ago. Modern humans reached the region by around 50,000 years ago, by which time "H. floresiensis" is thought to have gone extinct. Comparisons of the stone artifacts with those made by modern humans in East Timor indicate many technological similarities.


title: Homo floresiensis

text: The fossils are property of the Indonesian state. In early December 2004, Indonesian paleoanthropologist Teuku Jacob removed most of the remains from their repository, Jakarta's National Research Centre of Archaeology, without the permission of one of the institute's directors, Raden Panji Soejono, and kept them for three months. Professor Richard Roberts of the University of Wollongong in Australia and other anthropologists expressed the fear that important scientific evidence would be sequestered by a small group of scientists who neither allowed access by other scientists nor published their own research. Jacob returned the remains on 23 February 2005 with portions severely damaged and missing two leg bones.


title: Homo floresiensis

text: Press reports thus described the condition of the returned remains: "[including] long, deep cuts marking the lower edge of the Hobbit's jaw on both sides, said to be caused by a knife used to cut away the rubber mould ... the chin of a second Hobbit jaw was snapped off and glued back together. Whoever was responsible misaligned the pieces and put them at an incorrect angle ... The pelvis was smashed, destroying details that reveal body shape, gait and evolutionary history.", causing the discovery team leader Morwood to remark, "It's sickening; Jacob was greedy and acted totally irresponsibly."


title: Homo floresiensis

text: Jacob, however, denied any wrongdoing. He stated that the damages occurred during transport from Yogyakarta back to Jakarta despite the claimed physical evidence that the jawbone had been broken while making a mould of the bones.


title: Homo floresiensis

text: In 2005, Indonesian officials forbade access to the cave. Some news media, such as the BBC, expressed the opinion that the restriction was to protect Jacob, who was considered "Indonesia's king of palaeoanthropology", from being proven wrong. Scientists were allowed to return to the cave in 2007, shortly after Jacob's death.


title: Homo floresiensis

text: The discoverers proposed that a variety of features, both primitive and derived, identify these individuals as belonging to a new species, "Homo floresiensis". Based on previous date estimates, the discoverers also proposed that "H. floresiensis" lived contemporaneously with modern humans on Flores. Before publication, the discoverers were considering placing LB1 into her own genus, "Sundanthropus floresianus" (), but reviewers of the article recommended that, despite her size, she should be placed in the genus "Homo".


title: Homo floresiensis

text: Two orthopedic studies published in 2007 reported that the wrist bones were more similar to those of chimpanzees and "Australopithecus" than to modern humans. Another 2007 study of the bones and joints of the arm, shoulder, and lower limbs also concluded that "H. floresiensis" was more similar to early humans and other apes than modern humans. In 2008, South African palaeoanthropologist Lee Rogers Berger and colleagues described the earliest human remains from the Palau Archipelago, and noted several parallels to "H. floresiensis"; they suggested supposedly diagnostic traits of "H. floresiensis" were instead a result of insular dwarfism of an "H. erectus" population.


title: Homo floresiensis

text: A 2009 cladistic analysis concluded "H. floresiensis" branched off very early from the modern human line, either shortly before or shortly after the evolution of "H. habilis" 1.96–1.66million years ago. In 2009, American anthropologist William Jungers and colleagues found that the foot of "H. floresiensis" has several primitive characteristics, and that they could be the descendants of a species much earlier than "H. erectus". A 2015 Bayesian analysis found greatest similarity with "Australopithecus sediba", "Homo habilis" and the primitive "H. erectus georgicus", raising the possibility that the ancestors of "H. floresiensis" left Africa before the appearance of "H. erectus", and were possibly even the first hominins to do so. However, "H. floresiensis" has several dental similarities to "H. erectus", which could mean "H. erectus" was the ancestor species.


title: Homo floresiensis

text: Their ancestors may have reached the island by one million years ago. In 2016, fossil teeth and a partial jaw from hominins assumed to be ancestral to "H. floresiensis" were discovered at Mata Menge, about from Liang Bua. They date to about 700,000 years ago and are noted by Australian archaeologist Gerrit van den Bergh for being even smaller than the later fossils. Based on these, he suggested that "H. floresiensis" derived from a population of "H. erectus" and rapidly shrank. A phylogenetic analysis published in 2017 suggests that "H. floresiensis" was descended from the same (presumably australopithecine) ancestor as "H. habilis", making it a sister taxon to "H. habilis". "H. floresiensis" would thus represent a hitherto unknown and very early migration out of Africa. A similar conclusion was suggested in a 2018 study dating stone artefacts found at Shangchen, central China, to 2.1 million years ago.


title: Homo floresiensis

text: In 2006, two teams attempted to extract DNA from a tooth discovered in 2003, but both teams were unsuccessful. It has been suggested that this happened because the dentine was targeted; new research suggests that the cementum has higher concentrations of DNA. Moreover, the heat generated by the high speed of the drill bit may have denatured the DNA.


title: Homo floresiensis

text: The small brain size of "H. floresiensis" at 417 cc has prompted hypotheses that the specimens were simply "H. sapiens" with a birth defect, rather than the result of neurological reorganisation. This theory, however, has been contested, as detailed below.


title: Homo floresiensis

text: Prior to Jacob's removal of the fossils, American neuroanthropologist Dean Falk and her colleagues performed a CT scan of the LB1 skull and a virtual endocast, and concluded that the brainpan was neither that of a pygmy nor an individual with a malformed skull and brain. In response, American neurologist Jochen Weber and colleagues compared the computer model skull with microcephalic human skulls, and found that the skull size of LB1 falls in the middle of the size range of the human samples, and is not inconsistent with microcephaly. In 2006, American biologist Robert Martin and colleagues also concluded that the skull was probably microcephalic, arguing that the brain is far too small to be a separate dwarf species; he said that, if it were, the 400-cubic-centimeter brain would indicate a creature only in height, one third the length of the discovered skeleton.


title: Homo floresiensis

text: A 2006 study stated that LB1 probably descended from a pygmy population of modern humans, but herself shows signs of microcephaly, and other specimens from the cave show small stature but not microcephaly.


title: Homo floresiensis

text: In 2005, the original discoverers of "H. floresiensis", after unearthing more specimens, countered that the skeptics had mistakenly attributed the height of "H. floresiensis" to microcephaly. Falk stated that Martin's assertions were unsubstantiated. In 2006, Australian palaeoanthropologist Debbie Argue and colleagues also concluded that the finds are indeed a new species. In 2007, Falk found that "H. floresiensis" brains were similar in shape to modern humans, and the frontal and temporal lobes were well-developed, which would not have been the case were they microcephalic.


title: Homo floresiensis

text: In 2008, Greek palaeontologist George Lyras and colleagues said that LB1 falls outside the range of variation for human microcephalic skulls. However, a 2013 comparison of the LB1 endocast to a set of 100 normocephalic and 17 microcephalic endocasts showed that there is a wide variation in microcephalic brain shape ratios and that in these ratios the group as such is not clearly distinct from normocephalics. The LB1 brain shape nevertheless aligns slightly better with the microcephalic sample, with the shape at the extreme edge of the normocephalic group. A 2016 pathological analysis of LB1's skull revealed no pathologies nor evidence of microcephaly, and concluded that LB1 is a separate species.


title: Homo floresiensis

text: A 2007 study postulated that the skeletons were those of humans who suffered from Laron syndrome, which was first reported in 1966, and is most common in inbreeding populations, which may have been the scenario on the small island. It causes a short stature and small skull, and many conditions seen in Laron syndrome patients are also exhibited in "H. floresiensis". The estimated height of LB1 is at the lower end of the average for afflicted human women, but the endocranial volume is much smaller than anything exhibited in Laron syndrome patients. DNA analysis would be required to support this theory.


title: Homo floresiensis

text: In 2008 Australian researcher Peter Obendorf—who studies congenital iodine deficiency syndrome—and colleagues suggested that LB1 and LB6 suffered from myxoedematous (ME) congenital iodine deficiency syndrome resulting from congenital hypothyroidism (underactive thyroid), and that they were part of an affected population of "H. sapiens" on the island. Congenital iodine deficiency syndrome, caused by iodine deficiency, is expressed by small bodies and reduced brain size (but ME causes less motor and mental disablement than other forms of congenital iodine deficiency syndrome), and is a form of dwarfism still found in the local Indonesian population. They said that various features of "H. floresiensis" are diagnostic characteristics, such as enlarged pituitary fossa, unusually straight and untwisted humeral heads, relatively thick limbs, double rooted premolar, and primitive wrist morphology.


title: Homo floresiensis

text: However, Falk's scans of LB1's pituitary fossa show that it is not larger than usual. Also, in 2009, anthropologists Colin Groves and Catharine FitzGerald compared the Flores bones with those of ten people who had had cretinism, and found no overlap. Obendorf and colleagues rejected Groves and FitzGerald's argument the following year. A 2012 study similar to Groves and FitzGeralds' also found no evidence of congenital iodine deficiency syndrome.


title: Homo floresiensis

text: In 2014, physical anthropologist Maciej Henneberg and colleagues claimed that LB1 suffered from Down syndrome, and that the remains of other individuals at the Flores site were merely normal modern humans. However, there are a number of characteristics shared by both LB1 and LB6 as well as other known early humans and absent in "H. sapiens", such as the lack of a chin. In 2016, a comparative study concluded that LB1 did not exhibit a sufficient number of Down syndrome characteristics to support a diagnosis.


title: Homo floresiensis

text: The most important and obvious identifying features of "Homo floresiensis" are its small body and small cranial capacity. Brown and Morwood also identified a number of additional, less obvious features that might distinguish LB1 from modern "H. sapiens", including the form of the teeth, the absence of a chin, and a lesser torsion in the lower end of the humerus (upper arm bone). Each of these putative distinguishing features has been heavily scrutinized by the scientific community, with different research groups reaching differing conclusions as to whether these features support the original designation of a new species, or whether they identify LB1 as a severely pathological "H. sapiens".


title: Homo floresiensis

text: A 2015 study of the dental morphology of forty teeth of "H. floresiensis" compared to 450 teeth of living and extinct human species, states that they had "primitive canine-premolar and advanced molar morphologies," which is unique among hominins.


title: Homo floresiensis

text: The discovery of additional partial skeletons has verified the existence of some features found in LB1, such as the lack of a chin, but Jacob and other research teams argue that these features do not distinguish LB1 from local modern humans. Lyras "et al." have asserted, based on 3D-morphometrics, that the skull of LB1 differs significantly from all "H. sapiens" skulls, including those of small-bodied individuals and microcephalics, and is more similar to the skull of "Homo erectus". Ian Tattersall argues that the species is wrongly classified as "Homo floresiensis" as it is far too archaic to assign to the genus "Homo".


title: Homo floresiensis

text: LB1's height is estimated to have been . The height of a second skeleton, LB8, has been estimated at based on tibial length. These estimates are outside the range of normal modern human height and considerably shorter than the average adult height of even the smallest modern humans, such as the Mbenga and Mbuti at , Twa, Semang at for adult women of the Malay Peninsula, or the Andamanese at also for adult women. LB1's body mass is estimated to have been . LB1 and LB8 are also somewhat smaller than the australopithecines, such as "Lucy", from three million years ago, not previously thought to have expanded beyond Africa. Thus, LB1 and LB8 may be the shortest and smallest members of the extended human group discovered thus far.


title: Homo floresiensis

text: Their short stature was likely due to insular dwarfism, where size decreases as a response to fewer resources in an island ecosystem. In 2006, Indonesian palaeoanthropologist Teuku Jacob and colleagues said that LB1 has a similar stature to the Rampasasa pygmies who inhabit the island, and that size can vary substantially in pygmy populations. The Rampasasa pygmies are completely unrelated to "H. floresiensis".


title: Homo floresiensis

text: Aside from smaller body size, the specimens seem to otherwise resemble "H. erectus", a species known to have been living in Southeast Asia at times coincident with earlier finds purported to be of "H. floresiensis".


title: Homo floresiensis

text: In addition to a small body size, "H. floresiensis" had a remarkably small brain size. LB1's brain is estimated to have had a volume of , placing it at the range of chimpanzees or the extinct australopithecines. LB1's brain size is half that of its presumed immediate ancestor, "H. erectus" (). The brain-to-body mass ratio of LB1 lies between that of "H. erectus" and the great apes. Such a reduction is likely due to insular dwarfism, and a 2009 study found that the reduction in brain size of extinct pygmy hippopotamuses in Madagascar compared with their living relatives is proportionally greater than the reduction in body size, and similar to the reduction in brain size of "H. floresiensis" compared with "H. erectus".


title: Homo floresiensis

text: Smaller size does not appear to have affected mental faculties, as Brodmann area 10 on the prefrontal cortex, which is associated with cognition, is about the same size as that of modern humans. "H. floresiensis" is also associated with evidence for advanced behaviours, such as the use of fire, butchering, and stone tool manufacturing.


title: Homo floresiensis

text: The angle of humeral torsion is much less than in modern humans. The humeral head of modern humans is twisted between 145 and 165 degrees to the plane of the elbow joint, whereas it is 120 degrees in "H. floresiensis". This may have provided an advantage when arm-swinging, and, in tandem with the unusual morphology of the shoulder girdle and short clavicle, would have displaced the shoulders slightly forward into an almost shrugging position. The shrugging position would have compensated for the lower range of motion in the arm, allowing for similar maneuverability in the elbows as modern humans. The wrist bones are similar to those of apes and "Australopithecus", significantly different from those of modern humans, lacking features which evolved at least 800,000 years ago.


title: Homo floresiensis

text: The leg bones are more robust than those of modern humans. The feet were unusually flat and long in relation with the rest of the body. As a result, when walking, they would have had to have bent the knees further back than modern humans do. This caused a high-stepping gait and low walking speed. The toes had an unusual shape and the big toe was very short.


title: Homo floresiensis

text: Because of a deep neighbouring strait, Flores remained isolated during the Wisconsin glaciation (the last glacial period), despite the low sea levels that united Sundaland. Therefore, the ancestors of "H. floresiensis" could only have reached the isolated island by water transport, perhaps arriving in bamboo rafts around one million years ago.


title: Homo floresiensis

text: The cave yielded a great quantity, over ten thousand, of stone artefacts, mainly lithic flakes, surprising considering "H. floresiensis's" incredibly small brain size. This has led some researchers to theorize that "H. floresiensis" inherited their tool-making ability from "H. erectus". Points, perforators, blades, and microblades were associated with remains of the extinct elephant "Stegodon", and were probably hafted into barbs to sink into the elephant. This indicates the inhabitants were targeting juvenile "Stegodon". Similar artefacts are found at the Soa Basin south, associated with "Stegodon" and Komodo dragon remains, and are attributed to a likely ancestral population of "H. erectus".


title: Homo floresiensis

text: The youngest "H. floresiensis" bone remains in the cave date to 60,000 years ago, and the youngest stone tools to 50,000 years ago. The previous estimate of 12,000 BCE was due to an undetected unconformity in the cave stratigraphy. Their disappearance is close to the time that modern humans reached the area, suggesting that the initial encounter caused or contributed to their extinction. This would be consistent with the disappearance of "Homo neanderthalensis" from Europe about 40,000 years ago, within 5,000 years after the arrival of modern humans there, and other anthropogenic extinctions.


title: Homo floresiensis

text: Modern human bones recovered from the cave dating to 46,000 years ago indicate replacement of the former "H. floresiensis" inhabitants. The other megafauna of the island, such as "Stegodon florensis insularis" and the giant stork "Leptoptilos robustus", also disappeared.


title: Homo floresiensis

text: "Homo floresiensis" was swiftly nicknamed "the hobbit" by the discoverers, after the fictional race popularized in J. R. R. Tolkien's book "The Hobbit", and some of the discoverers suggested naming the species "H. hobbitus".


title: Homo floresiensis

text: In October 2012, a New Zealand scientist due to give a public lecture on "Homo floresiensis" was told by the Tolkien Estate that he was not allowed to use the word "hobbit" in promoting the lecture.


title: Homo floresiensis

text: In 2012, the American film studio The Asylum, which produces low-budget "mockbuster" films, planned to release a movie entitled "Age of the Hobbits" depicting a "peace-loving" community of "H.floresiensis" "enslaved by the Java Men, a race of flesh-eating dragon-riders." The film was intended to piggyback on the success of Peter Jackson's film "". The film was blocked from release due to a legal dispute about using the word "hobbit." The Asylum argued that the film did not violate the Tolkien copyright because the film was about "H.floresiensis", "uniformly referred to as 'Hobbits' in the scientific community." The film was later retitled "Clash of the Empires".


title: James Marsters

text: James Wesley Marsters (born August 20, 1962) is an American actor, musician, singer, comic book writer, and audiobook narrator.


title: James Marsters

text: He is sometimes credited in various anime series and video games as David Gray and Sam Majesters in the series "Dragon Ball Super" and the video game "Dragon Ball FighterZ" respectively. He is best known for his role as the popular British punk vampire, Spike in The WB series "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" and its spin-off, "Angel". Since then, he has played the alien supervillain Brainiac along with Professor Milton Fine and Brainiac 5 on the Superman-inspired series "Smallville", Captain John Hart on "Torchwood" and terrorist Barnabas Greeley in Syfy's "Caprica".


title: James Marsters

text: He appeared in a supporting role in the film "P.S. I Love You", as Victor Hesse in the 2010 reboot of "Hawaii Five-0", and Victor Stein in the Marvel series "Runaways". He is also the voice of Zamasu along with Future Zamasu for the "Funimation" dub of the "Dragon Ball" franchise. He recently starred in the critically acclaimed two-part indie film "A Bread Factory" by director Patrick Wang. He also voiced the roles of Lex Luthor in the film "" and the video game "DC Universe Online", Sergei in "", Mister Fantastic in "The Super Hero Squad Show", Korvac in "Ultimate Spider-Man", Captain Faro Argyus in "", Louis 'Match' Morris in "", Nosferatu (which is miscredited as 'Dracula') in "DuckTales" and Various voices in "".


title: James Marsters

text: Marsters was born in Greenville, California, the son of a United Methodist minister and social worker. He grew up with his brother, Paul, and sister, Susan, in Modesto, California. Dreaming about becoming an actor since he played Eeyore in "Winnie the Pooh" in 4th grade, Marsters joined the theatre group at Grace M. Davis High School and acted in many plays, including musicals. After graduation in 1980, Marsters studied at the Pacific Conservatory of the Performing Arts at Allan Hancock College in Santa Maria, California. In 1982, he moved to New York City to attend the Juilliard School, but was expelled from the program after just two years.