Are You Sure? (nonfiction)

Are You Sure? is a feature of the Gnomon Chronicles.

January

Are You Sure? (January 1)

• ... that cosmological theorist Giordano Bruno was burned at the stake for heresy after a trial by the Roman Inquisition, during which Bruno's pantheism was a matter of grave concern, although formal charges cited Bruno's denial of several core Catholic doctrines, including eternal damnation, the Trinity, the divinity of Christ, the virginity of Mary, and transubstantiation?

• ... that chromatographic analysis of Golden Spiral unexpectedly revealed "at least five hundred and twelve, perhaps two or even four times as many" previously unknown shades of the color yellow?

• ... that mathematician and physician Ehrenfried Walther von Tschirnhaus is considered by some to have been the inventor of European porcelain, an invention long accredited to Johann Friedrich Böttger (although others believe that porcelain had been made by English manufacturers at an even earlier date)?

Are You Sure? (January 2)

• ... that AESOP ("Artificial Expert System of Philosophy"), an alleged autonomous artificial intelligence self-propagating in the Earth's ionosphere, has been known to exchange data between unmanned spacecraft?

• ... that physicist and mathematician Rudolf Clausius' restatement of the Carnot cycle put the theory of heat on a truer and sounder basis?

• ... that Isaac Asimov wrote or edited more than 500 books and an estimated 90,000 letters and postcards?

Are You Sure? (January 3)

• ... that astronomer Jeremiah Horrocks made a simple helioscope by focusing the image of the Sun through a telescope onto a plane surface, whereby an image of the Sun could be safely observed?

• ... that computer science pioneer Peter Naur disliked the term "computer science", suggesting it be called "datalogy" or "data science"?

• ... that artist Karl Jones has said that his drawings "fall into two categories: spirals and monsters"?

Are You Sure? (January 4)

• ... that physicist Max Born formulated the now-standard interpretation of the probability density function for ψ*ψ in the Schrödinger equation, for which he was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1954?

• ... that the capacitor plague, a problem related to a higher-than-expected failure rate of non-solid aluminum electrolytic capacitors manufactured between 1999 and 2007, has been blamed on the mis-copying of a formula during industrial espionage?

• ... that physicist Erwin Schrödinger addressed the problems of genetics, looking at the phenomenon of life from the point of view of physics, in his book What Is Life?

• ... that the underlying principles of portable envy devices remain unclear, and there is currently no agreed-upon theory explaining why envy is the only emotion which can be migrated into electronic storage devices?

Are You Sure ... (January 5, 2020)

calculated the exact time of a solar eclipse that occurred on 1 April 1764, and that she wrote an article in which she gave a map of the eclipse's extent in 15-minute intervals across Europe?

• ... that mathematician Dmitry Mirimanoff made notable contributions to axiomatic set theory, and to number theory relating specifically to Fermat's last theorem, on which he corresponded with Albert Einstein before the First World War?

• ... that the novels of semiotician and crime-fighter Umberto Eco allegedly contain an encrypted "secret history" of crimes against mathematical constants?

• ... that astronomer and mathematician Simon Marius published his work Mundus Iovialis (1614) describing the planet Jupiter and its moons, and asserting that he discovered the planet's four major moons some days before Galileo Galilei?

Are You Sure ... (January 6, 2020)

• ... that mathematician and physicist Thomas Fincke introduced the modern names of the trigonometric functions tangent and secant in his book Geometria rotundi (1583)?

• ... that objections to Georg Cantor's work were occasionally fierce: Henri Poincaré referred to Cantor's ideas as a "grave disease" infecting the discipline of mathematics, and Leopold Kronecker's public opposition and personal attacks included describing Cantor as a "scientific charlatan", a "renegade" and a "corrupter of youth"?

• ... that Jacob Bernoulli derived the first version of the law of large numbers in his work Ars Conjectandi?

Are You Sure ... (January 7, 2020)

• ... that engineer Sandford Fleming proposed a single 24-hour clock for the entire world after missing a train because its printed schedule listed p.m. instead of a.m.?

• ... that experimental physicist Chien-Shiung Wu conducting the Wu experiment (1956), which contradicted the hypothetical law of conservation of parity?

• ... that electrical engineer Zénobe Gramme invented the Gramme machine, a type of direct current dynamo capable of generating smoother (less AC) and much higher voltages than earlier dynamos, and that the Gramme machine was thefirst usefully powerful electrical motor that was successful industrially?

• ... that the Reis Telephone can establish a stable transdimensional communications channel with people who have been dead for six hours or longer?

Are You Sure ... (January 8, 2020)

• ... that inventor and crime-fighter Herman Hollerith was issued a US patent for the Art of Applying Gnomon Algorithm Functions — his punched card crime forecasting system?

• ... that pioneering seismologist Sekiya Seikei constructed a model representing the motion of the ground during an earthquake, consisting of three twisted copper wires mounted side by side on a lacquered wooden stand, giving an illustration of the complicated movements of the ground during an earthquake, conveying the complexity of ground motion both in terms of the vagaries of its geometric path and in its erratic accelerations?

• ... that computer scientist Joseph Weizenbaum wrote ELIZA, a computer program capable of engaging humans in a conversation which bore a striking resemblance to one with an empathic psychologist?

Are You Sure ... (January 9, 2020)

• ... that the Royal Society posthumously awarded mathematician Georg Cantor its Sylvester Medal, the highest honor the Society can confer for work in mathematics, and that mathematician David Hilbert defended the award from its critics by declaring: "No one shall expel us from the Paradise that Cantor has created"?

• ... that mathematician Maria Agnesi's Instituzioni Analitiche is the first book on mathematics discussing both differential and integral calculus?

• ... that the Praxinoscope (an improved zoetrope) can be converted into a rudimentary scrying engine using simple Gnomon algorithm functions?

• ... that a greedy algorithm does not usually produce an optimal solution, but nonetheless a greedy heuristic may yield locally optimal solutions that approximate a globally optimal solution in a reasonable amount of time?