Archeologists lift the tombstone of the grave of noted Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe at the Church of Our Lady in Prague.MICHAL CIZEK/AFP/Getty Images
Our obsession with celebrities has finally crossed the line.
Death used to be a barrier in our intimate relationship with the famous. But now forensic detectives have remade themselves as postmortem paparazzi: Equipped with new scientific tools and itching to solve the mysteries of the past, they've turned into red-carpet grave robbers.
Take the case of 16th-century astronomer Tycho Brahe. The long-gone Danish discoverer of a thousand stars was back in the headlines this week, not for his celestial feats but for an event much more characteristic of our star-struck approach to science: His corpse, or what is left of it, was being exhumed in Prague.
Playing with the bodies of the great: If it's not quite porn, it's pretty darn close. Did Brahe, as the history books record, die of natural causes - a bladder infection brought on by a punctilious refusal to take a bathroom break during an endless royal reception? Or was he - gasp! - poisoned by a vengeful Danish king for a love affair gone wrong?
Did we mention that the hotheaded astronomer, the Michael Jackson of his time, wore a prosthetic nose after being badly gouged in a student duel? This supernova mystery just writes itself.
Exhumation is the ultimate tribute to celebrity's immortality. Dust to dust? The phrase has been rendered meaningless. Why was St. Thomas Aquinas so obese? Dig up his relics and let's find out. What killed King Tut? Combine an in-tomb CT scan with TV cameras and we might just get a satisfying answer. Are there any Romanovs lurking out there to prove the conspiracy theorists right? Just dig up a grave. As long as there's some news to extract from the big names of history, nobody can rest in peace.
Brahe is just the latest famous corpse to be brought to light. Earlier this year, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez authorized the exhumation of 19th-century revolutionary Simon Bolivar to substantiate claims that he might have died of arsenic poisoning rather than the usual verdict of tuberculosis - and also to bolster Mr. Chavez's self-conscious desire to link himself with the relics of the revered patriot.
Around the same time, chess master Bobby Fischer and Romania's dictatorial husband-and-wife team, the Ceausescus, were also dug up, only to prove that: (a) the eccentric Mr. Fischer did not father a Filipino daughter, as claimed; and (b) the bodies of the Ceausescus weren't mysteriously spirited away from their execution and burial site, as their children had insisted.
Coming up soon: Did escape artist Harry Houdini really suffer the banal fate of a ruptured appendix, which hardly fits his celebrity status? Or was he poisoned by psychics who resented how he mocked their powers?
Forensic anthropologist and mystery novelist Kathy Reichs is a member of the team formed to study what is left of the elusive Houdini. Given that her life's work has been about uncovering the truth beyond the grave - her latest novel, Virals, extends forensic crime-solving to the teen market - you might think that she would be staunchly pro-exhumation. Instead, there's a note of ambivalence about this convergence of science and celebrity.
"If there's a question about the cause of death, or the family requested it, then okay, I can see that," she says. "But if it's just for curiosity, then I don't know. You do get a lot of media attention, but whether there's a genuine academic interest on the part of those who participate … well, who am I to second-guess their motivation?"
As an anthropologist, Ms. Reichs acknowledges the cultural taboos against disturbing the dead - she is willing to let the belief systems of native peoples overrule the scientific pressure to study prehistoric remains. But when it comes to letting historians have the last word on the more familiar past, she changes course.
"When the story is told from the perspective of historians, you get as many takes on a person as there are historians. So where is the truth? Hard science is much less slippery. With these exhumations, you get to apply modern methods to solve questions from a time before science existed."
So the CT scan, X-rays and neutron-activation analysis on Brahe's remains may well reveal the mercury poisoning that skeptical scientists hope to find. But then what?
Whodunit isn't a scientific question, and a star-stuck autopsy is going to be as ratings-driven and glamour-seeking as an episode of CSI or Bones. Celebrity's power to fascinate is also its power to distort. Truth, as any good scientist should know, shuns the spotlight.
John Allemang is a feature writer for The Globe and Mail.