To: freedom44; Tallguy
Thanks, I'll add this thread to GGG.
In the shadow of the Moon
book mentioned in article
At 8.45 on the morning of 15 April 136 BC, Babylon was plunged into darkness when the Moon passed in front of the Sun. An astrologer, who recorded the details in cuneiform characters on a clay tablet, wrote: "At 24 degrees after sunrise-a solar eclipse. When it began on the southwest side, Venus, Mercury and the normal stars were visible. Jupiter and Mars, which were in their period of disappearance, became visible. The Sun threw off the shadow from southwest to northeast." If present-day astronomers use a computer to run the movements of the Earth, Moon and Sun backwards from their present positions, like a movie in reverse, they find something very odd. The total eclipse of 15 April 136 BC should not have been visible from Babylon at all. The zone of totality should have passed over the Spanish island of Mallorca, 48.8 degrees west of Babylon-a difference of more than one-eighth of a complete rotation of the Earth, or 3.25 hours. The only explanation is that the planet's rotation has slowed since 136 BC, making the day longer. Of course, there are many other records of the ancients observing cosmic events, from supernovas to comets, but the value of these sightings to modern science is limited. Reports of eclipses, however, are in a class of their own. If the Earth has accumulated a change in orientation equivalent to an eighth of a turn in just over 2000 years, then we can infer that the day has lengthened by an average of a few milliseconds a century. This is an extraordinarily precise figure to deduce from historical records. In fact, it is without precedent.Varsity Online
Cambridge scientist Dr Leslie Morrison, from the Royal Greenwich Observatory, and Professor Richard Stephenson, from the University of Durham, have discovered that the world is spinning at a faster rate than people had expected. Compared to records taken between 700 BC and 1000 AD, the scientists found that a day is now 42.5 milliseconds longer - much less than predicted. It is though effects from the last Ice Age have caused a flattening of the Earth's poles, making it spin faster.Solar eclipse
translated by Google and AltaVista
[www.nzz.ch/dossiers/dossiers1999/sonnenfinsternis/sonne990811hc.html]
On 15 April in the year 136 BC it became darker and darker in the course of the in the morning in the metropolis Babylon, until suddenly the sunlight shrank completely from the sky: The new moon had shifted itself between earth and sun and for minutes the Himmelsgestirn had completely covered. The total solar eclipse was observed by the Babylonian astronomers in all details... If one lets the astronomical film run backwards, one comes likewise to the solar eclipse from 15 April 136 BC. If one feeds the computer the values of the present angular speed and movements of earth, moon and sun, however a strange result results for that historical darkness: It should have taken place not in Babylon, but in the Spanish Mallorca. A geographical error of nevertheless an eighth of an earth revolution, which equals a delay of 3.25 hours on the cosmic timetable... [In] 1695 Edmond Halley concluded from the data the fact that the moon in the course of the centuries circled faster and faster around the earth and had continued to hit therefore the shadow of the moon at the point in time of a passed darkness somewhat east on the globe than due to a later darkness had to be expected... [In 1787] Pierre Simon de Laplace... postulated [that] the moon moves not faster, but the earth turns more slowly... Delaunay assumed a braking action by tides, as the tidal bulge moving from Moon's gravitation constantly in opposite direction for rotation over the earth's surface restrains the globe... Moon's gravitation distorts the flexible globe in the course of the month...The fact that a solar eclipse sets on the earth's surface a rapidly moving shadow label of at the most 250 kilometers width, makes it an event singularly precise in time and space. By the analysis as much as possible certifications of historical sun darkness would like to quantify Stephenson and Morrison also subtle modifications of the earth rotation in the course of thousands of years... Beside the Babylonian recordings, which cover the period of 700 BC to 75 AD, the Chinese data of 720 BC... From the data Stephenson and Morrison calculated a middle increase of the daily length [during the past] 2500 years by 1.7 milliseconds per century... A slow oscillation is still puzzling with one period of 1000 years.Solar eclipse
by Thomas de Padova
translated by Google and AltaVista
[www2.tagesspiegel.de/archiv/1999/08/03/ak-ws-na-42876.html]
The British researchers Richard Stephenson of the University of Durham and Leslie Morrison, formerly at the Royal Greenwich observatory in Cambridge, determined up to one second exactly, when the darkness must have achieved which place of the earth in the year 136 before Christ. And they came to an astonishing result: The solar eclipse at that time could have been observed according to the calculations not at all in Babylon, but approximately 50 degrees further west with Mallorca... Stephenson and Morrison checked so far approximately 300 historical recordings at the computer... The fact that the earth turns... ever more slowly [means that] while the earth is braked, the velocity of the moon increases. It becomes faster and creeps [away by the centimeter]. Scientists of the satellite station of the federal office for cartography and geodesy in cell in the Bavarian forest transmit laser pulses again and again to the moon. Astronauts of Apollo 11 left a mirror there which reflect the laser beams... The measurements prove that the moon recedes about four centimeters from the earth every year.
4 posted on
07/22/2004 12:23:42 PM PDT by
SunkenCiv
(Unlike some people, I have a profile. Okay, maybe it's a little large...)
To: SunkenCiv
fascinating stuff! Thanks!
6 posted on
07/22/2004 12:31:10 PM PDT by
Tallguy
12 posted on
02/08/2010 1:38:14 PM PST by
SunkenCiv
(Happy New Year! Freedom is Priceless.)
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