Posted on 08/31/2004 8:42:25 AM PDT by SunkenCiv
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.
(Excerpt) Read more at web.archive.org ...
Moon Phases 5000 yr catalog:
http://sunearth.gsfc.nasa.gov/eclipse/phase/phasecat.html
See message #1 of this thread.Ptolemy's Almagest and Fomenko's Opinion About It"PTOLEMY'S CRIME"?
and Especially: Some Words About Precession
by B. Lukács
This title comes from Newton (but not I. but R. R.), whose book has the title "The Crime of Claudius Ptolemy" [11]. His claim goes back to Delambre (1819) who believed that Ptolemy fabricated some solar eclipse data without observing the eclipses. I cannot decide if Ptolemy falsified or not and do not want to.
Another accusations from the 80's tell that Ptolemy's Stellar Catalog contains a lot of stars whose positions he did not observe. The idea is the following. Hipparchus discovered the precession. Then Ptolemy calculated that the precession between Hipparchus and himself must be 2°40', and for a lot of stars he simply took Hipparchus' positions + this precession shift while he declared that he reobserved them. The modern authors claim that they detected this practice from anomalous distribution of measurement errors + lack of any peculiar motion (which did not exist in Greek theory) + the incorrect value of precession. The literature is big, not unequivocal but fairly convincing.
Earth's magnetic poles on verge of flipping
World Net Daily | December 12, 2003
Posted on 12/13/2003 8:38:30 PM PST by gitmo
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1039977/posts
Jupiter's Spots Disappear Amid Major Climate Change
Space.com | 21 April 2004 | Robert Roy Britt
Posted on 04/21/2004 2:04:19 PM PDT by Yo-Y
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1121982/posts
Massive Object Calls Planet Discoveries into Question
Space dot com (via Yahoo) | Thu, Jan 20, 2005 | Robert Roy Britt
Posted on 01/21/2005 9:19:56 AM PST by SunkenCiv
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/1325494/posts
New evidence for the Moon's soft middle
New Scientist | 14 February 2002 | Will Knight
Posted on 12/27/2004 2:29:35 PM PST by SunkenCiv
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/1309193/posts
Scientific maverick's theory on Earth's core up for a test
SF Chronicle | Monday, November 29, 2004 | Keay Davidson
Posted on 12/05/2004 11:17:28 AM PST by SunkenCiv
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/1294934/posts
Scientists Find That Saturn's Rotation Period Is A Puzzle
University of Iowa | June 28, 2004 | Gary Galluzzo and Don Gurnett
Posted on 01/13/2005 6:00:04 PM PST by SunkenCiv
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/1320410/posts
Sun's rays to roast Earth as poles flip
The Observer (U.K.) | 11/10/2002 | Robin McKie
Posted on 11/09/2002 5:59:37 PM PST by Pokey78
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/786012/posts
When the Days Were Shorter
Alaska Science Forum (Article #742) | November 11, 1985 | Larry Gedney
Posted on 10/04/2004 10:31:59 AM PDT by SunkenCiv
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/1234919/posts
Will Spacecraft ever Go Faster than the speed of Light?
Various - See Text | 16 FEB 2003 | Various
Posted on 02/16/2003 2:16:44 PM PST by vannrox
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/844807/posts
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Just updating the GGG info, not sending a general distribution. |
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