. . . of the Saturnian moon Mimas. This is amongst the least exciting Saturnian moons!
Wednesday, August 31, 2011
astro picture for the day
. . . of the Saturnian moon Mimas. This is amongst the least exciting Saturnian moons!
Tuesday, August 30, 2011
Monday, August 29, 2011
astro picture for the day
M87 is the biggest and in that sense perhaps the greatest galaxy of our sector of the universe. Our galaxy and thousands of others are part of a Virgo supercluster. M87 is at the heart of this galaxy supercluster.
Our galaxy is at the outer edge of the Virgo supercluster.
This image is one of Hubbles first and still one of it's greatest. There's still plenty of great pictures from Hubble though!
Sunday, August 28, 2011
astro picture for the day
Saturday, August 27, 2011
anti-mathematical quote for the day(not that I support it)
"What indeed has Athens to do with Jerusalem? - Tertullian(Carthage Christian chruch father of like 160 to 225 A.D.)
Carthage is also home to Sait Augustine like a hundred plus years later(350-430) who had a few slips of the tongue with regard to the true origin of Jesus Christ(a sungod; christianity is just astrotheology). On somewhat related note, Iraneous lived in France. Seems interesting to me that so much of the church fathers(who almost certainly did a lot of the writings of the gospels and even Pauline epistles; we know a good amount of them were later forgeries) were in far away regions of the Roman empire! I guess only away from critical eyes could they have forged the christ conspiracy.
Carthage is also home to Sait Augustine like a hundred plus years later(350-430) who had a few slips of the tongue with regard to the true origin of Jesus Christ(a sungod; christianity is just astrotheology). On somewhat related note, Iraneous lived in France. Seems interesting to me that so much of the church fathers(who almost certainly did a lot of the writings of the gospels and even Pauline epistles; we know a good amount of them were later forgeries) were in far away regions of the Roman empire! I guess only away from critical eyes could they have forged the christ conspiracy.
Friday, August 26, 2011
astro picture for the day
Thursday, August 25, 2011
youtube for the day/ Darpa HTV-2 mach 20 scramjet(most likely)
I don't know why the U.S. military chooses to show this; but, they have.
astro picture for the day
This is a closer view of a similar picture I've put up recently. The thought "this is a 'anybody out there' type picture keeps coming up in my mind.
Wednesday, August 24, 2011
note for the day/ H.G Well's "Things to Come"
I've finally gotten around to adding notes to my blog entry of H.G. Well's "Things to Come." I've pointed out that the movie isn't about this or that government, but about scientific spirit versus the passive anti-science exploration spirit.
You can find it easily by just looking up Tuesday, July 5, 2011 on the right hand side. Actualy, the right hand side only allows you to see months; you can still find the blog entry I'm referring to by going to that right hand side; clicking the arrow for july; looking through the july entries and finding youtube for the day/ H.G. Well's "things to come".
You can find it easily by just looking up Tuesday, July 5, 2011 on the right hand side. Actualy, the right hand side only allows you to see months; you can still find the blog entry I'm referring to by going to that right hand side; clicking the arrow for july; looking through the july entries and finding youtube for the day/ H.G. Well's "things to come".
Tuesday, August 23, 2011
astro picture for the day
(Steve Mazlin, Jack Harvey, Rick Gilbert, and Daniel Verschatse)
If there's one astronomy picture I'd take if I had control of Hubble space telescope, this is the one I'd do!
Monday, August 22, 2011
thought for the day/ ancient wonders, knowledge, and technology
If you look at James Burke's "Connections", you see what ancient technologies? Not much. Similarly, what science before Galileo and Kepler? Aristarchus's sun centered cosmology(now lost; we only have a mention of it by Archimedes). Yes, there was mythological ideas about the earth and origins of the life and the universe. But, for the most part, without mathematics, there was no science or technology beyond stone axes or even bronz or iron axes.
I've already categorized the history of technology that James Burke presents in his "Connections" as gears which depends on euclidean geometry, or the technology that comes from daming up nature such as agriculture bringing about issues of irrigation, pest control, or keeping the soil good to go(I don't know why I have trouble remembering the technical name here!). I've already argued the connections of this with how mathematics works and Jacob Bronowski's ideas. The reason why I want to bring this all up again is to say that outside of architecture and boats and a few other things that clearly depends on mathematical thinking, the only other knowledge of interest pre-Galileo age was mathematics!
People in the eighteen hundreds discovered Egypt; the Egyptian findings were viewed with fascination of a civilization alien yet technologicaly sophisticated before their times. Since then, there's always an effort to say that civilization goes back further than anybody has dreamt of; they even go so far as to suggest that those who think Egypt were ancient civilization before say classical Greek times are non-imaginative and standerdized and so on and so forth(in the 1900s, due to rocketry and astronomy, people started hoping for alien life more sophisticated than us; and, there's been a ufo craze ever since!). Yet, none of these ancient wisdom seekers ever look towards mathematics of the ancient times as the place to turn to learn of a long lost wealth of knowledge. You never see documentaries of the great mathematics of the Babylonians before the Greeks for the most part just put in terms of axiomatic deductive system.
I point this out to reiterate the central role of mathematics in the human condition now and back then. The mathematical wonders of the ancients are the real wonders of the past. The great technological wonders of the ancients as nobody would really argue are mathematical in inspiration - think stonehenge and the Egyptian Pyramids. But, the mathematical wonders are greater in quantity and quality than all the rest of the ancient wonders.
I've already given a writup of Van Der Waerden's "Science Awakening" early on in this blog. Since this post was to be about ancient wisdom, this is a good stopping point for today!
astro picture for the day
This picture is proof of Einstein's General theory of Relativity. There's special and general Relativity theory; Special relates energy and mass in the famour e=mc(squared). General relativity relates that mass/energy to gravity and vice versa.
This picture along with the so called "hubble deep fields" are some of what Hubble has given us that we could not have before. Ground based telescopes have seen gravitational lensing, but nothing like the above!
To say the least, I've yet to show Hubble's best pictures yet!
Sunday, August 21, 2011
astro picture for the day
P.S.
I e-mailed the Hubble team this!
. . . with those new cloaking devices to blank out those secondary mirrors; i mean, with the ability to blank out the secondary mirror, all those spikes around the stars of astronomical images since Isaac Newton days would go away!
That doesn't sound like much; but, consider this; around every point of any astronomical image using a Newtonian reflector are these little spikes; most are much smaller than what you see around the stars; but, just imagine the images that we'd get if we could get rid of all those little spikes at every single point! At that point, the quality of the medium(the paper, or whatever the image is printed on) would become the major focus of making or even seeing great astronomical images(not to mention a given persons eyesight!). People would be saying "oh, well, that's not on good quality astronomical paper". Or, "oh, you need to get some eyesight upgrade to really see just how beautiful the picture is!" I mean kind of like the way people say you need to read Homer in Greek or the bible in Hebrew(and Aramaic . . . and Greek for the New Testament!).
Saturday, August 20, 2011
Friday, August 19, 2011
Thursday, August 18, 2011
Tuesday, August 16, 2011
Monday, August 15, 2011
Saturday, August 13, 2011
astro picture for the day
Credit & Copyright: Martin Pugh
Friday, August 12, 2011
youtube for the day/ Arthur C. Clarke Mysterious world/1908 Siberian explosion
Recently, Astronomers have noted the Earth has been hit by a stream of cometary debris. Meteor showers are common; but, this stream of meteors was more dense than usuall.
When a comet becomes bound up with a star such as our sun(as oppossed to comets that come from interstellar space, come in and leave the solar system for good), it leaves a stream of debris in that orbit. So, if you find some unusually dense or active meteor showers, you might wonder if it is due to a comet. And, if so, then you can bet there's a good chance that some day, that comet will come by and hit your planet.
Astronomers perhaps were a bit more alarmed about this latest meteor stream because they've never seen it before; they don't know what comet this stream is associated with.
Astronomers have recently become more concerned about possible cometary impacts due to quite probably the refutation of the Nemesis hypotheses. This hypotheses is that our star has a companion that periodically disturbs the Oort cloud of comets(way past thr orbit of Pluto or Neptune, whichever is the furthest solar system object at the time); and, so our planet gets hit by comets on a periodic pattern. Mathematicians have recently shown that the statistical analyses is biased(it's remarkable it took them this long to due this imo). This means that we could be hit by a comet now, tomorrow, or soon enough instead of fifteen million years from now(the Nemesis star was on a 26 million year cycle; we were midway through the last periodic impactor).
And so, I thought it appropriate to show this Arthur C. Clarke Mysterious world episode about the 1908 Siberian explosion!
I think this show is good for more than the fascination/fear of a cometary impact. It shows science when it doesn't have the answers; tunguska presented a bit of a problem; if this was due to an asteroid or cometary impact, where's the crator? There was no crator. So, people were imagining all kinds of possibilities; black holes, alien spaceships(where's the spaceship much less the impact crator?). In the end, it seems that we had a piece of a comet explode in midair.
When a comet becomes bound up with a star such as our sun(as oppossed to comets that come from interstellar space, come in and leave the solar system for good), it leaves a stream of debris in that orbit. So, if you find some unusually dense or active meteor showers, you might wonder if it is due to a comet. And, if so, then you can bet there's a good chance that some day, that comet will come by and hit your planet.
Astronomers perhaps were a bit more alarmed about this latest meteor stream because they've never seen it before; they don't know what comet this stream is associated with.
Astronomers have recently become more concerned about possible cometary impacts due to quite probably the refutation of the Nemesis hypotheses. This hypotheses is that our star has a companion that periodically disturbs the Oort cloud of comets(way past thr orbit of Pluto or Neptune, whichever is the furthest solar system object at the time); and, so our planet gets hit by comets on a periodic pattern. Mathematicians have recently shown that the statistical analyses is biased(it's remarkable it took them this long to due this imo). This means that we could be hit by a comet now, tomorrow, or soon enough instead of fifteen million years from now(the Nemesis star was on a 26 million year cycle; we were midway through the last periodic impactor).
And so, I thought it appropriate to show this Arthur C. Clarke Mysterious world episode about the 1908 Siberian explosion!
I think this show is good for more than the fascination/fear of a cometary impact. It shows science when it doesn't have the answers; tunguska presented a bit of a problem; if this was due to an asteroid or cometary impact, where's the crator? There was no crator. So, people were imagining all kinds of possibilities; black holes, alien spaceships(where's the spaceship much less the impact crator?). In the end, it seems that we had a piece of a comet explode in midair.
Thursday, August 11, 2011
Wednesday, August 10, 2011
Tuesday, August 9, 2011
astro picture for the day
Sunday, August 7, 2011
thought for the day/ Yazilikaya - Hittite sanctuary where PuduHepa tried to make one god out of many and rule the world
I've argued here on this blog that mathematics and mythology are similar in their natures of analogy; Mathematics is an abstraction; abstraction is an analogy; two apples and two oranges are two concrete instances the analogous abstract concept of number two. Mythology is poetry; poetry is similie/metaphor, hence analogy. One is rigorous/precise; the other is vague. They both try to unify. One tries to be constructive while the other tries to obscure and sweep problems under the rug.
I've shown really throughout my blog here, that Judeo-Christianity tried to unifty all previous mythology into one. The Jews combined Summarian and Phoenician gods of Elohim and Adonai into Lord God. Many stories throughout the old testament are repeated; you can tell that they are repeated by the perpective of someone else by the usage of either Elohim/God or Lord/Adonai exclusively, or sometimes they combine them. The Judahites also combined Egyptian ethics with Mesopotamian flood stories and so on and so forth. I've already pointed out and referenced all this. The New Testament was an attempt to unify the many sungods from Egypt to Greek into one. It was an atttempt to do many things at different times; but, ultimately, it unified all these sun gods who had twelve things to do or followers into one sungod - Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ represents that analogous concept of the sun going through the twelve constellations. The effort to unify various people's gods into one appears to have happened more than once!
There was the effort of Ahkenaten(as I've pointed out before in my "Gospel of Truth"); this one is well known. But, I've come across a similar effort to roll up all the different conquered cultures gods into one - one ring to rule them all! This effort was at a similar time frame to Ahkenaten's. It was the Hittites.
The Hittites were up around contemporary Turkey(some would say the true birthplace of agriculturalism). They purposely built their capital in a remote hard to get to location, and then surrounded this city with fortification.
They had a Pyramidal structure shown above which was the center piece fortifying the city. And then, many tunnels up to like three hundred feet long,
Going through these fortifications.
The Hittites were able to conqure much of the northern lands north of the Levant. The Hittites quickly became the competition with the Egyptians. They also have some connections, or at least communications and trading, with the city of Troy.
They grew by fear; they said join us peacefully, or we'll destroy you completely. They ended up taking in so many peoples and hence their respective gods, that the Hittites were known as the land of a thousand gods.
One of the last cultures brought in had a princess who would then go through a royal wedding(a political wedding a wedding for the purpose of creating family ties so that peace is made between families; or in many cases back then nations). Pudahepa is known as the person to suggest rolling up all these different peoples gods into one. The Hittites put up a temple which depicts this effort at Yazilikaya.
Here's a picture of the pathway into this temple,
Here's just one picture of the various peopls gods; this one is of the twelve gods of the underworld,
Here's another picture,
Pudahepa's efforts met with the same fate as Ahkenaten's; the various cultures fought each other; Hittite records show civil war for about thirty years around the 1200s; with that, the Hittites civilization self-destructed.
I'd like to note that the Maya civilization similarly self-destructed.
In conclusion, here we see(long before the Israelites, and some of them might have been Hittite refuges after the Hittite empire disintegrated) how the many different cultures created their own gods; we see how through conquering, people(in this instance, the Hittites) tried to roll everyone's gods into one for social-political purposes.
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Here's a picture of the many different rock engravings,
I've shown really throughout my blog here, that Judeo-Christianity tried to unifty all previous mythology into one. The Jews combined Summarian and Phoenician gods of Elohim and Adonai into Lord God. Many stories throughout the old testament are repeated; you can tell that they are repeated by the perpective of someone else by the usage of either Elohim/God or Lord/Adonai exclusively, or sometimes they combine them. The Judahites also combined Egyptian ethics with Mesopotamian flood stories and so on and so forth. I've already pointed out and referenced all this. The New Testament was an attempt to unify the many sungods from Egypt to Greek into one. It was an atttempt to do many things at different times; but, ultimately, it unified all these sun gods who had twelve things to do or followers into one sungod - Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ represents that analogous concept of the sun going through the twelve constellations. The effort to unify various people's gods into one appears to have happened more than once!
There was the effort of Ahkenaten(as I've pointed out before in my "Gospel of Truth"); this one is well known. But, I've come across a similar effort to roll up all the different conquered cultures gods into one - one ring to rule them all! This effort was at a similar time frame to Ahkenaten's. It was the Hittites.
The Hittites were up around contemporary Turkey(some would say the true birthplace of agriculturalism). They purposely built their capital in a remote hard to get to location, and then surrounded this city with fortification.
They had a Pyramidal structure shown above which was the center piece fortifying the city. And then, many tunnels up to like three hundred feet long,
Going through these fortifications.
The Hittites were able to conqure much of the northern lands north of the Levant. The Hittites quickly became the competition with the Egyptians. They also have some connections, or at least communications and trading, with the city of Troy.
They grew by fear; they said join us peacefully, or we'll destroy you completely. They ended up taking in so many peoples and hence their respective gods, that the Hittites were known as the land of a thousand gods.
One of the last cultures brought in had a princess who would then go through a royal wedding(a political wedding a wedding for the purpose of creating family ties so that peace is made between families; or in many cases back then nations). Pudahepa is known as the person to suggest rolling up all these different peoples gods into one. The Hittites put up a temple which depicts this effort at Yazilikaya.
Here's a picture of the pathway into this temple,
Here's just one picture of the various peopls gods; this one is of the twelve gods of the underworld,
Here's another picture,
Pudahepa's efforts met with the same fate as Ahkenaten's; the various cultures fought each other; Hittite records show civil war for about thirty years around the 1200s; with that, the Hittites civilization self-destructed.
I'd like to note that the Maya civilization similarly self-destructed.
In conclusion, here we see(long before the Israelites, and some of them might have been Hittite refuges after the Hittite empire disintegrated) how the many different cultures created their own gods; we see how through conquering, people(in this instance, the Hittites) tried to roll everyone's gods into one for social-political purposes.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Here's a picture of the many different rock engravings,
youtube for the day/ Myceneaean tomb/1200 B.C.
Here, we see a preciselly placed stone entrance into an arched tomb. Whatever this structure represents, it has an arch architecture; something the later Greeks of Athens fame did not build with. Why? A dark ages happened from 1200 B.C. to like 600 B.C.(at least for the Greeks).
We may not know why the dark ages happened between the Mycenaeans and the Greeks; but, we can say that these 'dark ages' seem to happen. I think one can argue that some cultures are victims of various environmental disasters like global weather changes, tsunamis. But, I think I've shown farely well that what happened with the Roman world and the Renaissance was social shift from at least some rationality to an escape to irrationality; it's no accident that the Dark ages of the European medieval period was a christian one.
--------------------------------------- this 1200 B.C. Mycenaean tomb has been called many things; Treasury of Atreus or Tomb of Agamemnon. Nobody knows what it really represents; the major point is what I say above.
Thursday, August 4, 2011
Wednesday, August 3, 2011
Tuesday, August 2, 2011
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