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Register a new userThinking about Archeoastronomy
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Noah Brosch
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I discuss various aspects of archeoastronomy concentrating on physical artifacts (i.e., not including ethno-archeoastronomy) focusing on the period that ended about 2000 years ago. I present examples of artifacts interpreted as showing the interest of humankind in understanding celestial phenomena and using these to synchronize calendars and predict future celestial and terrestrial events. I stress the difficulty of identifying with a high degree of confidence that these artifacts do indeed pertain to astronomy and caution against the over-interpretation of the finds as definite evidence. With these in mind, I point to artifacts that seem to indicate a human fascination with megalithic stone circles and megalithic alignments starting from at least 11000 BCE, and to other items presented as evidence for Neolithic astronomical interests dating to even 20000 BCE or even before. I discuss the geographical and temporal spread of megalithic sites associated with astronomical interpretations searching for synchronicity or for a possible single point of origin. A survey of a variety of artifacts indicates that the astronomical development in antiquity did not happen simultaneously at different locations, but may be traced to megalithic stone circles and other megalithic structures with possible astronomical connections originating in the Middle East, specifically in the Fertile Crescent area. The effort of ancient societies to erect these astronomical megalithic sites and to maintain a corpus of astronomy experts does not appear excessive.
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Are some cosmologists trying to return human beings to the centre of the cosmos? In the view of some critics, the so-called anthropic principle is a desperate attempt to salvage a scrap of dignity for our species after a few centuries of demotion at the hands of science. It is all things archaic and backwards - teleology, theology, religion, anthropocentrism - trying to sneak back in scientific camouflage. We argue that this is a mistake. The anthropic principle is not mere human arrogance, nor is it religion in disguise. It is a necessary part of the science of the universe.
The first time one of us (G.P.) encountered Earle was in Summer 1966, when she was directed to study Earles papers on radiative corrections to quasi-elastic electron scattering. The suggestion had come from Bruno Touschek, at the time head of the theoretical physics group at the Frascati National Laboratories near Rome. About the same time, Earle came from MIT to visit University of Rome and Frascati. G.P. was a young post-graduate, who had studied Earles papers and was awed by his already impressive scientific figure. After almost 40 years had passed, Earle visited Italy with his wife Ruth, making Frascati their base for an extended visit of almost a month. They were housed in what was then the laboratory hostel for foreign visitors, a small villa higher up above the hill, toward the town of Frascati. Since then, we became close friends, a friendship which included both his family and ours, and which has been very important for us. In memory of that first visit and in gratitude for the many years of friendship, we will tell here a story of infrared radiative corrections to charged particle scattering, to which Earles papers gave an important contribution.
Accurate programming is a practical approach to producing high quality programs. It combines ideas from test-automation, test-driven development, agile programming, and other state of the art software development methods. In addition to building on approaches that have proven effective in practice, it emphasizes concepts that help programmers sharpen their understanding of both the problems they are solving and the solutions they come up with. This is achieved by encouraging programmers to think about programs in terms of properties.
Edwin Powel Hubble is regarded as one of the most important astronomers of 20th century. In despite of his great contributions to the field of astronomy, he never received the Nobel Prize because astronomy was not considered as the field of the Nobel Prize in Physics at that era. There is an anecdote about the relation between Hubble and the Nobel Prize. According to this anecdote, the Nobel Committee decided to award the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1953 to Hubble as the first Nobel laureate as an astronomer (Christianson 1995). However, Hubble was died just before its announcement, and the Nobel prize is not awarded posthumously. Documents of the Nobel selection committee are open after 50 years, thus this anecdote can be verified. I confirmed that the Nobel selection committee endorsed Frederik Zernike as the Nobel laureate in Physics in 1953 on September 15th, 1953, which is 13 days before the Hubbles death in September 28th, 1953. I also confirmed that Hubble and Henry Norris Russell were nominated but they are not endorsed because the Committee concluded their astronomical works were not appropriate for the Nobel Prize in Physics.
This paper examines the predictions made by Chinese, Muslim and Jesuit astronomers of the eclipse of 21 June 1629 in Beijing, allegedly the event that determined Emperor Chongzhens resolution to reform the calendar using the Western method. In order to establish the accuracy of these predictions, as reported at the time by the Chinese scholar and convert Xu Guangqi, we have compared them with an accurate reconstruction of the eclipse made at NASA. In contrast with current opinions, we argue that the prediction made by the Jesuits was indeed the most accurate. It was in fact instrumental in dissipating Chongzhens doubts about the need to entrust Jesuit missionaries serving at the Chinese court with the task of reforming the calendar, leading to the first important scientific collaboration between Europe and China.
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