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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.
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 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 the
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 a
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
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