Special Astronomy Issue

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Check it out!

[The Code]

Have you seen the last latest issue? There is a great story in it about the early universe and another that black holes came first..... black holes huh... The mystery.

Mark

[aristarchusinexile]

Why isn't that woman in the kitchen instead of the Study!

[BMAONE23]

I like those stories listed at the top:
Bird for the Band, Sex Roles Lose Appeal, & Batteling Hepatitis C

[bystander]

I like those stories listed at the top:
Bird for the Band, Sex Roles Lose Appeal, & Batteling Hepatitis C

Yes, just what I would be looking for in an astronomy magazine.

[neufer]

Why isn't that woman in the kitchen instead of the Study!

Finnegans Wake page 4: "Arms apeal with larms, appalling."

• _____ Sex Roles Lose Appeal.
  -------------------------------------------------
  Males, females swap sex-role stereotypes
  Analysis finds that mating strategies are not universal
  By Bruce Bower, May 23rd, 2009; Vol.175 #11 (p. 5)
  
  <<Chuck that nonsense about “men are from Mars, women are from Venus.” Here on Earth, the sexes play the mating game with a flexible set of rules. A new study suggests that scientists should abandon the idea that males evolved to be promiscuous and females to be selective.
  
  Combined data from 18 modern and traditional societies show greater overall variation in reproductive success for men than for women — with some men producing lots of children with multiple partners and other men conceiving few or no children, say psychologist Gillian Brown of the University of St. Andrews in Fife, Scotland, and her colleagues. Women tend to have a handful of children.
  
  In the past, researchers have treated this pattern as a sign of universal mating tendencies, with women limiting how many children they bear and men conceiving as many children as possible.
  
  Yet the same pattern of distinctive male and female sex roles doesn’t appear when many of these same 18 societies are examined individually, Brown’s group reports in the June Trends in Ecology & Evolution. In monogamous societies and even in some polygynous ones, where men can have more than one wife or mate, men and women can have similar variation in the number of children they produce, the scientists find.
  
  Monogamous societies in the new study included Pitcairn Islanders in the South Pacific, Dobe !Kung hunter-gatherers in southern Africa and 19th century Swedes. Polygynous societies displaying comparable or only slightly unequal patterns of reproductive success for men and women included Aka hunter-gatherers in central Africa, Hadza hunter-gatherers in southern Africa and nomadic Yomut Turkmen in Iran.
  
  “Half of the populations we studied had similar variations in male and female reproductive success, which is inconsistent with universal stereotypes of passive, discriminating females and promiscuous males,” Brown says.
  
  Looking at the data all together, patterns of reproductive success were skewed by data from a few polygynous societies in which small numbers of men conceived the bulk of the offspring, the researchers contend. Examples of this pattern came from the DOGON and Kipsigis, both in Africa.>>
  ------------------------------------------------------------

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sirius_Mystery
.
<<The Sirius Mystery is a book by Robert K. G. Temple first published
in 1976. It presents the hypothesis that the DOGON people of Mali,
west Africa, preserve a tradition of contact with intelligent
extraterrestrial beings from the Sirius star-system. These beings, who
apparently taught the arts of civilization to humans, are claimed in
the book to have originated the systems of the Pharaohs of Egypt, the
mythology of Greek civilization, the Epic of Gilgamesh, and so on.
Temple's theory was heavily based on his interpretation of the work of
ethnographers Marcel Griaule and Germaine Dieterlen. A substantial
bulk of The Sirius Mystery consists of comparative linguistic and
mythological scholarship, pointing out resemblances among DOGON,
Egyptian and Sumerian beliefs and symbols. Greek and Arab myths and
words are considered to a lesser extent. The “mystery” that is central
to the book is how the DOGON acquired knowledge of Sirius B, the
invisible companion star of Sirius A. Temple did not argue that the
only way that the DOGON could have obtained their accurate information
on Sirius B was by contact with an advanced civilization; he
considered alternative possibilities, such as a very ancient,
advanced, and lost civilization that was behind the sudden appearance
of advanced civilization in both Egypt and Sumeria. He personally
found the theory of alien contact more convincing, but he did not
claim certainty about it.

However, *serious doubts* have been raised about the reliability of
Griaule and Dieterlein's work on which The Sirius Mystery is based,
and alternative explanations have been proposed.

* Astronomer Carl Sagan dealt with the issue in his book Broca's Brain
(1979), stating that there are many problems with Temple's hypothesis.
As an example Sagan mentions that the DOGON seem to have no knowledge
of another planet beyond Saturn which has rings, which would suggest
that their knowledge is more likely from European, and not extra-
terrestrial sources.

* Another astronomer, Ian Ridpath, points out in an article in the
Skeptical Inquirer (1978), "The whole DOGON legend of Sirius and its
companions is riddled with ambiguities, contradictions, and downright
errors, at least if we try to interpret it literally". Ridpath stated
that while the information that the DOGON probably gained from
Europeans to some extent resembles the facts about Sirius, the
presumed original DOGON knowledge on the star is very far from the
facts. Ridpath concluded that the information that resembles the facts
about Sirius was probably ascertained by way of cultural
contamination. More recent research suggests that the contaminator was
Griaule himself.

* Journalist and skeptic James Oberg collected claims that have
appeared concerning DOGON mythology in his 1982 book. According to
Oberg, the DOGON's astronomical information resembles the knowledge
and speculations of European astronomical knowledge of the late 1920s.
The DOGON could have gotten their astronomical knowledge, including
the information on Sirius, from European visitors before their
mythology was recorded in the 1930s. Oberg also points out that the
DOGONs were not an isolated tribe, and thus it was not even necessary
for outsiders to inform the DOGON about Sirius B. They could very well
have acquired such knowledge abroad, passing it on to their tribe
later. (Sirius B was first observed in 1862, and had been predicted in
1844 on dynamic grounds. However, Oberg does concede that such
assumptions of recent acquisition is "entirely circumstantial" and has
no foundation in documented evidence and concludes that it seems
likely that the Sirius mystery will remain exactly what its title
implies; a mystery.) In this way, by the time Griaule visited the
DOGON they had had a great deal of contact with the western world and
had time to incorporate Sirius B into their religion. However, Oberg
does concede that such assumptions of recent acquisition is "entirely
circumstantial".

* One unexplained aspect of the reported DOGON culture is the
assertion that the DOGON knew of another star in the Sirius system,
Emme Ya, or "larger than Sirus B but lighter and dim in magnitude." A
dynamical study published in 1995 concluded that the presence of a
third star orbiting Sirius could not be ruled out. However, a more
recent study found no observational evidence for such a body in the
sky region around Sirius, though the reported observations still do
not eliminate the possibility of a second companion but now confines
the search to the more central 30 arcsec region around Sirius.
.
Temple's book and the debates that followed its release publicized the
existence of the DOGON tribe among many New Age followers and
proponents of ancient astronaut theories. Speculation about the DOGON
on numerous websites is now mingled with fact, leading to wide
misunderstanding among the public about DOGON mythology. Temple,
however, has stated in the reprint of The Sirius Mystery (1999) that
he in no way supports cults that have been inspired by his book.>>
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What are the two things wrong with this picture?

[Loco]

What are the two things wrong with this picture?

'G' and 'Y' ( or 12 and 73 on your Lylgrhm Scale)

[bystander]

http://www.sciencenews.org/view/downloa ... nomy_Issue

[Chris Peterson]

What are the two things wrong with this picture?

Are there just two things? I'd start with the fact that there's an Iridium flare happening in front of the shaded part of the Moon, but the style of clothes strongly suggests this is depicting a scene before any Iridium satellites were launched. And I have to wonder what that doofus is trying to see with the room lights turned on bright enough to cast shadows.

[neufer]

What are the two things wrong with this picture?

Are there just two things? I'd start with the fact that there's an Iridium flare happening in front of the shaded part of the Moon, but the style of clothes strongly suggests this is depicting a scene before any Iridium satellites were launched. And I have to wonder what that doofus is trying to see with the room lights turned on bright enough to cast shadows.

The second "astronomical" thing is only a problem if the children aren't living in New Zealand (like my nephew & niece are now).

[Chris Peterson]

The second "astronomical" thing is only a problem if the children aren't living in New Zealand (like my nephew & niece are now).

I'm not seeing it. Do you recognize a star pattern that isn't consistent with the season or the hemisphere? Are you seeing something with the orientation of the Moon that couldn't be explained by these guys observing in the early morning?

[neufer]

Are you seeing something with the orientation of the Moon that couldn't be explained by these guys observing in the early morning?

If they had the gumption to get (or stay) up ~ 3:00 am to star gaze they would be outside, wouldn't they?

Right handed illustrators are too lazy to portray the crescent moon properly.

[BMAONE23]

There is also a star within the disk of the moon

[neufer]

There is also a star within the disk of the moon

Uh-oh, Chris missed one!

[Chris Peterson]

There is also a star within the disk of the moon

Uh-oh, Chris missed one! :wink:

No I didn't. I just twisted my interpretation a bit.