saturno2 wrote:
How the Maya astronomers made observations of the sky without the
modern instruments?
The same way we do. A great deal can be learned with the eyes alone, or with simple instruments like transit circles.
Venus is particularly visible:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venus wrote:
<<The planet Venus was important to the Maya civilization, who developed a religious calendar based in part upon its motions, and held the motions of Venus to determine the propitious time for events such as war. They named it Noh Ek', the Great Star, and Xux Ek', the Wasp Star. The Maya were aware of the planet's synodic period, and could compute it to within a hundredth part of a day>>
Chris Peterson wrote:
saturno2 wrote:
How they "saw" the dark side of the Moon?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012_phenomenon wrote:
December 2012 marks the conclusion of a b'ak'tun—a time period in the Mesoamerican Long Count calendar which was used in Central America prior to the arrival of Europeans. Although the Long Count was most likely invented by the Olmec, it has become closely associated with the Maya civilization, whose classic period lasted from 250 to 900 AD.
saturno2 wrote:How they "saw" the dark side of the Moon?
The Moon does not have a dark side. It does have a side which is never seen from Earth. What makes you think they saw it?
Rob
Rob you are right
I wrote : the dark side of the Moon ( error)
Correct: " It does have a side wich is never seen from Earth"
Several sources say the Maya knew the side of the Moon is never seen from Earth.
saturno2 wrote:
How they "saw" the dark side of the Moon?
The Moon does not have a dark side.
It does have a side which is never seen from Earth.
http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap951128.html wrote:
Explanation: In 1994, the space probe Clementine spent 70 days in lunar orbit mapping the Moon's surface. Shown above is a dramatically detailed composite view centered on the Moon's South Pole constructed from 1500 Clementine images. The top half shows the part of the Moon which faces the Earth while the bottom half is the lunar Farside. The images reveal a major depression very near the South Pole itself, probably caused by the impact of a comet or asteroid. The shadow region near the impact site is extensive and may be permanent - creating an area cold enough to trap water of cometary origin as ice.
Explanation: Is there enough water on the moon to sustain future astronauts? Last year, to help find out, scientists crashed the moon-orbiting LCROSS spacecraft into a permanently shadowed crater near the Moon's South Pole. New analyses of the resulting plume from Cabeus crater indicate more water than previously thought, possibly about six percent. Additionally, an instrument on the separate LRO spacecraft that measures neutrons indicates that even larger lunar expanses -- most not even permanently shadowed -- may also contain a significant amount of buried frozen water. Pictured above from LRO, areas in false-color blue indicate the presence of soil relatively rich in hydrogen, which is thought likely bound to sub-surface water ice. Conversely, the red areas are likely dry. The location of the Moon's South Pole is also digitally marked on the image. How deep beneath the surface the ice crystals permeate is still unknown, as well as how difficult it would be to mine the crystals and purify them into drinking water.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moon wrote:
<<The 2008, Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft has since confirmed the existence of surface water ice, using the on-board Moon Mineralogy Mapper. The spectrometer observed absorption lines common to hydroxyl, in reflected sunlight, providing evidence of large quantities of water ice, on the lunar surface. The spacecraft showed that concentrations may possibly be as high as 1,000 ppm. In 2009, LCROSS sent a 2300 kg impactor into a permanently shadowed polar crater, and detected at least 100 kg of water in a plume of ejected material. Another examination of the LCROSS data showed the amount of detected water, to be closer to 155 kilograms.>>
As 2012 draws to a close, many websites, books and cable television shows are erroneously predicting the end of the world. These claims range from fears that a rogue planet is heading toward Earth, to solar flares torching our planet.
David Morrison, a senior scientist and astrobiologist at NASA's Ames Research Center is working to inform the public that each of the claims are false and there is no reason that December 21, 2012 will be different from any other day on Earth.
Know the quiet place within your heart and touch the rainbow of possibility; be
alive to the gentle breeze of communication, and please stop being such a jerk. — Garrison Keillor
BMAONE23 wrote:
Well, Here it is, Saturday 12-22-12 in Australia and the world goes on. Go Figure
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_the_Beach_%281959_film%29 wrote:
On the Beach (1959) is a post-apocalyptic drama film directed by Stanley Kramer and written by John Paxton, based on Nevil Shute's 1957 novel of the same name and starring Gregory Peck, Ava Gardner, Fred Astaire and Anthony Perkins. The story is set in a then-future 1964, in the months following World War III. The conflict has devastated the northern hemisphere, polluting the atmosphere with nuclear fallout and killing all life. While the bombs were confined to the northern hemisphere, air currents are slowly carrying the fallout south. The only areas still habitable are in the far southern hemisphere, like Australia.
Julian Osborne: The trouble with you is you want a simple answer. There isn't any. The war started when people accepted the idiotic principle that peace could be maintained - - by arranging to defend themselves with weapons they couldn't possibly use - - without committing suicide. Everybody had an atomic bomb, and counter-bombs, and counter-counter bombs. The devices outgrew us; we couldn't control them. I know, I helped build them. Somewhere, some poor bloke probably looked at a radar screen and thought he saw something. He knew that if he hesitated for a second that his own country would be wiped off the map. So he pushed a button and the world went crazy.
] back in 1970.
Water Ice Detected Beneath Moons Surface
