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Is Atlas Holding Hipparchus' Lost Star Map?
cr0kin0le writes "The Farnese Atlas at the Naples National Archaeological Museum may be holding a celestial globe which accurately depicts the long-lost star catalog of Hipparchus, according to a physics professor at Louisiana State University."
Why the hell did you link Wikipedia in the blurb, now I can't karma whore...
And how come nobody found this out sooner?
Look at the little peepee on atlas!!!
LOL!!!
In the NYTimes.com picture, they added a leaf... Is this some American thing? /European
A)bort, R)etry or S)elf-destruct?
That's pretty cool. The scientists/naturalists/etc. of the past may have had a more primitive understanding of the universe, but they weren't stupid. It's amazing to think that they figured out so much about the sky so long ago with so few tools, when today most people don't have a working knowledge that even comes close to matching it.
From the FA: picture without leaf
DROS - Open-Source Robot Software
Oops! I read the article but overlooked that first link. I guess I subconsciously ignored it because its placement made it look like a link to the username of the submitter. Obviously it is not, but what can I say, it's late. :D
> Hmm.. Anyone else notice that the statue has a fig leaf over the groin in one photograph, but not the other? Did it fall off recently, or what?
No, it's just the pre-Ashcroft and post-Ashcroft versions.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
In America the human body is something to be ashamed and disgusted at and shocked about...
As if each person doesn't have one...
> Look at the little peepee on atlas!!!
We'll never fit that on the CD cover!
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
A sculpture probably isn't going to show enough detail, but old charts are interesting as they can show stars as being brighter or dimmer than they are today. For example, in the mid 19th century Eta Carinae was the second brightest star in the sky (after Sirius), now it's almost invisible to the naked eye (around 5th magnitude IIRC). The bright stars Castor and Pollux in Gemini were around the same magnitude, now Castor is dimmer (the brighter Pollux is still 'beta Geminorum'). I wonder what Hipparchos might have seen that we dont see now?
I am sure if we cut it off, noone would object anymore....
Errr...
In the NYTimes.com picture, they added a leaf... Is this some American thing?
Of course The American Version Is The Correct Version. Don't trust Our Media?
The danish version is just a filthy porn version from this well-known immoral little country.
I don't need a signature.
Reading this story, the most amazing thing to me was to think of the Chaldeans of Babylon laboriously making observations over at least half a millenium, before Hipparchus came along. Beats the story of Tycho Brahe, Johannes Kepler and Isaac Newton.
Here's an image of statue unaltered by US press: http://www.timelessmyths.com/classical/gallery/atl as.gif
Ludwig Wittgenstein
So there's a star map in Naples?
Now all I need to do is find all the other Star Maps to locate the Star Forge and defeat Darth Malak.....
May the force be with me....
READY.
PRINT ""+-0
I just ran it though several different filtering methods and plugins in photoshop that make editing/compositioning clearer, and it appears the leaf is legit. This doesn't prove it wasn't placed there just for the photograph or the current day statue has it there, but it more then likely was not photoshopped on.
For those of you who don't catch the reference, this is the story: (or, rather, the debunking of the story)
"The Breast was pretty quiet during the eight years of Janet Reno. As one peeved administration official puts it, "No cameraman was ever at Reno's feet, trying to get a shot of her with that thing." But Minnie Lou's outstanding feature stormed back with Ashcroft. When President Bush visited the Justice Department to rededicate the building to Robert Kennedy, his advance men insisted on a nice blue backdrop: "TV blue," infinitely preferable to the usual dingy background of the Great Hall. Everyone thought the backdrop worked nicely -- made for "good visuals," as they say. This was Deaverism, pure and simple. Ashcroft's people intended to keep using it.
An advance woman on his team had the bright idea of buying the backdrop: It would be cheaper than renting it repeatedly. So she did -- without Ashcroft's knowledge, without his permission, without his caring, everyone in the department insists.
But ABC put out the story that Ashcroft, the old prude, had wanted the Breast covered up, so much did it offend his churchly sensibilities. New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd, ever clever, wrote that Ashcroft had forced a "blue burka" on Minnie Lou. Comedians had a field day (and are still having it). The Washington Post has devoted great space to the story, letting Cher, for example, tee off on it -- as she went on to do on David Letterman's show.
And yet the story is complete and total bunk. First, Ashcroft had nothing to do with the purchase of the backdrop. Second, the backdrop had nothing to do with Breast aversion. But the story was just "too good to check," as we say, and it will probably live forever. Generations from now, if we're reading about John Ashcroft, we will read that he was the boob who draped the Boob. The story is ineffaceable."
When things get complex, multiply by the complex conjugate.
I believe the original Greek name was "Grunting Under The Burden of Astronomy."
"OH SHIT, THERE'S A HORSE IN THE HOSPITAL!"
I put on my hat and my whip.
/John Sjolander, project manager Contribio
An article about one of the greatest scientists of antiquity, yet most comments here seem to be about Atlas' schlong.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
I can see his wiener hehehehehehe.
I knew the french were that small but the greeks too?
They found it atlassed!
See what I did there?
~~Every few years or so I'm accidentally fashionable!
Whoa, now that's a content rich Wikipedia article. :-S
so does it tell you where Salvatore di Giacomo, Lorenzo Bernini, Gaetano Filangieri, and Enrico De Nicola used to live?
don't even know where Europe lies.
They probably think its a town in western Penssylvania or something.
Slashdot: stuff for news, nerds that matter, matter for news, stuff that nerd
Guess that explains the Simpsons. What about the other 290 million?
Ok, Homer turns to drink once in a while, but in which episode(s) did Bart rob a bank, Lisa become a pregnant crack addict and Marge become a whore?
Only to idiots, are orders laws.
-- Henning von Tresckow
My god, It's full of stars!
Maybe I'm being overly suspicious, but you look to me like a European karma whore. What true American would call Denmark "well-known"?
To quote the Guardian "...the British Museum's decision to chip off all the penises on Greek statues in its possession, to save the blushes of its Victorian visitors. (This act of egregious vandalism is remediable; the penises lie in a drawer at the museum and can be restored.)"
J.
You're only jealous cos the little penguins are talking to me.
He's also carrying the plans for our ultimate weapon. If the rebels get a hold of it, we're doomed!
You just added another such post in this thread.
This map also reminds us that astrology is complete bullshit since due to equinox precession ("wobbling" in the article) zodiac signs have changed once since the Romans and twice since the Egyptians devised occidental astrology. Makes the system of prediction wrong in principle...
Google passes Turing test : see my journal
Fear herd mentality: fear your fear of what others might think of you.
Preserve old classics: copy your collection onto all hard drives.
In America, you can have a statue without a fig leaf, and no one is going to arrest you. In Europe it is illegal to wear a Nazi symbol, and illegal to wear a Muslim head covering to school.
Hm. I think I like the American's "prudish" free speech better than the European's "liberated" suppressed speech.
"We receive as friendly that which agrees with, we resist with dislike that which opposes us" - Faraday
there is a tub boy now?
I here its george W...
Astronomy is not the Flinstones version of TV, it was developed by many cultures as a way to measure time. The invention of Agriculture depended on ancient astronomy and before that hunter-gathers used it to find seasonal fruits and game. Astronomy's importance to the ancients is built into thier monuments, art, religion and buildings. This has now grown into modern science that gives many people today the technology to be ignorant about thier surroundings and still survive.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
Hm. "Unleafed". Maybe that should be the "autumn" version. :P
Trolls lurk everywhere. Mod them down.
He calculated, within six and a half minutes, the length of a year That's some pretty fast calculating...
It took him less than six and a half minutes to calculate the leangth of a year?
That's pretty impressive.
Those who sacrifice security to condemn liberty deserve to repeat history or something. - Benjamin Santayana
The Farnese Atlas is an interesting example of [1] lost knowledge being rediscovered, [2] ancient wisdom forgotten during the Dark Ages, and what do we get?
Slashdot entertains. Windows pays the mortgage.
Among his other acts were the declaration (after a vote, no less) that the Pope was infallible (which, because he, the Pope, was infallible, must be right - right?) and the abduction of a jewish couple's child after the child had been secretly baptised by a servant, on the grounds that a 'christian' child must be brought up by christians. Nutter.
Incidentally, it has been suggested that his empire-building paved the way for the powerful modern vatican, and was a direct response to the formation of the modern state of Italy, which had removed a lot of the power of the church. So possibly not such a nutter. Nah, only kidding: Nutter!
Justin.
You're only jealous cos the little penguins are talking to me.
See, loads less than six-and-a-half minutes.
J.
You're only jealous cos the little penguins are talking to me.
Will it help me find my home planet?
-- juggling flaming chainsaws --
Ancient beliefs combined stars, religion, navigation and folk heroes into a single "art" of "myth". One fascinating, though really long, essay regarding their involution, is called Hamlet's Mill. I wonder how this map could be decoded to learn more about who the Neapolitans, and their cartographic predecessor, Hipparchus, had "commerce" with.
--
make install -not war
The NYT, "All the News That's Fit to Print", is entirely devoted to fig leafs, especially for the famous people who shoulder the burdens of the world (like American politicians).
--
make install -not war
Catholics like Rudy Giuliani, who shut down the Brooklyn Museum when it showed a painting of Jesus's mom that offended his personally unique sense of religion.
--
make install -not war
Newton penned over a millon words on the significance of the number 666, does the fact that he was a numeroligist and alchemist negate his contribution? Also don't underestimate Guttenberg's role in the sudden knowlage explosion of Europe in the late 1500's and the compulsory education campains of the Victorian era giving humanity another "boost". The Greeks could just as rightly be called the founders of a mathematical system that has lead humanity to today's understanding of the "the physical universe".
I think it is an advatage to humanity that we had both the ancient and the not so ancient and we should respect and learn from all of our ancestors, misty, nameless or otherwise. It's is quite possible (some would say almost certain) that humanity will enter another dark age and most of our system and it's knowlage will be lost.
I have no idea who the Chaldeans were but they survied at least 1000yrs and by your definition "science" has only 400 under it's belt. I don't think science was invented 400 or 2000 yrs ago, it has been with us (in some form) since we climbed down from the trees.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
Thanks, now I can't take the goddamn Indiana Jones theme song out of my head.
Cheers,
Adolfo
The linked photo is from the Naples Archeological Museum (Museo Archeologico Nazionale di Napoli). The NYTimes photo is from the Griffith Observatory in LA. Hence they're not necessarily the same piece of stone, and the latter may be a copy of the original in Naples. On another porn-related note, the Naples Museum is well known across the world for its beloved "Secret Room," full of sexually explicit artifacts dug up from Pompeii and other Roman sites. That, along with the awesome mosaics, are well worth the trip to Naples. Naples has a bad rap for a being unsafe (and parts of it are) but anyone going to Italy should surely go.
Interesting. I guess the way I would come down on this topic would be that what France may need is more free speech, not less. Preventing aggression may be better achieved by letting people express themselves. Repression often breeds animosity.
I'm not clear how allowing religious expression would "leads to" agression. A Muslim women wears a head scarf as a sign of respect. A Christians wears a cross as a sign of devotion. These are just expressions of personal piety, and pretty tame ones at that.
What are the French worried about? That a Muslim is going to see a Christian and bash them over the head?
In the U.S., hundreds of thousands of Muslims live, work, play, and worship in the same neighborhoods as people of other faiths. I believe something like the world's second-largest Muslim population is in America, in fact.
So, it is possible to live together in peace.
Perhaps having a guarantee of free speech that cannot be taken away by any law is what helps avoid conflict.
"We receive as friendly that which agrees with, we resist with dislike that which opposes us" - Faraday
.... the word "context".
It will be an enlightening experience, you trying to appear "cultivated" but ignore the context in which swastikas exist.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
However, we dont use it as an excuse to violently rip away the culture and traditions of those that choose not to immediately and completely conform.
What in the world are you talking about? Can you give an example of what you mean?
"We receive as friendly that which agrees with, we resist with dislike that which opposes us" - Faraday
Not everybody is a few minutes drive from a place where they can have a reasonable view of the sky unimpeded by artificial light.
If the Lapland is the best you can come off with then it is just one samll confirmation of how difficult it is to watch a clean sky.
I was not able to experience a clean sky until I had a chance to go to the Namib desert, pretty much in the middle of nowhere....
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
no text.
Sam
I have two young children and I absolutely WILL NOT put up with them being shown any nudity without my permission
Kid's do what they see, not what they are told to do. You are teaching them to be ashamed of nudity.
As their father it is up to me to decide what they see and what they don't
A parent doesn't OWN their children. A parent is the GUARDIAN of their children. But children are independent living beings that are slowly coming into the world of adults. You can't imprison their minds.
They have acted in good faith and given me the choice
Perhaps they lied about the reality of the statue... isn't that bad faith?
It's called responsible parenting. Never think of that, little 18 year old.
It sounds to me like you'll have a few 18 year olds in your house one day. Better prepare yourself for the worst.
Life and parenting isn't as simple as jumping on the moral high ground.
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
From TFA: "The cast of Michelangelo's David, taken from the original marble figure now in the Accademia di Belle Arti in Florence, was an early and unexpected acquisition for the fledgling Museum at South Kensington."
The Victorians were notoriously prudish, making even current America look downright debaucherous..."A letter sent to the Museum in 1903 by a Mr Dobson complained about the statuary displayed: 'One can hardly designate these figures as "art"; if it is, it is a very objectionable form of art.'" Course, some philistine woman in Florida had this to say about David: "'I didn't even know it was art,' said Jeanne Johnson, owner of a nearby barber shop, who complained about the 5ft concrete statue. 'To me, it's just a naked man standing on the side of the road. Once the girls saw it, I found myself in a position where I had to explain what a penis is.'" Talk about a sex-o-phobe...
Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored. - Aldous Huxley
Browsing at +1, the topic contains 181 comments in 3 threads. The majority (like, 175 comments) are in "What's up with the modified statue", discussing a frigging fig leaf. /., what else did you expect")
# of comments saying "Cool that we found this ancient star map", or otherwise even remotely related to astronomy: zero.
(yeah, I know, "this is
So I'll say it: Cool that we found this ancient star map. Pity we don't have Hipparchus' complete works, though.
If the ancient Romans carved a statue of Atlas holding a globe then they must have known the Earth is a sphere. What took the rest of us so long to figure it out?
Sorry, what I meant to say was I have heard that the U.S. has the second-largest expatriate Muslim population (Muslims not living in a Muslim-majority country.) I didn't mean to imply that more Muslims live in the U.S. than in Indonesia!
"We receive as friendly that which agrees with, we resist with dislike that which opposes us" - Faraday
The rule is that I grew up in a land where nude bathing was considered the norm and wearing clothes was for the tourists. So I remember being at the beach at age 12 with lots of other people around, completely naked, independent of age and gender. Yes, there were complete families there, from little child up to the grand parents sitting together naked and going for a swim.
;)
The most arousing moment for me was when I noticed that a girl didn't take off her pants. I was for at least 20mins wondering how she might have looked underneath. It never occured to me that I should have been aroused by people being naked.
Then there was a lake not far away from my parents home. When I went there the first time, it was uses half of the beach by nude swimmers, the other half by people prefering textiles around them. A year later it was a nude beach only. And this without any regularies around. It just happened.
And then I was partaking at a triathlon competition. The swimming part took place at another lake not far from my parents home. There were ropes around the changing zone and the place at the beach where the athletes entered the lake and left it after the swimming distance. The places behind the ropes were crowded by nude spectators watching intensely the neoprene-clad people fighting for a good starting position at the competition.
Lets put it like this: In it's true sence of word, all about nudity depends on how you look at it
...I might as well go to lunch (like I wasn't having ENOUGH trouble keeping my mind on my work...and to think I actually believed Slashdot might take my mind OFF of boobies for a few minutes...)
This space intentionally left (almost) blank.
On the other hand, you might have a point in that diet plays a role in vision. (Oh, and to answer your question, glasses were likely invented around 1280, at least according to Wikipedia, grains of salt implied.
This sig has absolutely no significance and serves only to take up screen space and waste the time of the reader.
Atlas. Divine. Was that pun intentional? :)
It has been suggested that Newton here was taking a subtle jab at his rival Hooke, who was of short stature (5'0") and self-conscious of it.
"Mr. Rearden," said Francisco, his voice solemnly calm, "if you saw Atlas, the giant who holds the world on his shoulders, if you saw that he stood, blood running down his chest, his knees buckling, his arms trembling but still trying to hold the world aloft with the last of his strength, and the greater his effort the heavier the world bore down upon his shoulders - what would you tell him to do?"
"I... don't know. What... could he do? What would you tell him?"
"To shrug."
Circumcision is child abuse.
You think prudish American are a tiny minority? Methinks you come from the flakey pinko liberal infidel traitorous blue-state minority coastlands--not the stable, patriotic heartlands that form the flesh and blood of this great country. May you all slide into the ocean, you demonic evildoers!
:-)
Whoops, am I overstating something?
Cheers
curiousity is killing this cat. ....must...hold....lunch...down...
I mod down so you can mod up. Your welcome.
The basis of Christian (Catholic and Protestant) ethics concerning sexual behaviour is the concept of "defrauding". In this context, to defraud someone is to arouse desires that cannot be righteously (or practically, for you libertines) fulfilled. Pornography is the ultimate in sexual defrauding, hence it condemned. Solomon puts it more positively, "I adjour you, awake not my love till it pleases." In other words, don't arouse me until the time is right and we can enjoy it to the utmost. (We don't need to be reminded of how Solomon did not exactly set a good example of sexual restraint. He regretted it afterward.)
However, the precise stimuli which result in inappropriate arousal is very culturally relative. A Christian family I know was visited by a Christian family from Russia. They met them at the airport, and the American wife gave all of their visitors a big hug. Later, they discovered that this made the Russians very uncomfortable. (This may reflect a particular subculture in Russia, and not Russians in general.)
My sister spent some years in the jungle in Papua New Gunea. The Christian women there were very few clothes, often going topless due to the climate. This did not seem to provoke the wrong response in the men. (Although I've heard that it does for American boys reading National Geographic.) Strangely, the Papua women were shocked by magazine photos of American women in bikinis. Objectively, the bikinis represented more cloth than what the Papua women wore, but there was something about the facial expression and body language that said "come hither", and thus became pornography.
One more thing, Eros is exclusive and jealous by nature. Promiscuous behaviour does not contradict this. When that special someone says to us, "I love you!", we are thrilled. When we discover that they are saying the same thing to 10 other people, we are not so thrilled. Some people have expressed the idea that pornography might be appropriate within marriage (or whatever you libertines want to use as a substitute). However, because an image rather than the beloved becomes the source of arousal, it diminishes Eros and cheats both partners.
(.)
Me, showing you my hairy arse. And I'm not ashamed. I'd love to show you it IRL. Seriously. The shame is entirely yours (cf Jebus, if he existed, died for his own sins, not mine. I'd show him my arse too)
A whole first page of comments and hardly a one is actually about the star map. You want to discuss plaster penises go here:
p ://www.selfregulation.info/iapcoda/0405-press- report-dl.html (in europe anyway, couldn't find a US one.)
http://www.fcc.gov/cgb/complaints.html
or
htt
IANALOOA
Dude, your girlfriend isn't even alive. And I think the pee-pee option is built into the "xtreem watersportz edition".
It's not offtopic, dumbass. It's orthogonal.
Cool, this coincides perfectly with my purchase of Starry Night a few days ago. I never knew much about astronomy, but I've learned tons in the last few days of playing with it, and I totally understand, technically, what this guy did re: Hipparchus, whereas I'm sure I wouldn't have really understood it just last week. (i.e., how the ecliptic precesses relative to the celestial equator.)
Starry Night is definitely the coolest program I've purchased in a long time. (I swear I'm not a shill!) Great for planning photo shoots, too.
No doubt Sidney Bristow will shortly show up, any moment now, in something skin tight and cut to there, then will see if Atlas is REALLY made of stone or not.
No doubt pushing the correct combination of constellations will reveal Rimbaldi artifact #4,236,319 which will lead to yet further plot confusion.
And more skimpy outfits and multicolored wigs!
Well it is very difficult for me to think of any connection between Greeks and caves... BTW it seems that you have not the slightest knowledge of Plato's books. I would recommend you to read "Timeus" and "Crito". It will enhance your ability to discuss and it will improve your manners. But most important it will help you put the "tale of Eden" in its correct perspective.
I guess the question would be whether they were really asking for your ethnicity or for your location of birth. I'm caucasian no matter where I was born (and boy am I white...). I think part of the problem is that it's become politically correct to not refer to an ethnicity by a term like Mongoloid or Negroid. Therefore, we get terms like "Asian" or "African American" that refer to locations rather than ethnicity.
This sig has absolutely no significance and serves only to take up screen space and waste the time of the reader.