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."

Comments

Re:What's up with the modified statue?

[Tony Hoyle]

Probably an american thing.

Remember this is the country that ground to a virtual halt at the sight of half a breast.

Re:Interesting stuff

[dn15]

That's because most people now have better things to do than look up in the sky at night. Those people of the past didn't really have much else to entertain themselves with.

Yes, people have much better things to do today. Why waste time learning stuff when you have an Xbox and the next episode of The Bachelorette is almost on?

the amazing chaldeans

[xconfig]

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.

Re:the amazing chaldeans

[gilroy]

Blockquoth the poster:

Beats the story of Tycho Brahe, Johannes Kepler and Isaac Newton.

Ah, yes, yet another tale wherein the ancient peoples outdo their modern imitators. Except for the whole "found a system of the world wherein the mode of learning is a self-correcting, self-perpetuating mechanism that leads to heights, depths, and breadths of knowledge undreamt of four centuries ago, much less twenty."

I don't know much about the Chaldeans' observations, so I'll concede that they might have outstripped Tycho. But I'm fairly certain that they did not point out that the planets move in ellipses with the Sun at one focus, or that the orbits of any planet sweeps out equal areas in equal time, or that the period of a planet's orbit is proportional to the 3/2 power of its distance from the Sun (OK, technically, its semi-major axis). So, advantage: Kepler.

And I am absolutely certain that they did not then note that a universal attraction of each planet for the others actually pulls them off said ellipses and causes a more complex motion -- let alone actually providing a method to correct for this -- oh, and incidentally, crafting a system of mechanics that not only allows one to build skyscrapers and suspension bridges but leads to investigations and methods that eventually discover electromagnetism, relativty, and quantum mechanics.

So I think advantage: Newton, as well.

The ancients were not idiots. They were just as smart as we are today. But they knew less than we do about the physical universe and they didn't have a system even remotely similar to science, that allowed a steady and self-correcting accumulation of knowledge. I can honestly not understand the apparently fervent need of many to worship at the altar of mist-enshrouded nameless ancestors, who "have" to be better than the well-documented founders of the modern world.

Re:What's up with the modified statue?

[Slur]

No, the prudish Americans are a tiny minority - bordering on a myth, really.

The media props up this mythical form of being in order to Disney-fy the airwaves and make anyone who lives a normal flawed human lifestyle feel like a depraved piece of shit. This helps to prop up those capitalist endeavors that rely on a cowed populus, such as the snack industry, the advertising industry, and the defense industry.

The underlying aim of the media is to teach ordinary Americans that they are in constant danger of being demonized as outsiders. They are told they can escape this alienation by joining the mass-consciousness. All they need do is practice the dubious virtues of jingoism and an unquestioning submission to authority and they will be accepted, loved, and embraced by the status-quo. ...They also have a lot to say about the relative value of light-skinned blonde daughters versus black-skinned kinky-haired daughters....

Re:What's up with the modified statue?

[R.Caley]

I have two young children and I absolutely WILL NOT put up with them being shown any nudity without my permission.

I presume you put blindfolds on them when they shower in case they should happen to look down without asking first?

I think the outraged reaction to the Janet Jackson things was funnier. After all, the primary purpose of breasts is to be presented to young children. How is someone who spent much of the most delicate period of their post-birth brain development with a breast the size of their head shoved in their face going to be adversely affected by a glipse of nipple?

Re:Actually, the Americans have the better deal

[thempstead]

Urm, whilst it may be illegal to do those things in _some_ contries in Europe, (in the first case Germany and the second France (i think)), but that does not mean that its illegal to do so all over Europe.

In the first case it may e considered in bad taste everywhere though ...

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Slahdot is going downhill

[Merdalors]

This is a good example of how Slashdot is degenerating into irrelevance.

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?

... nattering about pee-pees.