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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...
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
> 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
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?
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.
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
It's a real leaf, that was placed on it in the Victorian era by Papal decree, and was recently removed as part of a restoration project, but most news outlets frankly don't want to spend $20 for an updated photo when their old stock still works.
I believe the original Greek name was "Grunting Under The Burden of Astronomy."
"OH SHIT, THERE'S A HORSE IN THE HOSPITAL!"
Look at the little peepee on atlas!!! LOL!!!
Please, the polite way of putting it is "He's a grower, not a shower".
Another possible retort is: "Yeah, but did you see what a great great ass he has? Divine!". Note that this can lead to awkward silences in predominantly male enviroments such as Slashdot though.
Right guys? Guys...?
*crickets*
Being bitter is drinking poison and hoping someone else will die
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
Maybe I'm being overly suspicious, but you look to me like a European karma whore. What true American would call Denmark "well-known"?
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
t
He calculated, within six and a half minutes, the length of a year That's some pretty fast calculating...
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.
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.
C'mon -- the guy's got the south pole on his back. That's bound to cause some shrinkage.
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.