Showing posts with label Science in Amnesia. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Science in Amnesia. Show all posts

Friday, September 16, 2011

Democritus Guesses Again



Science in cryptomnesia:

"He [Democritus] said that the ordered worlds are boundless and differ in size, and that in some there is neither sun nor moon, but that in others, both are greater than with us, and yet with others more in number. And that the intervals between the ordered worlds are unequal, here more and there less, and that some increase, others flourish and others decay, and here they come into being and there they are eclipsed. But that they are destroyed by colliding with one another. And that some ordered worlds are bare of animals and plants and all water." -- Hippolytus, priest, 2nd century

Discovery News: WEIRD [sic] EXOPLANET DISCOVERED ORBITING TWO STARS.

If you could stand on the surface of Kepler-16b, you'd have two shadows. At sunset, you would see an orange star about the size of the sun and next to it a much fainter red star. As the stars slipped toward the horizon, they would change places in the sky, like partners in a square dance.

Wednesday, April 20, 2011

As Though They Had Never Been



"Besides this, however, many of their discoveries [the ancients] were ultimately lost to the world, some, as at Alexandria, by fire -- the bigoted work of a Mohammedan conquerer -- some by irruption of barbarians; and all were buried so long and so completely by the night of the dark ages, that they had to be rediscovered almost as absolutely and completely as though they had never been." -- Oliver J. Lodge, physicist, Pioneers of Science, 1893

Wednesday, September 23, 2009

The Svalbard Global Seed Vault



"Ahura Mazda warns Yima, the first king of men, of the approach of a dire winter, which is to destroy every living creature by covering the land with a thick sheet of ice, and advises Yima to build a Vara, or an enclosure, to preserve the seeds of every kind of animal and plant." -- Zend-Avesta, Fargard II, 1000 B.C.

Via Retardipedia: Svalbard Global Seed Vault. (Hat tip: Suzannah)

The Svalbard Global Seed Vault (Norwegian: Svalbard globale frøhvelv) is a secure seedbank located on the Norwegian island of Spitsbergen near the town of Longyearbyen in the remote Arctic Svalbard archipelago. The facility was established to preserve a wide variety of plant seeds from locations worldwide in an underground cavern. The Seed Vault holds duplicate samples, or "spare" copies, of seeds held in genebanks worldwide.
Deja vu all over again. At least some people get it.