Questioning Stellar Distances

How do we know which stars are close and which stars are far away?

"That's been the single greatest frustration in all of astronomy. Looking at the night sky, even with telescopes, you cannot tell distances. That's been the Holy Grail of astronomy for centuries." -- Michio Kaku, physicist, February 19th 2008

"One of the frightening things I think for conventional astronomers is to accept the fact or to realize that these intrinsic redshifts of the quasars and peculiar galaxies and so forth, active galaxies, means that a lot of the things which we thought were out at great distance in the universe are very much closer in. And in fact you would have to say that what we call the Local Supercluster is much more crowded and contains many more objects than we previously thought." -- Halton C. Arp, astronomer, 2000

Arp, H.C., Cepheid Variables in the Small Magellanic Cloud, Astronomical Journal, Volume 63, Number 2, Page 45, Feb 1958

This difference coupled with the striking difference in amplitude of variation of the shorter period Cepheids opens the question of whether, at a given period, the Cepheids in the galaxy and the SMC have the same luminosity, or mass, or chemical composition.

Dear Dr. Arp,

How does one know, by looking at it, if a star is a red giant or a red dwarf?

How do we know the distance to Delta Cephei?

It is said that Delta Cephei is a "yellow-white class F (F5) supergiant" but how do we know it's a supergiant?

Supposing there are frozen sodium ions in between Delta Cephei and the Earth, wouldn't that slow the light down on it's way to the Earth?

Keep up the good work.

Warmest possible regards,

Me

International Conference On Ancient Studies 2010

Science Confirms Truth of Myth

Google Earth confirms Dreamtime legend. (Hat tip: Fungus)

NDIGENOUS Australians might have been some of the earliest astronomers with a meteorite crater confirming a Dreamtime legend, a scientist has found.

Duane Hamacher, a PhD candidate at Macquarie University in Sydney, found a bowl-shaped crater in Palm Valley - about 130km south-west of Alice Springs - by searching for it on Google Earth after being tipped off by Aboriginal Dreamtime stories.

"Indigenous Australians tell lots of stories about stars falling out of the sky with a noise like thunder - and one of the stories gave a location in the Northern Territory," the astronomer told the Northern Territory News.
"I searched for it on Google Earth, but when I really found something looking like a crater I couldn't believe it.

"I was very hesitant with excitement as I thought I would look like an idiot if it was just something simple - but it wasn't. It was a crater."

When visiting the site with a team of geophysicists and astrophysicists, Mr Hamacher and his team found evidence of Palm Valley being an ancient meteorite crater.

Mr Hamacher said the discovery of a connection between Dreamtime stories and reality was an exciting one.

"Lots of Aboriginal Dreamtime stories are associated with craters, meteorites and cosmic impacts and although some craters are millions of years old and people would not have been able to witness the impact, it seems as if traditional dreaming stories know about the crater's origin."

One of the stories - which tells of a star that fell into a waterhole called Puka in the valley, where Kulaia the serpent lived - had led to the discovery of the ancient crater, but there were "many, many more", Mr Hamacher said.

Astronomy Vs. Astrophysics

"I am terrified of Geoffrey Burbidge. I admit it. He makes me quake in my boots. The larger by a considerable margin of the famous husband-and-wife team that has earned the moniker 'B-squared', Geoff is certainly a different kettle of fish. Margaret, on one hand, is a motherly figure, treating visitors to their lovely San Diego home to tea and crumpets in the glorious English tradition. Dealing with her husband is quite another matter. Geoffrey does not suffer fools gladly, and it would seem to me that by his definition, all the world’s a fool. And that includes me, of course. Over the years, I have enjoyed a cordial relationship with the Burbidges, and hasten to assure you that Geoff has never been unkind to me. We are, after all, on the same side (I think, I hope!). It’s just that he’s direct. Very direct. Dr Burbidge’s brand of civility is unadorned by frills or meaningless platitudes. If you’re a spade, he will certainly not call you a shovel. My point is this: Whether or not Geoffrey Burbidge’s social skills make you feel all warm and cuddly, you will ignore him at your peril. He is arguably the most accomplished theoretical astrophysicist alive today, and although I disagree with him on the fundamental issues of universal expansion and what energises the Sun, I use every opportunity that comes my way to learn from him. He is without doubt one of the giants of the modern era." -- Hilton Ratcliffe, astronomer, May 29th 2009

So I'm seriously thinking about moving to California to go back to school: UCSD's Center for Astronomy and Space Sciences to meet the Burbidges. I just hope they don't die on me before I get there.

Astronomy or physics -- That is the question: Interview with Dr. Halton Arp By Paul Wright, July 29, 1975

I never thought of myself as an astrophysicist. As a matter of fact, that’s an anecdote I can tell. When I arrived from Harvard I was convinced I was an astronomer. There was never anything else in my mind. And when I went into nuclear physics course with Willie Fowler, who was teaching at the time, we all handed in our blue slips in the beginning. When he went through the blue slips and he announced proudly to this group, he said, oh, we have an astrophysicist in the class and I started looking around to see an astrophysicist, pretty interesting. I tried to find this astrophysicist, but finally Willie pointed to me and said, “you!” And I said, “I’m not an astrophysicist, I’m an astronomer.” I never accepted that term about astrophysicist. I think, that one of the underlying currents right now in astronomy today is a deep seated struggle between the physicist, to be blunt about it, and the astronomer. Physicists believe that the universe is just another example of laboratory physics, just another arena for their laws to work in. And I think a few true astronomers, at least I believe, that there is in astronomy most important fundamental new processes which have yet to be discovered which are transcendent to physics in a sense. I don’t know if it’s going to be right, we’ll have to see. But a lot of physicists are shifting in to astronomy so I mean, I think, for other reasons, I think they sense it. But they bring different skills and different approaches to the astronomy. They approach it as a deductive exercise, as if they were trying to prove again and again the things they learn in the laboratory and learn in their courses and I think the reason that they are going to fail is that they don’t look on astronomy as an arena for discovering new things. They look at it as an arena for proving old things. That’s a fighting statement.

UPDATE (Hat tip: Fungus): Voyager Makes an Interstellar Discovery.

The solar system is passing through an interstellar cloud that physics says should not exist.

Short Term What?

Science Daily: Neuroscientists Store Information in Isolated Brain Tissue; Possible Basis of Short-Term Memory.

ScienceDaily (Dec. 28, 2009) — Ben W. Strowbridge, PhD, associate professor of neuroscience and physiology/biophysics, and Phillip Larimer, PhD, a MD/PhD student in the neurosciences graduate program at Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine, are the first to create stimulus-specific sustained activity patterns in brain circuits maintained in vitro.

Their study will be published in the February 2010 issue of Nature Neuroscience and is currently available online.

Neuroscientists often classify human memory into three types: declarative memory, such as storing facts or remembering specific events; procedural memory, such as learning how to play the piano or shoot basketballs; and working memory, a type of short-term storage like remembering a phone number. With this particular study, Strowbridge and Larimer, were interested in identifying the specific circuits that could be responsible for working memory.

Using isolated pieces of rodent brain tissue, Larimer discovered a way to recreate a type of working memory in vitro. He was studying a particular type of brain neuron, called mossy cells, which are often damaged in people with epilepsy and are part of the hippocampus.

"Seeing the memory deficits that so many people with epilepsy suffer from led me to wonder if there might be a fundamental connection between hippocampal mossy cells and memory circuits," said Larimer.

What Causes Planets to Explode?

"... we are lead to ask 'Do planets explode?!'" -- Thomas C. Van Flandern, astronomer, 1993

"Our story continues when man has advanced to the point where he begins to rediscover evidence of the explosion -- the year 1772. ... The astronomer Daniel Titius notices a curious fact about the spacing of the planets: each of the six planets is roughly twice the distance of the previous one from the Sun, with only one exception, a gap between Mars and Jupiter. The gap is just the right size to hold exactly one additional planet." -- Thomas C. Van Flandern, astronomer, 1993

"Is there other evidence that comets and minor planets originated in the 'recent' explosion of a planet? Yes, a great deal. We can study the orbits of comets, and by using the laws of gravitation we can do what amounts to tracing these orbits back in time. We find a statistical tendency to emanate from a common point between Mars and Jupiter about three million years ago...." -- Thomas C. Van Flandern, astronomer, 1993

"... we know enough now to want to ask two very important questions: What caused the explosion? And why did it happen only three million years ago?" -- Thomas C. Van Flandern, astronomer, 1993

"It is intrinsically unsettling to conclude that planets explode because, after all, we live on a planet ourselves and are totally dependent upon it for survival. Nevertheless, we wish to know the truth." -- Thomas C. Van Flandern, astronomer, 1993

"Additional evidence for a recent and nearby nova or supernova (or planetary explosion) event exists in the form of excess Aluminum-26 in the local interstellar medium. The half life of this radioactive isotope is only about a million years, requiring a recent source to inject the abundant quantities we see today." -- Thomas C. Van Flandern, astronomer, 1993

"... the most natural way to produce the isotopic anomalies observed in meteorites, and supply abundant energy, is by a matter-antimatter explosion. This speculative possibility might result from magnetic separation and storage of the antimatter in a planet over billions of years before the explosion; or from some sort of chain-reaction high-energy antimatter generation process; or from the intervention of intelligent beings. In my opinion, the last possibility should not be dismissed out of hand." -- Thomas C. Van Flandern, astronomer, 1993

"'Intervention by intelligent beings' implies the existence of such beings in the first place, and secondly, implies their knowledge of a physics capable of blowing up a planet, and their possession of the technological means to do so. This is a consequently breathtaking statement for someone of Van Flandern's stature to make! Van Flandern is gingerly and delicately implying that his exploded planets might have been blown up in deliberate acts of war. Yet ... it is precisely this model that the abundance of ancient texts actually supports!" -- Joseph P. Farrell, author, 2007

Ancient Robots

"Thetis of the silver feet came to the house of Hephaistos,
imperishable, starry, and shining among the immortals,
built in bronze for himself by the god of the dragging footsteps.
She found him sweating as he turned here and there to his billows
busily, since he was working on twenty tripods
which were to stand against the wall of his strong-founded dwelling.
And he had set golden wheels underneath the base of each one
so that of their own motion they could wheel into the immortal
gathering, and return to his house: a wonder to look at."
-- Homeros, poet, Iliad, XVIII:369-377, 8th century B.C.

"The movements of animals may be compared with those of automatic puppets, which are set going on the occasion of a tiny movement; the levers are released, and strike the twisted strings against one another; or with the toy wagon. For the child mounts on it and moves it straight forward, and then again it is moved in a circle owing to its wheels being of unequal diameter (the smaller acts like a centre on the same principle as the cylinders). Animals have parts of a similar kind...." -- Aristotle, philosopher, On the Motion of Animals, 350 B.C.

"For if every instrument could accomplish its own work, obeying or anticipating the will of others, like the statues of Daedalus, or the tripods of Hephaestus, which, says the poet, 'of their own accord entered the assembly of the Gods;' if, in like manner, the shuttle would weave and the plectrum touch the lyre without a hand to guide them, chief workmen would not want servants, nor masters slaves." -- Aristotle, philosopher, Politics, Book I, 350 B.C.

Sharkey, N., The Programmable Robot of Ancient Greece, New Scientist, Issue 2611, Jul 2007

"When Lionardo was at Milan the King of France came there and desired him to do something curious; accordingly he made a lion whose chest opened after he had walked a few steps, discovering himself to be full of lilies." -- Giorgio Vasari, The Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors and Architects (Florence 1550).

Constructing a mechanical lion that could walk, let alone present flowers to the king, can't have been a simple task back in 1515 - even for a genius like Leonardo da Vinci. How he managed this feat remained a mystery until 2000, when US robotics expert Mark Rosheim came to a surprising conclusion.

Pulling together fragments of notes and drawings, Rosheim worked out that the lion was almost certainly powered by a clockwork cart illustrated in da Vinci's Codex Atlanticus (see Illustration) Intriguingly, Rosheim suggested that the cart's steering mechanism was controlled by arms attached to rotating gears. With this design it would have been possible to control the automaton's movements simply by changing the position of these arms - in other words, Rosheim argues, da Vinci's lion was not only clockwork, it was also programmable.

This astonishing idea raised some intriguing questions: was da Vinci influenced by an earlier design? And if so, how far back in history can we trace programmable robots?

In search of answers I followed the technology back through medieval Europe to the Islamic world, where I have found evidence of an even earlier programmable automaton, made in Baghdad by the brilliant 13th-century engineer Ibn Ismail Ibn al-Razzaz Al-Jazari. He created a veritable boatload of programmable robot musicians - effectively a floating jukebox - designed to entertain nobles as they drank and lounged at royal pool parties.

Yet the trail doesn't stop there. It led me even further back past the automata of the Byzantine court and ancient Rome to ancient Alexandria. It was here that Hero, one of the greatest Greek engineers, constructed a programmable robot that pre-dates da Vinci's by 1500 years. ...

This certainly seems like a candidate for a programmable machine, and a translation of Book I of Hero's Peri automatopoietikes (on automata-making) supplied the answer. This theatre was indeed a programmable machine, but not in quite the way I had imagined; there are no cams involved. Surprisingly, Hero used a much more explicit programming strategy than either da Vinci or Al-Jazari. His method of programming is unique in the history of robots. It relied on string. ...

There is also the vexatious question of whether Hero's machine was the first. It is hard to believe that there were no earlier designs. In his book Hero hinted that he was giving us something new in an already established theatrical tradition, but he complained that earlier writers were not clear enough to enable others to copy their robots. He made explicit references to Philo of Byzantium's lost book on automatic theatres from 200 BC, for example. Elsewhere there are references to even earlier automata - for instance, in the 4th century BC Aristotle wrote about automatic puppets and a child's wagon that could move in a circle, describing them as if they were commonplace.

The programmable self-propelled machine might even go back as far as the 8th century BC, according to Homer's Iliad: "[Hephaestus] was making twenty tripods that were to stand by the wall of his house, and he set wheels of gold under them all that they might go of their own selves to the assemblies of the gods, and come back again - marvels indeed to see." It looks like the search for the earliest programmable robot is far from over.

Happy Birthday Jesus

"Today... is Christmas! There will be a magic show at zero-nine-thirty! Chaplain Charlie will tell you about how the free world will conquer Communism with the aid of God and a few Marines! God has a hard-on for Marines because we kill everything we see! He plays His games, we play ours! To show our appreciation for so much power, we keep heaven packed with fresh souls! God was here before the Marine Corps! So you can give your heart to Jesus, but your ass belongs to the Corps! Do you ladies understand?" -- Stanley Kubrick, film producer, 1987

Today is our blessed LORD's birthday.

Satan Claus didn't die for our sins.

Physical Evidence of the Saturnian Nova

I never understood the significance of this until now.

NASA: Saturn's Infrared Ring.

This artist's conception shows a nearly invisible ring around Saturn -- the largest of the giant planet's many rings. It was discovered by NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope.

The artist's conception simulates an infrared view of the giant ring. Saturn appears as just a small dot from outside the band of ice and dust. The bulk of the ring material starts about six million kilometers (3.7 million miles) away from the planet and extends outward roughly another 12 million kilometers (7.4 million miles). The ring's diameter is equivalent to roughly 300 Saturns lined up side to side.

The inset shows an enlarged image of Saturn, as seen by the W.M. Keck Observatory at Mauna Kea, Hawaii, in infrared light. The ring, stars and wispy clouds are an artist's representation.

Saturnian Research

"Woe to thee, Moab! thou art undone, O people of Chemosh [Saturn]:" -- Numbers 21:29

"And they forsook the LORD, and served Baal [Saturn] and Ashtaroth [Venus]." -- Judges 2:13

"Wilt not thou possess that which Chemosh [Saturn] thy god giveth thee to possess? So whomsoever the LORD our God shall drive out from before us, them will we possess." -- Judges 11:24

"Then did Solomon build a high place for Chemosh [Saturn], the abomination of Moab, in the hill that is before Jerusalem, and for Molech [Saturn], the abomination of the children of Ammon." -- I Kings 11:7

"Because they have forsaken me, and have worshipped Ashtoreth [Venus] the goddess of the Zidonians, Chemosh [Saturn] the god of the Moabites, and Milcom [Saturn] the god of the children of Ammon, and have not walked in my ways, to do that which is right in mine eyes, and to keep my statutes and my judgments, as did David his father." -- I Kings 11:33

"Then said Elijah unto the people, I, [even] I only, remain a prophet of the LORD; but Baal's [Saturn's] prophets [are] four hundred and fifty men." -- I Kings 18:22

"And they left all the commandments of the LORD their God, and made them molten images, even two calves, and made a grove, and worshipped all the host of heaven, and served Baal [Saturn]." --II Kings 17:16

"For he [Manasseh] built again the high places which Hezekiah his father had destroyed; and he reared up altars for Baal [Saturn], and made an Asherah, as did Ahab king of Israel, and worshipped all the host of heaven, and served them. -- II Kings 21:3

"And the high places that were before Jerusalem, which were on the right hand of the mount of corruption, which Solomon the king of Israel had builded for Ashtoreth [Venus] the abomination of the Zidonians, and for Chemosh [Saturn] the abomination of the Moabites, and for Milcom [Saturn] the abomination of the children of Ammon, did the king defile." -- II Kings 23:13

"And the houses of Jerusalem, and the houses of the kings of Judah, shall be defiled as the place of Tophet [Saturn], because of all the houses whose roofs they have burned incense unto all the host of heaven, and have poured out drink offerings unto other gods." -- Jeremiah 19:13

"For because thou hast trusted in thy works and in thy treasures, thou shalt also be taken: and Chemosh [Saturn] shall go forth into captivity with his priests and his princes together." -- Jeremiah 48:7

"And Moab shall be ashamed of Chemosh [Saturn], as the house of Israel was ashamed of Bethel [heaven] their confidence." -- Jeremiah 48:13

"Woe be unto thee, O Moab! the people of Chemosh [Saturn] perisheth: for thy sons are taken captives, and thy daughters captives." -- Jeremiah 48:46

"Seek him that maketh the seven stars [Khima/Saturn] and Orion [Kesil/Mars], and turneth the shadow of death into the morning, and maketh the day dark with night: that calleth for the waters of the sea, and poureth them out upon the face of the earth: The LORD is his name:" -- Amos 5:8

"But ye have borne the tabernacle of your Moloch [Saturn] and Chiun [Saturn] your images, the star of your god, which ye made to yourselves." -- Amos 5:26

"And them that worship the host of heaven upon the housetops; and them that worship and that swear by the LORD, and that swear by Malcham [Saturn];" -- Zephaniah 1:5

"Which maketh Arcturus [Aish], and Orion [Kesil/Mars], and Pleiades [Khima/Saturn], and the chambers of the south." -- Job 9:9

"Canst though bind the sweet influences of Pleiades [Khima/Saturn], or loose the bands of Orion [Kesil/Mars]? Canst thou bring forth Mazzaroth [Lucifer/Venus] in his season? or canst thou guide Arcturus [Aish] with his sons? Knowest thou the ordinances of heaven?" -- Job 38:31-33

"This is the way it is fated to be; and for you and your anger
I [Jupiter] care not; not if you stray apart to the undermost limits
of earth and sea, where Iapetos and Kronos [Saturn] seated
have no shining of the sun god Hyperion to delight them
nor winds delight, but Tartaros stands deeply about them."
-- Homeros, poet, Iliad, VIII:477-481, 8th century B.C.

"Hades [Pluto] trembled where he rules over the dead below, and the Titans under Tartarus who live with Cronos [Saturn] ...." -- Hesiod, poet, Theogony, 8th century B.C.

"Zeus [Jupiter], as thou sayest, holds a father's death
As first of crimes,-yet he of his own act
Cast into chains [rings] his father, Cronus [Saturn] old."
-- Aeschylus, playwright, Eumenides, 458 B.C.

"Again, we have been often told of the reign of Cronos [Saturn]." -- Plato, philosopher, The Stateman, 360 B.C.

"And since they [Chaldeans] have observed the stars over a long period of time and have noted both the movements and the influences of each of them with greater precision than any other men, they foretell to mankind many things that will take place in the future. But above all importance, they say, is the study of the influence of the five stars known as planets, which they call 'Interpreters' when speaking of them as a group, but if referring to them singly, the one named Cronus [Saturn] by the Greeks, which is the most conspicuous and presages more events and such as are of greater importance than the others, they call the star of Helius, whereas the other four they designate as the stars of Ares [Mars], Aphrodite [Venus], Hermes [Mercury], and Zeus [Jupiter], as do our astrologers." -- Diodorus Siculus, historian, Library of History, Book II, 1st century B.C.

"There was in their city [Carthage] a bronze image of Cronus [Saturn], extending its hands, palms up and sloping toward the ground, so that each of the children when placed thereon rolled down and fell into a sort of gaping pit filled with fire." -- Diodorus Siculus, historian, Library of History, Book XX, 1st century B.C.

"The second star is that of Sol; others say of Saturn. Eratosthenes claims that it is called Phaethon, from the son of Sol. Many have written about him – how he foolishly drove his father’s chariot and set fire to the earth. Because of this he was struck with a thunderbolt by Jove, and fell into the river Eridanus, and was conveyed by Sol to the constellations." -- Gaius J. Hyginus, author, Astronomica, 1st century B.C.

"Yea, ye took up the tabernacle of Moloch [Saturn], and the star of your god Remphan [Saturn], figures which ye made to worship them: and I will carry you away beyond Babylon." -- Acts 7:43

"I regard Serapis as foreign, but Osiris [Saturn] as Greek, and both as belonging to one god and one power. Like these also are the Egyptian beliefs; for they oftentimes call Isis [Venus] by the name of Athena...." -- Plutarch, historian, Isis and Osiris, 61-62, 1st century

"To you, O Saturn, Zoilus dedicates these chains and these double fetters, his first rings." -- Marcus V. Martialis, poet, Epigram XXIX, 1st century

"... and yet the King of Gods, the first and eldest one, is in bonds [rings], they say, if we are to believe Hesiod and Homer and other wise men who tell this tale about Cronus [Saturn]...." -- Dio Crysostom, philosopher, Discourse XIV, 1st century

"Theopompus records that the people who live toward the west believe that the winter is Cronus [Saturn]...." -- Plutarch, historian, Moralia: Isis and Osiris (69), 1st century

"Certain things he [Pythagoras] declared mystically, symbolically, most of which were collected by Aristotle, as when he called the sea a tear of Saturn...." -- Porphyry, philosopher, Life of Pythagoras, 3rd century

"In Orpheus, likewise, Saturn is ensnared by Jupiter...." -- Porphyry, philosopher, Cave of Nymphs, 3rd century

"There also is that one they call Saturn, and yet they give him no small property beside, namely all seeds." -- Augustine, theologian, City of God, 426

"The last fell to the lot of Cronos [Saturn] the seventh planet. Such he made this seat; and having founded the sacred city, he called it by the name of Thebes in Egypt...." -- Nonnus, poet, Dionysiaca, Book V, 5th century

"...as ancient Cronos [Saturn] heavy-kneed, pouring rain." -- Nonnus, poet, Dionysiaca, Book VI, 5th century

"I take the sharing of the kingdom of Hyperion among his brothers the Titans, to be the division of the earth among the gods mentioned in the poem of Solon." -- Isaac Newton, mathematician, Revised History of Ancient Kingdoms: A Complete Chronology, 1727

"But this reign [Quetzalcoatl/Venus], like that of Saturn, and the happiness of the world, were not of long duration...." -- Alexander Von Humboldt, naturalist, 1814

"... but how is it possible that the dark and distant planet Saturn can answer to the luminary who 'irradiates the nations like the sun, the light of the gods'?" -- George Rawlinson, historian, Ninip or Nin - His Epithets, 1875

"... by the word 'Sun' we must understand the 'Star of the Sun,' i.e., Saturn...." -- R. Campbell Thompson, historian, The Reports of the Magicians and Astrologers of Nineveh and Babylon in the British Museum, 1900

"[R. Campbell] Thompson in his Introduction to his collection of astrological reports has noticed that the planet Saturn was also designated as Šamaš, i.e. 'sun' by the Babylonian-Assyrian astrologers and he quotes the statement of Hyginus to the effect that Saturn was called 'the star of the sun.'" -- Morris Jastrow Jr., historian, Sun and Saturn, 1910

"... 'when Šamaš stands in the halo of the moon'. Since this phenomenon can only occur at night, Šamaš cannot of course be the sun. The proof that it is Saturn is furnished by the astrologers themselves...." -- Morris Jastrow Jr., historian, Sun and Saturn, 1910

"'The planet Saturn is Shamash.'" -- Morris Jastrow Jr., historian, Sun and Saturn, 1910

"At a date that I would be hard put to identify even with approximation, but possibly about less than ten thousand years ago Saturn was disturbed by Jupiter and exploded, actually became a nova. The solar system and reaches beyond it were illuminated by the exploded star, and in a matter of a week the earth was enveloped in waters of Saturnian origin." -- Immanuel Velikovsky, cosmologist, Saturn, 1966

"The rings of Saturn are formations of less than ten or twelve thousand years old. They must consist largely of water in the form of ice, but since the ancient lore all around the world tells us that it was Jupiter who put these rings around Saturn, they may have some other components, too [1940s]. Since these lines were written, spectroscopic study of the Saturnian rings has revealed that they consist mainly of water in the form of ice." -- Immanuel Velikovsky, cosmologist, Saturn, 1966

"The age of Uranus preceded the age of Saturn; it came to an end with the 'removal' of Uranus by Saturn." -- Immanuel Velikovsky, cosmologist, In the Beginning: Uranus, 1966

"One instance of the Saturn myth can be verified with the help of a small telescope: Saturn is in chains." -- Immanuel Velikovsky, cosmologist, In the Beginning: The Rings of Saturn, 1966

"How did the ancient Greeks and Romans know that Saturn is encircled by rings? It is strange that this question was not asked before." -- Immanuel Velikovsky, cosmologist, In the Beginning: The Rings of Saturn, 1966

"Saturn exploded and caused the Earth to go through the greatest of its historical catastrophes, and this was completely sufficient to make of Saturn the supreme deity; but it appears that the Age of Saturn is a name for the epoch before the Deluge; after the Deluge, Saturn dismembered, almost ceased to exist as a planetary body and when at length it was reconstituted it was fettered by rings, and was far from being the dominant celestial body that would behoove it as the supreme deity of the epoch." -- Immanuel Velikovsky, cosmologist, In the Beginning: Saturn's Golden Age, 1966

"... the conclusion would be that the distance of the Earth from Saturn was but a twentieth part of what it is now; this would permit us to speculate whether the Earth could at some earlier period have been a satellite of Saturn." -- Immanuel Velikovsky, cosmologist, In the Beginning: Saturn's Golden Age, 1966

"Today expert philologists tell us that Saturn and Jupiter are names of vague deities, subterranean or atmospheric, superimposed on the planets at a 'late' period; they neatly sort out folk origins and 'late' derivations, all unaware that planetary periods, sidereal and synodic, were known and rehearsed in numerous ways by celebrations already traditional in archaic times." -- Giorgio de Santillana, polymath, Hamlet's Mill: An Essay Investigating the Origins of Human Knowledge and Its Transmission Through Myth, 1969

"Ancient historians would have been aghast had they been told that obvious things were to become unnoticeable. Aristotle was proud to state it as known that the gods were originally [wandering] stars, even if popular fantasy had obscured this truth. Little as he believed in progress, he felt this much had been secured for the future. He could not guess that W.D. Ross, his modern editor, would condescendingly annotate, 'This is historically untrue.' Yet we know that Saturday and Sabbath had to do with Saturn, just as Wednesday and Mercredi had to do with Mercury. Such names are as old as time; as old, certainly, as the planetary heptagram of the Harranians. They go back far before Professor Ross' Greek philology. The inquiries of great and meticulous scholars such as Ideler, Lepsius, Chwolson, Boll and, to go further back, of Athanasius Kircher and Petavius, had they only been read carefully, and noted, would have taught several relevant lessons to the historians of culture, but interest shifted to other goals, as can be seen from current anthropology, which has built up it's own idea of the 'primitive' and what came after." -- Giorgio de Santillana, polymath, Hamlet's Mill: An Essay Investigating the Origins of Human Knowledge and Its Transmission Through Myth, 1969

"... Huang-Ti, the Yellow Emperor, is acknowledged to be Saturn." -- Giorgio de Santillana and Hertha Von Dechend, polymaths, Hamlet's Mill: An Essay Investigating the Origins of Human Knowledge and Its Transmission Through Myth, 1969

"... Ptah, who is the Egyptian Saturn, and also Deus Faber." -- Giorgio de Santillana and Hertha Von Dechend, polymaths, Hamlet's Mill: An Essay Investigating the Origins of Human Knowledge and Its Transmission Through Myth, 1969

"In China, Saturn has the title 'Genie du pivot,' as the god who presides over the Center, the same title which is given to the Pole star. This is puzzling at first, and so is the laconic statement coming from Mexico: 'In the year 2-Reed Tezcatlipoca changed into Mixcouatl, because Mixcouatl has his seat at the North pole and, being now Mixcouatl, he drilled fire with the first fire sticks for the first time." -- Giorgio de Santillana and Hertha Von Dechend, polymaths, Hamlet's Mill: An Essay Investigating the Origins of Human Knowledge and Its Transmission Through Myth, 1969

"What has Saturn, the far-out planet to do with the pole? Yet, if he cannot be recognized as the 'genie of the pivot,' how is it possible to support Amlodhi's claim to be the legitimate owner of the Mill?" -- Giorgio de Santillana and Hertha Von Dechend, polymaths, Hamlet's Mill: An Essay Investigating the Origins of Human Knowledge and Its Transmission Through Myth, 1969

"It is the Golden Age, in Latin tradition, Saturnia regna, the reign of Saturn; in Greek, Kronos. In this dim perplexing figure there is an extraordinary concordance throughout world myths. In India it was Yama; in the Old Persian Avesta it was Yima xsaeta, a name which became in New Persian Yamshyd; in Latin Saeturnus, then Saturnus. Saturn or Kronos in many names had been known as the Ruler of the Golden Age ...." -- Giorgio de Santillana and Hertha Von Dechend, polymaths, Hamlet's Mill: An Essay Investigating the Origins of Human Knowledge and Its Transmission Through Myth, 1969

"It should be stressed that the disinclination of philologists to allow for the 'essential' connection between Chronos and Kronos rests upon the stern belief that the 'god' Saturn has nothing to do with the planet Saturn, and upon the supposition that an expert in philology has nothing whatever to learn from Indian texts. Were it not so, they might have stumbled over Kala, i.e. Chronos, as a name of Yama, i.e. Kronos, alias the planet Saturn." -- Giorgio de Santillana and Hertha Von Dechend, polymaths, Hamlet's Mill: An Essay Investigating the Origins of Human Knowledge and Its Transmission Through Myth, 1969

"... I started to think that quite possibly, though not certain, that at the age of Kronos, the planet Earth could have been a satellite of Saturn. None of them was on their present orbit." -- Immanuel Velikovsky, cosmologist, Letter to David Talbott, January 29th 1975

"This non-acceptance made me view mine in a different light. To begin with, if others had detected this northernism with which Saturn is associated, the knowledge could not be as obscure as I had first imagined it to be. Also, it was easier to imagine Saturn as pole star than it was to accept that primitive man would have noticed the slow precession of the equinoxes. It was then that I realized that if we were to reconstruct a cosmic history based on ancient records, we would have no option but to accept what the ancients recorded. I also decided that, for the time being, it did not much matter whether what the ancients recorded was deemed possible or not. The testing of such possibilities could come later. Temporarily it was enough to attempt a reconstruction as dictated by the message of myth. Moreover, in those cases where the message was unambiguous, it would have to be accepted at face value. And such was the message which stated that Saturn had once played the part of pole star. Much as I wanted to disbelieve it, I had to accept it. It was either that or disbelieve everything else I had thus far uncovered." -- Dwardu Cardona, author, The Road to Saturn, December 1988

"This repeated confusion of the Sun and Saturn seems to make no sense at all. Can you imagine any difficulty in separating the two bodies, or distinguishing the one from the other?" -- David N. Talbott, author, Saturn: The Ancient Sun God, April 1997

"... as the leading expert Franz Boll soon pointed out, the identification of the 'sun' god as Saturn was more widespread and more archaic than previously acknowledged. ... Based on his reading of the most original Greek manuscripts, Boll drew a startling conclusion: the sun god Helios and the planet-god Saturn were 'one and the same god.'" -- David N. Talbott, author, Saturn: The Ancient Sun God, April 1997

"Myths have no point to make. They are, in fact, history." -- Jno Cook, Recovering the Lost World: Saturnian Cosmology, author, November 2009

"If electrical capture is common, it lends credibility to such Saturnist models of the recent history of the Solar system as that described by Dwardu Cardona in his book God Star and its two sequels. The body that became Saturn was a brown dwarf star moving alone in the galaxy with Venus, Mars, and Earth held in the axial jet above its pole—a low-energy counterpart of Herbig-Haro stars. It was drawn toward the Sun along the same galactic current. When it entered the Sun’s sheath, the electrical readjustment caused flaring and the disruption of the axial alignment of planets. Proto-Saturn lost its stellar radiance and its planets, and the bodies soon settled into quasi-stable orbits among the rest of the Sun’s planets." -- Mel Acheson, natural philosopher, Stars in Collision Part 2, November 2nd 2009

Orbital Resonance

"Simulations have been done to show that when these Baptistina family members happen to get into a resonance with the planet Jupiter, in other words a resonance where the asteroid orbits seven times for every two orbits of Jupiter, when that special moment happens, the asteroids can get shot into the inner solar system, just like hitting a flipper on a pinball machine, some fraction of those asteroids are going to get into Earth-crossing orbits, which means they have a chance of hitting the Earth." -- Amy Mainzer, astronomer, March 4th 2008

Can someone explain this to me please?

The Redeemable Carl Sagan

On Exobiology

"In the vastness of the Cosmos there must be other civilizations far older and more advanced than ours." -- Carl E. Sagan, professor, Cosmos, 1990

"For all I know we may be visited by a different extraterrestrial civilization every second Tuesday...." -- Carl E. Sagan, professor, Cosmos, 1990

On Intelligent Design

"If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first create the universe." -- Carl E. Sagan, professor, Cosmos, 1980

"In the fabric of space and in the nature of matter, as in a great work of art, there is, written small, the artist's signature." -- Carl E. Sagan, professor, Contact, 1985

Engineer Says Golden Ratio Is Designed

"A straight line is said to have been cut in extreme and mean ratio when, as the whole line is to the greater segment, so is the greater to the less." -- Euclid, geometer, Elements, Book VI, Definition 3

Science Daily: Mystery of Golden Ratio Explained.

Adrian Bejan, professor of mechanical engineering at Duke's Pratt School of Engineering, thinks he knows why the golden ratio pops up everywhere: the eyes scan an image the fastest when it is shaped as a golden-ratio rectangle.

The natural design that connects vision and cognition ...

Heliocentrism In The Bible

"And he [Methuselah] was moreover with the angels of God these six jubilees of years, and they showed him everything which is on the earth and in the heavens, the rule of the sun, and he wrote down everything. And he testified to [the existence of] the Watchers...." -- Jubilees 4:21-22

The Book of Jubilees is one of the Dead Sea Scrolls and is considered to be canonical by the Ethiopian Orthodox Church (The Book of Division).

So-Called Hunter-Gatherers Ate Cereal

Slowly dispelling the myths of Darwinism.

Science Daily: Stone Age Pantry: Archaeologist Unearths Earliest Evidence of Modern Humans Using Wild Grains and Tubers for Food.

ScienceDaily (Dec. 18, 2009) — The consumption of wild cereals among prehistoric hunters and gatherers appears to be far more ancient than previously thought, according to a University of Calgary archaeologist who has found the oldest example of extensive reliance on cereal and root staples in the diet of early Homo sapiens more than 100,000 years ago.

Julio Mercader, holder of the Canada Research Chair in Tropical Archaeology in the U of C's Department of Archaeology, recovered dozens of stone tools from a deep cave in Mozambique showing that wild sorghum, the ancestor of the chief cereal consumed today in sub-Saharan Africa for flours, breads, porridges and alcoholic beverages, was in Homo sapiens' pantry along with the African wine palm, the false banana, pigeon peas, wild oranges and the African "potato." This is the earliest direct evidence of humans using pre-domesticated cereals anywhere in the world. Mercader's findings are published in the December 18 issue of the research journal Science.

"This broadens the timeline for the use of grass seeds by our species, and is proof of an expanded and sophisticated diet much earlier than we believed," Mercader said. "This happened during the Middle Stone Age, a time when the collecting of wild grains has conventionally been perceived as an irrelevant activity

Is The European Police State Going Global?

Via Louis Hissink's Crazy World: The Fabian gloves finally come off.

Is the European police state going global?
From The Viscount Monckton of Brenchley in Copenhagen

Today the gloves came off and the true purpose of the “global warming” scare became nakedly visible. Ugo Chavez, the Socialist president of Venezuela, blamed “global warming” on capitalism – and received a standing ovation from very nearly all of the delegates, lamentably including those from those of the capitalist nations of the West that are on the far Left – and that means too many of them.

Previously Robert Mugabe, dictator of Rhodesia, who had refused to leave office when he had been soundly defeated in a recent election, had also won plaudits at the conference for saying that the West ought to pay him plenty of money in reparation of our supposed “climate debt”.

Inside the conference center, “world leader” after “world leader” got up and postured about the need to Save The Planet, the imperative to do a deal, the necessity to save the small island nations from drowning, etc., etc., etc.

Outside, in the real world, it was snowing, and a foretaste of the Brave New World being cooked up by “world leaders” in their fantasy-land was already evident. Some 20,000 observers from non-governmental organizations – nearly all of them true-believing Green groups funded by taxpayers – had been accredited to the conference.

However, without warning the UN had capriciously decided that all but 300 of them were to be excluded from the conference today, and all but 90 would be excluded on the final day.

Of course, this being the inept UN, no one had bothered to notify those of the NGOs that were not true-believers in the UN’s camp. So Senator Steve Fielding of Australia and I turned up with a few dozen other delegates, to be left standing in the cold for a couple of hours while the UN laboriously worked out what to do with us.

In the end, they decided to turn us away, which they did with an ill grace and in a bad-tempered manner. As soon as the decision was final, the Danish police moved in. One of them began the now familiar technique of manhandling me, in the same fashion as one of his colleagues had done the previous day.

Once again, conscious that a police helicopter with a high-resolution camera was hovering overhead, I thrust my hands into my pockets in accordance with the St. John Ambulance crowd-control training, looked my assailant in the eye and told him, quietly but firmly, to take his hands off me.

He complied, but then decided to have another go. I told him a second time, and he let go a second time. I turned to go and, after I had turned my back, he gave me a mighty shove that flung me to the ground and knocked me out.

I came to some time later (not sure exactly how long), to find my head being cradled by my friends, some of whom were doing their best to keep the police thugs at bay while the volunteer ambulance-men attended to me.

I was picked up and dusted me off. I could not remember where I had left my telephone, which had been in my hand at the time when I was assaulted. I rather fuzzily asked where it was, and one of the police goons shouted, “He alleges he had a mobile phone.”

In fact, the phone was in my coat pocket, where my hand had been at the time of the assault. The ambulance crew led me away and laid me down under a blanket for 20 minutes to get warm, plying me with water and keeping me amused with some colorfully colloquial English that they had learned.

I thanked them for their kindness, left them a donation for their splendid service, and rejoined my friends. A very senior police officer then came up and asked if I was all right. Yes, I said, but no thanks to one of his officers, who had pushed me hard from behind when my back was turned and had sent me flying.

The police chief said that none of his officers would have done such a thing. I said that several witnesses had seen the incident, which I intended to report. I said I had hoped to receive an apology but had not received one, and would include that in my report. The policeman went off looking glum, and with good reason.

To assault an accredited representative of a conference your nation is hosting, and to do it while your own police cameramen are filming from above, and to do it without any provocation except my polite, non-threatening request that I should not be manhandled, is not a career-enhancing move, as that police chief is about to discover to his cost.

Nor does this incident, and far too many like it, reflect the slightest credit on Denmark. We must make reasonable allowance for the fact that the unspeakable security service of the UN, which is universally detested by those at this conference, was ordering the Danish police about. The tension between the alien force and the indigenous men on the ground had grown throughout the conference.

However, the Danish police were far too free with their hands when pushing us around, and that is not acceptable in a free society. But then, Europe is no longer a free society. It is, in effect, a tyranny ruled by the unelected Kommissars of the European Union. That is perhaps one reason why police forces throughout Europe, including that in the UK, have become far more brutal than was once acceptable in their treatment of the citizens they are sworn to serve.

It is exactly this species of tyranny that the UN would like to impose upon the entire planet, in the name of saving us from ourselves – or, as Ugo Chavez would put it, saving us from Western capitalist democracy. (my emphasis LH).

A few weeks ago, at a major conference in New York, I spoke about this tendency towards tyranny with Dr. Vaclav Klaus, the distinguished economist and doughty fighter for freedom and democracy who is President of the Czech Republic.

While we still have one or two statesmen of his caliber, there is hope for Europe and the world. Unfortunately, he refused to come to Copenhagen, telling me that there was no point, now that the lunatics were firmly in control of the asylum.

However, I asked him whether the draft Copenhagen Treaty’s proposal for what amounted to a communistic world government reminded him of the Communism under which he and his country had suffered for so long.

He thought for a moment – as statesmen always do before answering an unusual question – and said, “Maybe it is not brutal. But in all other respects, what it proposes is far too close to Communism for comfort.”

Today, as I lay in the snow with a cut knee, a bruised back, a banged head, a ruined suit, and a written-off coat, I wondered whether the brutality of the New World Order was moving closer than President Klaus – or any of us – had realized.

Nazi Darwinism

"The deepest and ultimate reason for the decline of the old Reich lay in its failure to recognize the racial problem and its importance for the historical evolution of peoples. For events in the lives of peoples are not expressions of chance, but processes related to the self-preservation and propagation of the species and the race and subject to the laws of Nature, even if people are not conscious of the inner reason for their actions." -- Adolf Hitler, Führer, 1925

"... struggle is always a means for improving a species' health and power of resistance and, therefore, a cause of its higher evolution. If the process were different, all further evolution would cease and the opposite would occur." -- Adolf Hitler, Führer, 1925

"National Socialism is nothing but applied biology." -- Rudolph Hess, Deputy Führer, 1934

"National Socialism is applied biology." -- Hans Schemm, Nazi Education Minister and president of the Nazi Teacher's Association, 1935

"Darwin would be astounded at the progress we're going to make in one year as we move the human race forward." -- Reinhard Heydrich, Chief of Police, January 20th 1942

"Eugenics is applied Darwinism." -- Ann Coulter, author, August 26th 2006

Adolf Hitler named his book My Struggle (1925) after Charles Darwin's book title The Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life (1859).

Epictetus On Intelligent Design

"And the existence of male and female, and the desire of each for conjunction, and the power of using the parts which are constructed, do not even these declare the workman?" -- Epictetus, philosopher, Discourses, Book I, 1st century

"Who made these things or devised them? 'No one,' you say. Oh, amazing shamelessness and stupidity!" -- Epictetus, philosopher, Discourses, Book I, 1st century

Modern Observers Rediscover a Water World

Agence France Presse via Yahoo! News: Scientists discover Earth-like, water-rich planet: study.

PARIS (AFP) – Astronomers have discovered a new Earth-like planet that is larger than our own and may be more than half covered with water, according to a study published Wednesday in the science journal Nature.

The so-called "super Earth" is about 42 light years away in another solar system and has a radius nearly 2.7 times larger than that of our planet, according to the study by the Harvard-Smithsonian Centre for Astrophysics.

The discovery of the planet, called GJ 1214b, represents a "major step forward" in the search for worlds similar to the Earth, added the University of California's Geoffrey Marcy in a commentary also in Nature.

The "newfound world" is too hot to sustain life as we know it, said the Harvard-Smithsonian Centre for Astrophysics in a statement.

Its density suggests however it "is composed of about three-fourths water and other ices and one fourth-rock," it said. "There are also tantalising hints that the planet has a gaseous atmosphere."

Its temperature is estimated at between 280 and 120 degrees Celsius (536 and 248 degrees Fahrenheit) with its host star about one-fifth the size of the Sun, according to the scientists.

"Despite its hot temperature, this appears to be a waterworld," says Zachory Berta, a graduate student who first spotted hints of the planet's presence.

"It is much smaller, cooler and more Earthlike than any other known exoplanet," he said in the statement.

The Ancient Origins of Intelligent Design

"Seek him that maketh the seven stars and Orion, and turneth the shadow of death into the morning, and maketh the day dark with night: that calleth for the waters of the sea, and poureth them out upon the face of the earth: The LORD is his name:" -- Amos 5:8

"The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of His hands." -- Psalm 19:1

"The lot is cast into the lap; but the whole disposing thereof is of the LORD." -- Proverbs 16:33

"He [God] directeth it under the whole heaven, and his lightning unto the ends of the earth." -- Job 37:3

"Because that which may be known of God is manifest in them; for God hath shewed it to them." -- Romans 1:19

"All things were mixed up together, then Mind came and arranged them all in distinct order." -- Anaxagoras, philosopher, 5th century B.C.

"Then I heard someone who had a book of Anaxagoras, as he said, out of which he read that mind was the disposer and cause of all, and I was quite delighted at the notion of this, which appeared admirable, and I said to myself; If mind is the disposer, mind will dispose all for the best, and put each particular in the best place ...." -- Socrates, philosopher, Phaedo, 360 B.C.

"Some people even question whether they [chance and spontaneity] are real or not. They say that nothing happens by chance, but that everything which we ascribe to chance or spontaneity has some definite cause ...." -- Aristotle, Physics, Book II, 350 B.C.

"... if chance were real, it would seem strange indeed, and the question might be raised, why on earth none of the wise men of old in speaking of the causes of generation and decay took account of chance; whence it would seem that they too did not believe that anything is by chance." -- Aristotle, Physics, Book II, 350 B.C.

"Certainly the early physicists found no place for chance among the causes which they recognized...." -- Aristotle, Physics, Book II, 350 B.C.

"There are some too who ascribe this heavenly sphere and all the worlds to spontaneity. They say that the vortex arose spontaneously, i.e. the motion that separated and arranged in its present order all that exists. This statement might well cause surprise. For they are asserting that chance is not responsible for the existence or generation of animals and plants, nature or mind or something of the kind being the cause of them (for it is not any chance thing that comes from a given seed but an olive from one kind and a man from another); and yet at the same time they assert that the heavenly sphere and the divinest of visible things arose spontaneously, having no such cause as is assigned to animals and plants. Yet if this is so, it is a fact which deserves to be dwelt upon, and something might well have been said about it. For besides the other absurdities of the statement, it is the more absurd that people should make it when they see nothing coming to be spontaneously in the heavens ...." -- Aristotle, Physics, Book II, 350 B.C.

"Spontaneity and chance, therefore, are posterior to intelligence and nature. Hence, however true it may be that the heavens are due to spontaneity, it will still be true that intelligence and nature will be prior causes of this All and of many things in it besides." -- Aristotle, Physics, Book II, 350 B.C.

"... Anaxagoras, who says that all things were together and at rest for an infinite period of time, and that then Mind introduced motion and separated them...." -- Aristotle, Physics, Book VIII, 350 B.C.

"... nor again could it be right to entrust so great a matter [nature] to spontaneity and chance. When one man said, then, that reason was present -- as in animals, so throughout nature -- as the cause of order and of all arrangement, he seemed like a sober man in contrast with the random talk of his predecessors. We know that Anaxagoras certainly adopted these views, but Hermotimus of Clazomenae is credited with expressing them earlier." -- Aristotle, Metaphysics, Book I, 350 B.C.

"As with these productions of art, so also is it with the productions of nature." -- Aristotle, On the Parts of Animals, Book I, 350 B.C.

"Empedocles, then, was in error when he said that many of the characters presented by animals were merely the result of incidental occurrences during their development; for instance, that the backbone was divided as it is into vertebrae, because it happened to be broken owing to the contorted position of the foetus in the womb. In so saying he overlooked the fact that propogation implies a creative seed endowed with certain formative properties. Secondly, he neglected another fact, namely, that the parent animal pre-exists, not only in idea, but actually in time. For man is generated from man; and thus it is the possession of certain characters by the parent that determines the development of like characters in the child." -- Aristotle, On the Parts of Animals, Book I, 350 B.C.

"Yet even from this inferior intelligence of man we may discover the existence of some intelligent agent that is divine, and wiser than ourselves; for, as Socrates says in Xenophon, from whence had man his portion of understanding?" -- Marcus T. Cicero, philosopher, The Nature of the Gods, Book II, Chapter VI, 1st century B.C.

"Yet these people doubt whether the universe, from whence all things arise and are made, is not the effect of chance, or some necessity, rather than the work of reason and a divine mind. According to them, Archimedes shows more knowledge in representing the motions of the celestial globe than nature does in causing them, though the copy is so infinitely beneath the original." -- Marcus T. Cicero, philosopher, The Nature of the Gods, Book II, Chapter XXXV, 1st century B.C.

"Can any one in his sense imagine that this disposition of the stars, and this heaven so beautifully adorned, could ever have been formed by a fortuitous concourse of atoms? Or what other nature, being destitute of intellect and reason, could possibly have produced these effects, which not only required reason to bring them about, but the very character of which could not be understood and appreciated without the most strenuous exertions of well-directed reason?" -- Marcus T. Cicero, philosopher, The Nature of the Gods, Book II, Chapter XLIV, 1st century B.C.

"Again, he who does not perceive the soul and mind of man, his reason, prudence and discernment, to be the work of a divine providence, seems himself to be destitute of those faculties." -- Marcus. T. Cicero, philosopher, The Nature of the Gods, Book II, Chapter LIX, 1st century B.C.

"He [Anaxagoras] said that the beginning of the universe was mind and matter, mind being the creator and matter that which came into being. For that when all things were together, mind came and arranged them." -- Hippolytus, priest, 2nd century

Also see: Keener, C., Ancient Philosophers and Intelligent Design, Aug 2007

Dr. David Berlinski

Mathematics and Evolution



What does it take to evolve?



On random mutations.



On copying genetic material.

Scientists Continue to Learn From the Ancients

"Isaac Asimov's 'Nightfall' tells the story of a civilization on a planet with six suns, where night comes only once every 2,049 years. Scholars of that world have uncovered traces of at least nine previous cultures, all of which reached a height comparable to their own and then vanished suddenly. Because of their viewing handicap, those scientists cosmology is faulty. At their most creative, they can imagine that their universe consists of perhaps a few dozen 'stars' -- mysterious lights that eccentric cultists are always talking about. When night does fall and myriad stars shine forth, their cosmology, and indeed the philosophical basis for their society, crumbles." -- Anthony L. Peratt, physicist, February 1992

Science Daily: First Known Binary Star Is Discovered to Be a Triplet, Quadruplet, Quintuplet, Sextuplet System.

ScienceDaily (Dec. 13, 2009) — In ancient times, people with exceptional vision discovered that one of the brightest stars in the Big Dipper was, in fact, two stars so close together that most people cannot distinguish them. The two stars, Alcor and Mizar, were the first binary stars -- a pair of stars that orbit each other -- ever known.

Modern telescopes have since found that Mizar is itself a pair of binaries, revealing what was once thought of as a single star to be four stars orbiting each other. Alcor has been sometimes considered a fifth member of the system, orbiting far away from the Mizar quadruplet.

Now, an astronomer at the University of Rochester and his colleagues have made the surprise discovery that Alcor is also actually two stars, and is apparently gravitationally bound to the Mizar system, making the whole group a sextuplet. This would make the Mizar-Alcor sextuplet the second-nearest such system known. The discovery is especially surprising because Alcor is one of the most studied stars in the sky.

"Finding that Alcor had a stellar companion was a bit of serendipity," says Eric Mamajek, assistant professor of physics and astronomy at the University of Rochester, and leader of the team that found the star. "We were trying a new method of planet hunting and instead of finding a planet orbiting Alcor, we found a star."

Ancient Inventions

"To us this seems like a kind of racism, in which our ancestors are looked down on simply because they lived in the past." -- Peter James, historian, and Nick Thorpe, archaeologist, July 1994

"A popular misconception exists that the builders of the pyramids or the cave painters of prehistory were somehow less intelligent than we are. This simply isn't true -- there is no evidence that the human brain has evolved at all in the last fifty thousand years at least. Modern people are simply benefiting from thousands of years of accumulated knowledge and experiment, not from increased intellect." -- Peter James, historian, and Nick Thorpe, archaeologist, July 1994

"These ideas are part of a mistaken view of history best described as temporocentrism -- the belief that our own time is the most important and represents a 'pinnacle' of achievement. The temporocentric view is a hangover from nineteenth century ideas of progress. This crude version of Darwinian evolution has led to many misinterpretations of the archaeological evidence for ancient technological and cultural achievement." -- Peter James, historian, and Nick Thorpe, archaeologist, July 1994

"... so many inventions have been developed only to be forgotten and redeveloped much later." -- Peter James, historian, and Nick Thorpe, archaeologist, July 1994

"... every now and again an object or a text turns up that completely surpasses all previous estimates of an ancient culture's technical skill. The increasing number of such finds is forcing us to reasses completely our view of ancient technological abilities." -- Peter James, historian, and Nick Thorpe, archaeologist, July 1994

"... we ... have much to learn from the exploration of ancient science and technology. The goal of such exploration is unimaginably rich: a vast store of accumulated knowledge, arrived at through thousands of years of trial-and-error experience on the part of all our ancestors." -- Peter James, historian, and Nick Thorpe, archaeologist, July 1994

James, P., and Thorpe, N., Ancient Inventions, 1994

Richard Dawkins Admits Intelligent Design Is Possible

"Well, it [Intelligent Design] could come about in the following way, it could be that at some earlier time somewhere in the universe a civilization ... [came] to a very very high level of technology and designed a form of life that they seeded onto perhaps this planet. Now that is a possibility, an intriguing possibility, and I suppose it's possible that you might find evidence for that if you look at the details of biochemistry and molecular biology you might find a signature of some sort of designer. And that designer could well be a higher intelligence from elsewhere in the universe." -- Richard Dawkins, atheist preacher, 2008

Meyer, S.C., The Origin Of Biological Information And The Higher Taxonomic Categories, Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington, Volume 117, Number 2, Pages 213-239, May 2007

Scientists Admit the Earth Grows

"The near-Earth plasma sheet is thought to thin during the growth phase and then rapidly expand after the onset of the substorm." -- J.P. Dewhurst, astrophysicst, et al., 2004

Science Daily: Earth's Atmosphere Came from Outer Space, Scientists Find.

ScienceDaily (Dec. 11, 2009) — The gases which formed the Earth's atmosphere -- and probably its oceans -- did not come from inside the Earth but from outer space, according to a study by University of Manchester and University of Houston scientists.

The report published in the journal Science means that textbook images of ancient Earth with huge volcanoes spewing gas into the atmosphere will have to be rethought.
According to the team, the age-old view that volcanoes were the source of the Earth's earliest atmosphere must be put to rest.

How can the Earth gain matter from outerspace without growing? I guess the particles have negative mass.

John Coleman on the Global Warming Cult

Watts Up With That: John Coleman on the “six legged monster”.

David and Goliath

The 21st century Goliath is Global Warming. It is a powerful six-legged monster. In no order of strength, those legs are:

(1) The big money climate change scientists and their powerful institutions from governmental centers to Universities,

(2) The United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change which is a Geneva-based, highly funded bureaucracy controlled by one-world government political activists,

(3) Environmentalists who seek to use threats of climate chaos to stop the use of fossil [sic] fuels and return to a simpler, more “natural”, primitive lifestyle,

(4) Government at all levels whose political leaders find dealing with global warming is their opportunity to save us all from disaster cementing their status and success,

(5) The media populated by people who love to warn us of impending disaster and give us the advice we need to cope, who believe in Al Gore and his political party and who know that “the sky is falling” is the best headline of them all,

(6) Al Gore, who uses his status as a successful former Senator and Vice President to provide a platform to promote his message of doom and gloom, a message he learned in his only college science class and must have truly believed for many years but should see now is only an empty threat.

The total financial resources and power structure behind Goliath are staggering.

Ancient Acoustic Science

"Democritus [said], that there is but one sort of motion, and it is that which is vibratory." -- Plutarch, historian, 1st century

"And Apollodorus, of Cyzicus, says that he [Democritus] was intimate with Philolaus; 'He used to practise himself,' says Antisthenes, 'in testing perceptions in various manners; sometimes retiring into solitary places, and spending his time even among tombs.'" -- Diogenes Laertius, historian, 3rd century

"... to what Agent did the Ancients attribute the gravity of their atoms and what did they mean by calling God an harmony and comparing him & matter (the corporeal part of the Universe) to the God Pan and his Pipe?" -- Isaac Newton, mathematician, 169-

"Francois Lenormont writes in his Chaldean Magic that by means of sounds the priests of ancient Babylon were able to raise into the air heavy rocks which a thousand men could not have lifted." -- Andrew Tomas, author, 1971

"Babylonian tablets affirm that sound could lift stones. The Bible speaks of Jericho and what sound waves did to it's walls. Coptic writings relate the process by which blocks for the pyramids were elevated by the sound of chanting. However, at the present state of our knowledge we can establish no connection between sound and weightlessness." -- Andrew Tomas, author, 1971

"Was it possible therefore that the world once possessed an understanding of sound that was lost and never recovered?" -- Andrew Collins, author, 2002

PRWeb: Ancient Temple Architects May Have Been Chasing a Buzz From Sound Waves (Hat tip: Lord Fungus)

Emerging archaeology in a new study highlighted by the Old Temples Study Foundation suggests that sound and a desire to harness its effects may have been equally important as vision in the design of humankind’s earliest ancient temples and monumental buildings.

Sarasota, FL (PRWEB) December 1, 2009 -- Six-thousand-year-old ancient temples are giving up acoustic clues for modern scientists. Intriguing new research on ancient temples in Malta and highlighted by the Old Temples Study Foundation is resonating through international archaeology and interdisciplinary classics research. Reaching beyond the scope of traditional archaeology, a multi-disciplinary approach has opened a new dimension for the study of the ancient world.

We may be hitting on one of those ‘lost secrets’,” says Linda Eneix, President of The OTS Foundation, dedicated to archaeology research and education related to the ancient temples of Mediterranean Malta.

Located south of Sicily, the islands of Malta and Gozo are home to megalithic structures that were created by a highly developed people more than a thousand years ahead of Stonehenge and the pyramids. The monuments, including ancient temples, represent free-standing architecture in its purest and most original form. Design features including corbelled ceilings, are mirrored in subterranean mortuary shrines that have been carved out of solid limestone. (In architecture, corbelling is a system of a row of stones oversailing the one below it, reducing the area of the ceiling with each row upward and distributing its weight.) Malta’s Hal Saflieni Hypogeum provides the most extraordinary example. A multi-leveled complex of caves and ritual chambers, it is a gem of archaeology that lay undisturbed until workers broke into it accidentally in 1902.

Science Officer at the Hypogeum, Joseph Farrugia describes unusual sound effects in the UNESCO World Heritage Site: “There is a small niche in what we call ‘The Oracle Chamber’, and if someone with a deep voice speaks inside, the voice echoes all over the hypogeum. The resonance in the ancient temple is something exceptional. You can hear the voice rumbling all over.”

As anyone who sings in the shower knows, sound echoing back and amplifying itself from hard walls can do unusual things. That effect is magnified several times over in the stone chambers. “Standing in the Hypogeum is like being inside a giant bell,” says Eneix. “You feel the sound in your bones as much as you hear it with your ears. It’s really thrilling!”

After catching a film about the “Sounds of the Stone Age” on a flight from London, Eneix jumped on the chance to explore further and sought out the principals.

A consortium called The PEAR Proposition: Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research are pioneers in the field of archaeo-acoustics, merging archaeology and sound science. Directed by Physicist Dr. Robert Jahn, the PEAR group set out in 1994 to test acoustic behavior in megalithic sites such as Newgrange and Wayland‘s Smithy in the UK. They found that the ancient chambers all sustained a strong resonance at a sound frequency between 95 and 120 hertz: well within the range of a low male voice.

In subsequent OTSF testing, stone rooms in ancient temples in Malta were found to match the same pattern of resonance, registering at the frequency of 110 or 111 hz. This turns out to be a significant level for the human brain. Whether it was deliberate or not, the people who spent time in such an environment were exposing themselves to vibrations that impacted their minds.

Sound scientist, Prof. Daniel Talma of the University of Malta explains: “At certain frequencies you have standing waves that emphasize each and other waves that de-emphasize each other. The idea that it was used thousands of years ago to create a certain trance -- that’s what fascinates me.”

Dr. Ian A. Cook of UCLA and colleagues published findings in 2008 of an experiment in which regional brain activity in a number of healthy volunteers was monitored by EEG through different resonance frequencies. Findings indicated that at 110 hz the patterns of activity over the prefrontal cortex abruptly shifted, resulting in a relative deactivation of the language center and a temporary switching from left to right-sided dominance related to emotional processing. People regularly exposed to resonant sound in the frequency of 110 or 111 hz would have been “turning on” an area of the brain that bio-behavioral scientists believe relates to mood, empathy and social behavior.

Although archaeologists had not found an explanation for such sophisticated engineering suddenly blossoming nearly six thousand years ago, Prof. Richard England, a Fellow of the American Institute of Architects, sees an evolution: “. . . a gradual growth, from the cave to the tomb. The idea of continuity comes from an underground architecture. Gradually from these ovular rock-hewn spaces, man moved above ground, and above ground he fashioned an architecture of the living which followed the form of an architecture for the dead.”

“Once you know what you are looking for, you can see these same ceiling curves in natural caves in Malta.” Eneix observes. “It’s logical that the ancient temple builders observed the echoes and sound characteristics in the caves and came up with the idea of recreating the same environment in a more controlled way. Were they doing it intentionally to facilitate an altered state of consciousness? There is a lot that we are never going to know.”

Acoustics may well have been part of a widespread religious tradition. Old photos in an early edition of National Geographic Magazine show the discovery in securely dated levels of the Malta temples, of conical shaped stones bearing a distinct resemblance to the Omphalos or “belly-button” oracle stone at Delphi, used much later in time by ancient Greek priestesses who listened to the voice of the earth for guidance. The Omphalos became an Umbilicus when the Romans took over the concept and spread it over their empire. The timeline places the ancient Temple Builders at the head of a long chain of “coincidence.”

Lord Christopher Monckton

"Quite often in this field [medicine] politics comes first and science second. We must take a position based upon the science and the data." -- Arata Kochi, physician, September 15th 2006

"It is a logical fallacy. In fact, it is in the Aristotelian canon of logical fallacies. ... We feel sorry for the polar bears cuz they're cuddly and therefore global warming is terrible. There is no logic in that. It is all emotion." -- Lord Christopher Monckton, polymath, 2009

"The most unreliable source on Earth: Wiki Bloody Pedia." -- Lord Christopher Monckton, polymath, 2009

"It is a clear and continuing instance of deliberate bad faith." -- Lord Christopher Monckton, polymath, 2009

"The fact of warming, which of course stopped in 1995 and hasn't really resumed since, but the fact of warming does not tell us it's cause. ... We don't know what's causing the warming, so we're going to blame it on anything we like. That's not a rational or logical argument. And it might just as well be Al Gore with his flamethrower on the surface of Greenland." -- Lord Christopher Monckton, polymath, 2009

(Hat tip: Stephen Smith)

Al Gore's Polar Bear

Encyclopedia Dramatica:

According to leftards, polar bears are incapable of swimming; therefore it's IMPOSSIBLE that one would climb upon an ice floe that was ALREADY far from land.

Encyclopedia Dramatica

This is definitely an improvement over Wikipedia.

Evolution:

Evilution is an Atheist Lie designed to make people buy flu shots and be scared of the Swine flu. Evolution comes in two flavours (according to Tards): the observable phenomenon responsible for turning wolves into poodles and lions into lolcats, and the as-of-yet unobserved but still PROVEN!!!11 concept that we all originally came from apes, who all originally came from rats, who all originally came from fish, who all originally came from soup, which originally came from nothing. Thanks to the atheists' unceasing desire to convince the dull-witted masses of the latter form, said masses reject the former, making their quest even harder and thus resulting in epic irony and butthurt for the atheists who believe soup theory to be the key to killing Christianity and religion in general by proving we are all hairy, stupid, stinking monkeys.

In response to the Bible-trolling by basement-dwelling atheists everywhere, fundamentalist Christians wage an epic war against them wherever they may lurk, trying to prove they are NOT hairy, stupid, stinking monkeys. The ensuing battles between the Alliance and the Horde nearly always result in epic fail and bad science all around, go on for at least 100 pages, and have caused the deaths of over 9000 Wikipedia accounts.

Global Warming:

Global warming, or climate change, is a liberal conspiracy devised by Al Gore, treehugging hippies, and the electric car industry in order to gain political and financial power. Some argue that no one has ever actually seen global warming, pointing to the fact that said hippies probably imagined it while on LSD. (Plus, don't forget that there were at least 6 or 7 ICE AGES over the course of Earth's history.) All we have to do is keep burning shit, and we'll have enough carbon dioxide in the atmosphere to really change things. In fact, if another Ice Age does occur, then warming the earth with emissions will help reduce the catastrophic temperature drop.

Last Thursday Al Gore finally lost the argument by comparing Global Warming to Nazis. Seriously.

The supposed effects of global warming will not affect you in any way, so pollute as much as possible to troll the next generations.

Are Scientists Bad For The Environment?

Fox News 2007: Scientists Find Oldest Living Animal, Then Kill It.

British marine biologists have found what may be the oldest living animal — that is, until they killed it.

The team from Bangor University in Wales was dredging the waters north of Iceland as part of routine research when the unfortunate specimen, belonging to the clam species Arctica islandica, commonly known as the ocean quahog, was hauled up from waters 250 feet deep.

Only after researchers cut through its shell, which made it more of an ex-clam, and counted its growth rings did they realize how old it had been — between 405 and 410 years old.

I Learned Three New Words Today

I learned three new words today.

That's because I was accused of two separate heresies...haha.

Nestorianism AND Monophysitism (specifically Eutychianism).

For I say Mary should be called, "The Mother of Christ" (Nestorianism).

And I also say Jesus had a dual nature, namely mundane and extraterrestrial (Eutychianism).

I wouldn't have survived very long in Medieval times.

Cave Man Smart; Modern Man Dumb

"I expect they [Homo sapiens idialtu] were much more like us than we have given them credit for being." -- Susan Antón, paleoanthropologist, June 2003

John Feliks: Phi in the Acheulian.

Phi in the Acheulian is the second of two papers presented at the XVth UISPP Congress in Lisbon (September 7, 2006) that offer a completely new perspective on the intelligence of our ancient ancestors. For the past 150 years, early humans have been regarded as inferior to us, unable to create art, think abstractly, or even to speak. In these two papers (Part I being The Graphics of Bilzingsleben), I demonstrate that this picture is not at all accurate and that early peoples such as Homo erectus, Homo ergaster, Neanderthals, and Homo heidelbergensis were just as intelligent as we are in today's modern world. The evidence provided in the two papers shows beyond any reasonable doubt that early people had highly-developed language and even mathematical ability 400,000 years ago.

The Racist Scientific Lies We Are Taught

"Some efforts have already been made in a number of fields to investigate the knowledge of tribal peoples and incorporate it into modern scientific explanations. Thor Heyerdahl was one of the first people to show, by repeating the event, that ancient peoples could well have traveled by sea to various parts of the globe. I think partially as a result of his voyages a small group of anthropologists have now allowed that Indians, instead of marching four abreast over the mythical Bering land bridge, might have come by boat on a bay and inlet basis from the Asian continent to North America. Recognizing that Indians may have been capable of building boats seems a minor step forward until we remember that for almost two centuries scientific doctrine required that Indians come by land because they were incapable of building rafts. Polynesian voyages of considerable distances have now been duplicated, giving credence to the idea that Hawaiian tales of sea voyages were not superstitious ways of discussing ocean currents. Critical in this respect is the fact that Hawaiians would not be believed until a white man had duplicated the feat." -- Vine Deloria Jr., historian, 1997

Evidence is once again refuting the racist scientific lies we were brainwashed with in school. The only things that Columbus ever discovered were scientific racism and ignorance: Polynesians Took Chickens to the Americas 100 Years Before Columbus.

CHICKEN was on the menu in the Americas at least 100 years before Europeans arrived. The birds were introduced by Polynesians, according to an analysis of chicken bones found on the Arauco Peninsula in south-central Chile.

It's the first concrete evidence that Polynesians voyaged as far as South America, and also suggests that they, not Europeans, were responsible for introducing chickens to the continent. Both topics have been hotly debated.

Elizabeth Matisoo-Smith from the University of Auckland in New Zealand and her colleagues carbon dated the bones. "When we got the date I was gobsmacked," says Matisoo-Smith. The 50 chicken bones came from at least five different birds and date from between 1321 and 1407. While Columbus didn't arrive until 1492, the timescale for the bones coincides with the colonisation of the easternmost islands of Polynesia, including Pitcairn and Easter Island.

I Won't Let Them Teach My Baby

"You know we receive an education in the schools from books. All those books that people became educated from twenty-five years ago, are wrong now, and those that are good now, will be wrong again twenty-five years from now. So if they are wrong then, they are also wrong now, and the one who is educated from the wrong books is not educated, he is misled. All books that are written are wrong, the one who is not educated cannot write a book and the one who is educated, is really not educated but he is misled and the one who is misled cannot write a book that is correct." -- Edward Leedskalnin, stone mason, 1936

"Everything I'm gonna present to you was not in my textbooks when I went to school. And most of it was not even in my college textbooks. I'm a geophysicist and (all my earth science books) when I was a student I had to give the wrong answer to get an A. We used to ridicule continental drift. It was something we laughed at." -- Robert D. Ballard, oceanographer, May 2008