Pages

Wednesday, November 06, 2019

General Relativity Made Albert Einstein an Iconic Idol of Science and the World

The Smithsonian mag online has an excellent article by Dan Falk titled One Hundred Years Ago, Einstein’s Theory of General Relativity Baffled the Press and the Public: Few people claimed to fully understand it, but the esoteric theory still managed to spark the public’s imagination.

As Falk writes:
"After two eclipse expeditions confirmed Einstein's theory of general relativity, the scientist became an international celebrity....

"When the year 1919 began, Albert Einstein was virtually unknown beyond the world of professional physicists. By year’s end, however, he was a household name around the globe. November 1919 was the month that made Einstein into “Einstein,” the beginning of the former patent clerk’s transformation into an international celebrity.

On November 6, scientists at a joint meeting of the Royal Society of London and the Royal Astronomical Society announced that measurements taken during a total solar eclipse earlier that year supported Einstein’s bold new theory of gravity, known as general relativity. Newspapers enthusiastically picked up the story. “Revolution in Science,” blared the Times of London; “Newtonian Ideas Overthrown.” A few days later, the New York Times weighed in with a six-tiered headline—rare indeed for a science story. “Lights All Askew in the Heavens,” trumpeted the main headline. A bit further down: “Einstein’s Theory Triumphs” and “Stars Not Where They Seemed, or Were Calculated to Be, But Nobody Need Worry.”

The spotlight would remain on Einstein and his seemingly impenetrable theory for the rest of his life."
Read the whole article ... which also contains several top photos of Einstein.

As linked at the mag,
"Read more: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/one-hundred-years-ago-einsteins-theory-relativity-baffled-press-public-180973427/#RuP6wtKVrwKdqH9F.99
Give the gift of Smithsonian magazine for only $12! http://bit.ly/1cGUiGv
Follow us: @SmithsonianMag on Twitter"

Thursday, September 19, 2019

The Gravitational-Wave "Revolution" Is Underway - Scientific American


Was there recent talk of Einstein's "general relativity"?

Yes, there was.
It all dropped on us, as it were, as if by gravity -- at the speed of light.
Read on....

At the Scientific American, Jonathan O'Callaghan tells us that:

The Gravitational-Wave “Revolution” Is Underway

writing in this regard as follows:
"The first neutron star merger observed by LIGO and Virgo [...] has helped researchers probe some fundamental aspects of the universe itself. Christopher Berry from Northwestern University notes that gamma rays from the event were detected by other telescopes 1.6 seconds after the gravitational waves, which allowed for an unprecedented test of the speed of gravity versus the speed of light. “We’d expect a little difference in their arrival time because they weren’t necessarily created at the same time,” he says. “But the fact that it was 1.6 seconds allowed us to test that the speed of light and the speed of gravity really are the same thing, as predicted in general relativity.
As the fourth anniversary of the first detection approaches, the field continues to mature—with a bright future ahead.""
Read the full article at:

The Gravitational-Wave "Revolution" Is Underway - Scientific American

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-gravitational-wave-revolution-is-underway/

https://bit.ly/2lYqkPJ

Sky Earth Native America

Sky Earth Native America 1 :
American Indian Rock Art Petroglyphs Pictographs
Cave Paintings Earthworks & Mounds as Land Survey & Astronomy
,
Volume 1, Edition 2, 266 pages, by Andis Kaulins.

  • Sky Earth Native America 2 :
    American Indian Rock Art Petroglyphs Pictographs
    Cave Paintings Earthworks & Mounds as Land Survey & Astronomy
    ,
    Volume 2, Edition 2, 262 pages, by Andis Kaulins.

  • Both volumes have the same cover except for the labels "Volume 1" viz. "Volume 2".
    The image on the cover was created using public domain space photos of Earth from NASA.

    -----

    Both book volumes contain the following basic book description:
    "Alice Cunningham Fletcher observed in her 1902 publication in the American Anthropologist
    that there is ample evidence that some ancient cultures in Native America,
    e.g. the Pawnee in Nebraska,
    geographically located their villages according to patterns seen in stars of the heavens.
    See Alice C. Fletcher, Star Cult Among the Pawnee--A Preliminary Report,
    American Anthropologist, 4, 730-736, 1902.
    Ralph N. Buckstaff wrote:
    "These Indians recognized the constellations as we do, also the important stars,
    drawing them according to their magnitude.
    The groups were placed with a great deal of thought and care and show long study.
    ... They were keen observers....
    The Pawnee Indians must have had a knowledge of astronomy
    comparable to that of the early white men."
    See Ralph N. Buckstaff, Stars and Constellations of a Pawnee Sky Map,
    American Anthropologist, Vol. 29, Nr. 2, April-June 1927, pp. 279-285, 1927.
    In our book, we take these observations one level further
    and show that megalithic sites and petroglyphic rock carving
    and pictographic rock art in Native America,
    together with mounds and earthworks, were made to represent territorial geographic landmarks
    placed according to the stars of the sky using the ready map of the starry sky
    in the hermetic tradition, "as above, so below".
    That mirror image of the heavens on terrestrial land is the "Sky Earth" of Native America,
    whose "rock stars" are the real stars of the heavens,
    "immortalized" by rock art petroglyphs, pictographs,
    cave paintings, earthworks and mounds of various kinds (stone, earth, shells) on our Earth.
    These landmarks were placed systematically
    in North America, Central America (Meso-America) and South America
    and can to a large degree be reconstructed as the Sky Earth of Native America."

    Most Popular Posts of All Time