A good read. I only wish I had the intellectual prowess to have something to add.
I will say, once you really digest it, it becomes impossible to look at the crescent moon at night and not immediately triangulate the position of the sun, even though the sun is not visible. Truly internalizing your place on this "floating sphere of rock and water" is as close to a religious experience as I have had.
But I'll never walk on the moon, and I'll never see an earth-rise. I am convinced the moon is a ball of rock, but my mortality and inability to go and see tenders my heart towards those who firmly believe in other 'unconfirmed' ideas, say, that the moon is a bowl of fire or that lightning bolts are Zeus having a go on some poor soul. It makes me sad and afraid in a way the young, strident, physics loving, atheist me in the past could not understand.
> How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers? What was holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet owned has bled to death under our knives: who will wipe this blood off us? What water is there for us to clean ourselves?
We do owe something to the supernatural, for killing it. I just don't know what. Love? Then again, maybe we owe something to Socrates, for killing him.
You wouldn't see one even if you were on the Moon, which doesn't rotate with respect to the Earth. (In the spirit of your comment, you can satisfy yourself about this intuitively by reflecting that we always see the same face of the Moon, so somebody on that face wouldn't see the Earth changing position in the sky, either.)
You are not wrong, and I am not trying to be pedantic. But I want to take this opportunity to bring up an interesting phenomenon.
While the Moon is tidally locked with Earth, a slight wobble in the Moon's motion (an effect called lunar libration) allows us to see more than 50% of its surface over time.
Therefore for an observer positioned on the Moon's limb (the boundary between the near and far sides), this wobble would cause the Earth to slowly rise just above the horizon and then dip back down. This movement would be extremely slow, taking place over many days, and would only involve a portion of the Earth's surface, not the entire planet rising completely into the sky. But it is the closest thing to earth-rise and set, you can get from the surface of the moon.
The wobble is caused by the moon speeding towards earth (on approach in its elliptical orbit) and then slowing down (on receding away) while still having a constant spin on it axis.
> it becomes impossible to look at the crescent moon at night and not immediately triangulate the position of the sun
I do that too, like the moon is lit from the right, slightly from above so yes obviously the sun is over there, up, aaaand... nope, it's sunset. Something's not right, is the light curved?
Anyway, that's the day I learned about the lunar terminator illusion[1]. Honestly, even knowing about the phenomenon, it still feels quite mind-bending to think about it.
That whole article seems odd to me. I don't think I've ever felt this illusion, at least not when old enough to even think about the geometry of it.
I don't intuit the cylindrical projection mentioned in that article. I "feel" an arc over the hemispherical sky. I know the terminator is perpendicular to that arc and the moon chases the sun towards the horizon.
I wonder if latitude or other local terrain and climate features influence what sort of mental model one develops about this...
A strange position, to require to experience something to believe in it. Yet in the same time, reverting back by default to superstitions and supernatural beliefs, which in the most logical sense were never truly experienced by anybody. But I guess they soothe some highly illogical emotional core from our distant past which made fight-or-flight and similar reactions possible.
You do you (or let your 'heart' do you), happy to not feel member of such group in any way nor sharing such concerns. Life is too short and there are properly amazing things to experience each day, that's a better focus of experiencing this world IMHO.
Oh I believe in it. I can't experience it, and yet I believe completely. Yes, my argument is stronger than one who thinks the moon is a bowl of fire, but epistemology, science itself, unfortunately confirms that I do not know. My point is simply that this realization should give you sympathy to those who believe something different. My concern is not with my own beliefs, it's with the ability to bridge the gap with others. To heal the "crack in the cosmos", and to avoid the science-shock described in the article.
I don't know if you are right about things "not experienced by anyone"
If anything, men we owe much to like Darwin, Newton and Lematire were religiously trained and lived religious lives - their belief and experience is vastly different from yours (projecting an atheist belief system on you based on your comment) and you have no way to relate to it. But the fact that our greatest advanced came from minds running that operating system is not something you can waive away.
I hadn't heard of this Aegospotami meteor before, I wonder what happened to it given that it was apparently intact and "the size of a wagon-load". I had to look up if that's even possible, but there's one in Namibia that's 60 tonnes and hasn't been moved from where it dropped; it was discovered in 1920. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hoba_meteorite
Indeed, it’s fairly certain that Tutankhamun’s dagger is meteoric in origin. I’ve always found it intensely interesting that “star metal” was sought out for its qualities but rarely replicated until the modern age.
The meteoritic iron has never been replicated until modern times because the ancients did not know that its good qualities are caused by its content of nickel and cobalt.
Even if they had known that, they would not have known which are the minerals that contain nickel or cobalt, despite the fact that minerals containing cobalt have been used for coloring glass for many millennia.
There have been several places, including China, where in ancient times alloys of copper and nickel have been made. Nevertheless, even in those places the smiths did not know that the nickel minerals contain another metal. They knew only that when adding nickel minerals to copper minerals, a better copper is obtained after smelting. This was similar to what the ancient Romans did, who knew very well to make brass, and who used zinc oxide for a lot of things, including in medicine, but who had no idea that brass and zinc oxide contain a distinct metal, zinc.
The metals nickel and cobalt have been discovered only during 18th century, at the start of modern chemistry, when people, especially in Sweden, have started to classify all the known chemical substances and minerals and to search for new minerals and substances. In the Sweden of the 18th century there was some kind of classification mania, which has been very useful for mankind, because its result was the start of the modernization of biology, chemistry and mineralogy.
Before modern chemistry, the Europeans knew 7 metals in pure form, because the 8th metal, the adamant of the ancient Greeks and Romans had been forgotten (i.e. natural nuggets of Os-Ir alloy), while 2 other metals had been discovered and used by the natives of other parts of the world, i.e. zinc in Asia and platinum in South-America.
When not counting the semi-metals As, Sb and Bi (which are fragile, because they do not have a metallic crystal structure, even if they have free electrons), cobalt and nickel have been the first true metals discovered in modern times, after the 9 metals (7 + Zn + Pt) that had been in use for many centuries or millennia.
I wonder if it was simply covered by up soil, due to erosion. As the article points out, the whole region has had multiple periods of wars - probably very easy to "lose" an entire city, and a meteor that was worshipped nearby.
> That ‘glorious hope’ was quickly dashed, however. In Anaxagoras’s account, it seemed to Socrates, Mind had no agency other than initially setting things in motion, and no morality. ... For this reason, Socrates tells us plainly, he completely lost interest in the heavens, in science, and in physical reality (ta onta, ‘the things that are’).
> And so (as I’ve argued in more detail elsewhere) the first global franchise [Christian faith] was set up on an anti-science basis.
Supposedly, Socrates wasn't disenchanted with the disenchantment because he thought it was nonsense, but because it didn't address existential/moral issues that he found pertinent.
I'm not sure this drive is best characterized as anti-science. There's a difference between denying scientific research as today understood and denying a inherently materialistic worldview as one's overarching context of life. The latter is often married to science, but it doesn't have to be.
No shortage of science was and is done by deeply religious individuals. And indeed religions co-opted science in various ways. And we had materialist* views pretty far back (clearly in both Greece and India).
What's changed recently IMO, is that at those ancient times, a materialistic worldview was a sort of "Yeah, and?" sort of deal, since it offered little in terms of giving a direction to the life of an individual. Nowadays, there is at least a technological eschatology, with people expecting or looking forward to luxuries, longevity, and other such things as have usually been the promises of religions. Funnily enough, insofar as this eschatology contains a place for human agency, its mostly been taken up by organizations and corporations few would see as anything but morally corrupt. It's a weird eschatology where the idea is that if you pump enough juice in the greed machine, at some point a phase transition occurs and all of it can be converted in stable welfare for all.
For me it went off the rails in the middle, and I couldn't follow what was going on any more. Lesson in there (for me). Stories need to have a tight plot.
A good read. I only wish I had the intellectual prowess to have something to add.
I will say, once you really digest it, it becomes impossible to look at the crescent moon at night and not immediately triangulate the position of the sun, even though the sun is not visible. Truly internalizing your place on this "floating sphere of rock and water" is as close to a religious experience as I have had.
But I'll never walk on the moon, and I'll never see an earth-rise. I am convinced the moon is a ball of rock, but my mortality and inability to go and see tenders my heart towards those who firmly believe in other 'unconfirmed' ideas, say, that the moon is a bowl of fire or that lightning bolts are Zeus having a go on some poor soul. It makes me sad and afraid in a way the young, strident, physics loving, atheist me in the past could not understand.
> How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers? What was holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet owned has bled to death under our knives: who will wipe this blood off us? What water is there for us to clean ourselves?
We do owe something to the supernatural, for killing it. I just don't know what. Love? Then again, maybe we owe something to Socrates, for killing him.
> I'll never see an earth-rise
You wouldn't see one even if you were on the Moon, which doesn't rotate with respect to the Earth. (In the spirit of your comment, you can satisfy yourself about this intuitively by reflecting that we always see the same face of the Moon, so somebody on that face wouldn't see the Earth changing position in the sky, either.)
You'd probably get into lunar orbit before descending to the surface, so that would offer you an opportunity to see the Earth rise (sort of).
You are not wrong, and I am not trying to be pedantic. But I want to take this opportunity to bring up an interesting phenomenon.
While the Moon is tidally locked with Earth, a slight wobble in the Moon's motion (an effect called lunar libration) allows us to see more than 50% of its surface over time.
Therefore for an observer positioned on the Moon's limb (the boundary between the near and far sides), this wobble would cause the Earth to slowly rise just above the horizon and then dip back down. This movement would be extremely slow, taking place over many days, and would only involve a portion of the Earth's surface, not the entire planet rising completely into the sky. But it is the closest thing to earth-rise and set, you can get from the surface of the moon.
The wobble is caused by the moon speeding towards earth (on approach in its elliptical orbit) and then slowing down (on receding away) while still having a constant spin on it axis.
> it becomes impossible to look at the crescent moon at night and not immediately triangulate the position of the sun
I do that too, like the moon is lit from the right, slightly from above so yes obviously the sun is over there, up, aaaand... nope, it's sunset. Something's not right, is the light curved?
Anyway, that's the day I learned about the lunar terminator illusion[1]. Honestly, even knowing about the phenomenon, it still feels quite mind-bending to think about it.
[1] https://chrisjones.id.au/MoonIllusion/
That whole article seems odd to me. I don't think I've ever felt this illusion, at least not when old enough to even think about the geometry of it.
I don't intuit the cylindrical projection mentioned in that article. I "feel" an arc over the hemispherical sky. I know the terminator is perpendicular to that arc and the moon chases the sun towards the horizon.
I wonder if latitude or other local terrain and climate features influence what sort of mental model one develops about this...
A strange position, to require to experience something to believe in it. Yet in the same time, reverting back by default to superstitions and supernatural beliefs, which in the most logical sense were never truly experienced by anybody. But I guess they soothe some highly illogical emotional core from our distant past which made fight-or-flight and similar reactions possible.
You do you (or let your 'heart' do you), happy to not feel member of such group in any way nor sharing such concerns. Life is too short and there are properly amazing things to experience each day, that's a better focus of experiencing this world IMHO.
Oh I believe in it. I can't experience it, and yet I believe completely. Yes, my argument is stronger than one who thinks the moon is a bowl of fire, but epistemology, science itself, unfortunately confirms that I do not know. My point is simply that this realization should give you sympathy to those who believe something different. My concern is not with my own beliefs, it's with the ability to bridge the gap with others. To heal the "crack in the cosmos", and to avoid the science-shock described in the article.
I don't know if you are right about things "not experienced by anyone"
If anything, men we owe much to like Darwin, Newton and Lematire were religiously trained and lived religious lives - their belief and experience is vastly different from yours (projecting an atheist belief system on you based on your comment) and you have no way to relate to it. But the fact that our greatest advanced came from minds running that operating system is not something you can waive away.
I hadn't heard of this Aegospotami meteor before, I wonder what happened to it given that it was apparently intact and "the size of a wagon-load". I had to look up if that's even possible, but there's one in Namibia that's 60 tonnes and hasn't been moved from where it dropped; it was discovered in 1920. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hoba_meteorite
I believe some meteorites were used a source of iron, as iron isn't easy to dig out of the ground with primitive tools.
Indeed, it’s fairly certain that Tutankhamun’s dagger is meteoric in origin. I’ve always found it intensely interesting that “star metal” was sought out for its qualities but rarely replicated until the modern age.
The meteoritic iron has never been replicated until modern times because the ancients did not know that its good qualities are caused by its content of nickel and cobalt.
Even if they had known that, they would not have known which are the minerals that contain nickel or cobalt, despite the fact that minerals containing cobalt have been used for coloring glass for many millennia.
There have been several places, including China, where in ancient times alloys of copper and nickel have been made. Nevertheless, even in those places the smiths did not know that the nickel minerals contain another metal. They knew only that when adding nickel minerals to copper minerals, a better copper is obtained after smelting. This was similar to what the ancient Romans did, who knew very well to make brass, and who used zinc oxide for a lot of things, including in medicine, but who had no idea that brass and zinc oxide contain a distinct metal, zinc.
The metals nickel and cobalt have been discovered only during 18th century, at the start of modern chemistry, when people, especially in Sweden, have started to classify all the known chemical substances and minerals and to search for new minerals and substances. In the Sweden of the 18th century there was some kind of classification mania, which has been very useful for mankind, because its result was the start of the modernization of biology, chemistry and mineralogy.
Before modern chemistry, the Europeans knew 7 metals in pure form, because the 8th metal, the adamant of the ancient Greeks and Romans had been forgotten (i.e. natural nuggets of Os-Ir alloy), while 2 other metals had been discovered and used by the natives of other parts of the world, i.e. zinc in Asia and platinum in South-America.
When not counting the semi-metals As, Sb and Bi (which are fragile, because they do not have a metallic crystal structure, even if they have free electrons), cobalt and nickel have been the first true metals discovered in modern times, after the 9 metals (7 + Zn + Pt) that had been in use for many centuries or millennia.
I wonder if it was simply covered by up soil, due to erosion. As the article points out, the whole region has had multiple periods of wars - probably very easy to "lose" an entire city, and a meteor that was worshipped nearby.
I wonder if anyone's tried to find it.
> That ‘glorious hope’ was quickly dashed, however. In Anaxagoras’s account, it seemed to Socrates, Mind had no agency other than initially setting things in motion, and no morality. ... For this reason, Socrates tells us plainly, he completely lost interest in the heavens, in science, and in physical reality (ta onta, ‘the things that are’).
> And so (as I’ve argued in more detail elsewhere) the first global franchise [Christian faith] was set up on an anti-science basis.
Supposedly, Socrates wasn't disenchanted with the disenchantment because he thought it was nonsense, but because it didn't address existential/moral issues that he found pertinent.
I'm not sure this drive is best characterized as anti-science. There's a difference between denying scientific research as today understood and denying a inherently materialistic worldview as one's overarching context of life. The latter is often married to science, but it doesn't have to be.
No shortage of science was and is done by deeply religious individuals. And indeed religions co-opted science in various ways. And we had materialist* views pretty far back (clearly in both Greece and India).
What's changed recently IMO, is that at those ancient times, a materialistic worldview was a sort of "Yeah, and?" sort of deal, since it offered little in terms of giving a direction to the life of an individual. Nowadays, there is at least a technological eschatology, with people expecting or looking forward to luxuries, longevity, and other such things as have usually been the promises of religions. Funnily enough, insofar as this eschatology contains a place for human agency, its mostly been taken up by organizations and corporations few would see as anything but morally corrupt. It's a weird eschatology where the idea is that if you pump enough juice in the greed machine, at some point a phase transition occurs and all of it can be converted in stable welfare for all.
Good read but kind of went off the rails a bit at the end there.
For me it went off the rails in the middle, and I couldn't follow what was going on any more. Lesson in there (for me). Stories need to have a tight plot.
I wonder what happened to the meteorite the size of a wagon load?