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Haven't dropped into The Hall in some time. As always, spirited and interesting discussions!
Here's a small digression that I thought would be appreciated by this crowd. I was visiting one of my favorite web pages the other day and ran across an interesting picture:
I wonder where Union Carbide made the connection between the product and the brand name?
Cheers,
by
Geoff Chester
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Ancient History
There is an interesting point in here, which is that even a subject as old as and as "noble" as astronomy is fraught with politics. Both the discoveries of Uranus & Neptune raised all sorts of political mischief in their day, and only recently have the British abandoned their claim to a share of finding Neptune.
Pluto was found at Lowell Observatory, one of the first serious &qu
by
Geoff Chester
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Ancient History
Speaking on behalf of myself and not my employer I feel that if it is in orbit around a parent star and it is large enough to form a spherical shape under its own gravity it should be accorded planetary status. By these criteria Ceres, Pallas, probably Juno, Vesta & Chiron would join the club. So would the objects tentatively dubbed "Xena" and "Quaoar" (sp.?).
If the
by
Geoff Chester
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Ancient History
OK, this is getting off-topic, but I feel a rant coming on...
Interesting, albeit quirky move by the IAU. Having met Clyde Tombaugh on the occasion of the 50th Anniversary of his discovery of Pluto, and working for the institution that discovered its moon Charon, to me it will always be a planet. Not many people can say "Hey, I once knew a guy who discovered a planet and another guy who
by
Geoff Chester
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Ancient History
One of the things I love to do at my astronomy programs is to ask people to name the first planet discovered in "historical" times.
Most people who volunteer an answer will say "Uranus", for which they get the razzberry buzzer. I'll ask them to think harder, which usually results in quizzical looks and/or blank stares. Then I give them a hint:
"You're st
by
Geoff Chester
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Ancient History
Just what I was looking for! Now I can go back and re-trace my steps...
Many thanks...
Geoff
by
Geoff Chester
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Ancient History
I was recently going through my photo album of my November 2003 trip to Egypt when I came across a page of pictures that I took in the offering chapels of some of the mastaba tombs near the pyramid of Unas, on the north side of the causeway.
Does anyone know of a good map of the mastaba field in this area, preferrably online? I'm trying to identify the owners of these tombs for my own
by
Geoff Chester
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Ancient History
OK, so they found a right angle on Mars! Big woo...
My guess is that if you take the entire land surface area of the Earth (roughly equivalent to the total acreage on Mars) you'd probably find several of these. I'd be surprised if this was the only one.
Way back in my planetarium days I went to one of Hoagland's lectures. he was prattling on about the "alignments"
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Geoff Chester
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Ancient History
Well, if we are to regard this as a cache-type "re-burial", the coffins were probably recycled from the available stock at hand. Look at the other royal cache burials. With a few exceptions most of the royals were re-interred in contemporary coffins of varying workmanship. Even Amunhotep II was re-buried in a rather cheesy 21st Dynasty cartonnage coffin.
While I didn't see th
by
Geoff Chester
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Ancient History
Geoff Chester Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> IIRC, when we last left our intrtepid Discovery
> Channel coverage, there was quite a bit of chatter
> about the inscriptions that were covered in pitch
> but still plainly visible on the last coffin lid.
> Has anything come to light from these? Zahi
> certainly seems pretty confident in his
by
Geoff Chester
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Ancient History
IIRC, when we last left our intrtepid Discovery Channel coverage, there was quite a bit of chatter about the inscriptions that were covered in pitch but still plainly visible on the last coffin lid. Has anything come to light from these? Zahi certainly seems pretty confident in his argument. An inscrition would be pretty solid evidence.
Burying mothers near pharaohs is not without precedent
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Geoff Chester
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Ancient History
Oddly enough, it was the impact of a Mars-sized "planetessimal" with the proto-Earth that most probably formed the Moon some 4 billion years ago. The fact that we have a large satellite with about 1.2% of the planet's mass is one of the key factors in stabilizing the long-term change in the tilt of the Earth's axis. This value varies by a scant 3 degrees over geological time
by
Geoff Chester
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Ancient History
I found the program to be interesting, more for what was *not* said than what was. The seals, the fragmentary "pa-aten" inscription, the resin-covered glyphs on the "sealed" coffin...I DVR'ed it and I am going to try to grab a few frames of the latter to see if PhotoShop can maybe reveal anything.
In particular there was no mention of Zahi. His inspector Mansur seeme
by
Geoff Chester
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Ancient History
WWJD? - 17 years ago
Some of you may recall my rant against real estate agents back in late March. Well, my poor late mother-in-law must now be really spinning in her urn...
Here are three links to recent articles in the New York Times.
To make a long story short, "Father Mike" Madden, the "whistle-blower" in this case, was the priest who comforted my mother-in-law in her fina
by
Geoff Chester
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Humanities
While there have been numerous historical documentations of meteorite falls, the only one that caused any type of widespread damage is the Tunguska event of 1908. The parent body was probably an Apollo/Amor/Aten type asteroid, which are all classes of Earth-crossing objects that are for the most part the nuclei of defunct comets.
As such they are little more than rubble-piles with very litt
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Geoff Chester
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Ancient History
There are several cycles at work here. Most of us are familiar with the ~20ky cycle of precession, which placed the star Thuban (Alpha Draconis) near the north celestial pole at the time of Khufu. This cycle actually varies between about 19,000 to 23,000 years thanks to the perturbations of Jupiter.
The "secular polar motion" referenced in this thread is a 41ky cycle of the variati
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Geoff Chester
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Ancient History
I think this person lived in the same condo development and knew that she was in failing health. Either she saw the van from the funeral home or the Robert's Oxygen truck picking up her O2 tanks...
My wife is more in shock over this than the loss of her mom...
Geoff
by
Geoff Chester
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Humanities
Until yesterday.
My mother-in-law passed away in the wee hours of March 28. We got the call at 5:30 am. My wife was on the train by 10:30, and at her mom's condo by 3:00 pm. The condo is located on the Norwalk/Darien town line, in a nice little wooded development that's a stone's throw from the CT Turnpike and the Darien commuter train station. In other words it's a &qu
by
Geoff Chester
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Humanities
IIRC back in 1967 - 1968 there was an experiment conducted inside Khafre's burial chamber by Louis Alvarez, the late high-energy particle physicist. His team set up a cosmic ray (muon) detector in an attempt to see if there were any voids in the overlying masonry. His conclusion was that there were none...at least in the "convergence cone" of his detector system. This cone exten
by
Geoff Chester
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Ancient History
One of the things that struck me on my visit to Egypt in 2003 was how the general population became more "African" as I found my way to Aswan. IIRC this was the frontier between ancient Egypt (or KMT if you prefer) and Nubia, or "wretched Kush" as it seems to have been called by those ancients who pulled duty there. The AE's referred to the inhabitants of Kush as "
by
Geoff Chester (Jeffhotep)
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Ancient History
Remember that the floor level of the VoK was much lower in New Kingdom times. The huts that covered the entrance to KV62, attributed to the workers who quarried KV9, were several meters below the present ground level. Roemer mentions in his 1978 book that the entrance to KV9 was 4-5 meters above the floor when it was completed.
That said, there have been a number of "embalmer's cac
by
Geoff Chester (Jeffhotep)
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Ancient History
I knew I'd get in trouble over this. Calendars are notorious for mucking things up. The fact that the AEs at least got the 365 days arranged in a somewhat sensible system should speak for itself.
The heliacal rise of Sirius is indeed not fixed to a specific date. Precession of the equinoxes has shifted it from what would have been early July ca. 3000 BCE to the present time of mid-Augu
by
Geoff Chester (Jeffhotep)
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Ancient History
The AEs observed two distinct calendars. One was a secular calendar based on 3 seasons of 4 months of 30 days plus 5 intercalary days for a total of 365 days. The other was the "Sothic year" based on the observation of the heliacal rise of Sothis (the star we now call Sirius), which occurred shortly before the annual innundation. Since the latter was tied to the astronomical tropical
by
Geoff Chester (Jeffhotep)
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Ancient History
Bob:
These two pieces of Tiye's shrine were all that were on display in the Amarna room. If there had been a larger panel I certainly would have taken a picture of it! I spent the better part of 2 days in the Museum...Undoubtedly the large panel was probably languishing in one of the infamous store-rooms at the time of my visit.
The Amarna hall was one of my specific "targets&qu
by
Geoff Chester (Jeffhotep)
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Ancient History
Rick, et al.:
The "excision" of the cartouches is indeed very precise. Certainly not something that would have been done as an act of vandalism to condemn the deceased to an afterlife in limbo. However, it strikes me as odd that even in a hasty adaptation of a coffin some effort wasn't made to even crudely identify the occupant.
You can see the same precision in the missing
by
Geoff Chester (Jeffhotep)
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Ancient History
Bob:
You got me off my duff to put up a small web page on the KV55 artifacts.
The URL is:
Cheers,
Geoff (Jeffhotep)
by
Geoff Chester (Jeffhotep)
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Ancient History
I've finally gotten off my tush and put up the first of what I hope will be several pages covering my trip to Egypt back in November 2003. Better late than never, I guess.
In response to the thread on the coffin in KV55 I've posted some pix I took of the coffin lid, trough, "face", and other stuff from the tomb.
The URL is:
Cheers,
Geoff
by
Geoff Chester
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Ancient History
The reconstructed coffin trough is indeed back in the Cairo Museum. I saw it a couple of years ago, just outside the Amarna hall. It is plexiglass or Lexan, and has most of the surviving gold leaf and glass inlay is intact. The lid, with the shattered face, is displayed alongside. I have pix that I'll post to a web server later today (I don't have the CD with my images from the trip
by
Jeffhotep
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Ancient History
Well, if you liked the low-rider trousers debacle that our forward-thinking Virginia state legislature *almost* passed, you'll be glad to know that at least some members of that august body have a modicum of something that passes for brains.
Yesterday the state Senate approved a bill requiring hunters to have a blood-alcohol content of less than 0.02 to legally carry a firearm for hunting
by
Jeffhotep
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Coffee Shop
As a resident of the Commonwealth, it just goes to show you how our state legislature feels about personal freedoms.
We can carry concealed guns into schools, taverns, and government buildings. We must allow our children the freedom to pray in schools. I could go on...
However, we may not allow local municipalities to create and enforce any statutes that might infringe of the above, we ma
by
Jeffhotep
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Coffee Shop