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The Sirius Mystery
''The Sirius Mystery'' is a book written by Robert K. G. Temple (born Robert Kyle Grenville Temple in 1945) supporting the pseudoscientific ancient astronauts hypothesis that intelligent extraterrestrial beings visited the Earth and made contact with humans in antiquity and prehistoric times. The book was first published by St. Martin's Press in 1976. Its second, 1998, edition is called ''The Sirius Mystery: New Scientific Evidence of Alien Contact 5,000 Years Ago''. Overview The book presents the hypothesis that the Dogon people of Mali, in West Africa, preserve a tradition of contact with intelligent extraterrestrial beings from the Sirius star system. These beings, who are hypothesized to have taught the arts of civilization to humans, are claimed in the book to have originated the systems of the Pharaohs of Egypt, the mythology of Greek civilization, and the Epic of Gilgamesh, among other things. Temple's theory is heavily based on his interpretation of the work of eth ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Dogon People
The Dogon are an ethnic group indigenous to the central plateau region of Mali, in West Africa, south of the Niger River, Niger bend, near the city of Bandiagara, and in Burkina Faso. The population numbers between 400,000 and 800,000. They speak the Dogon languages, which are considered to constitute an independent branch of the Niger–Congo language family, meaning that they are not closely related to any other languages. The Dogon are best known for Dogon religion, their religious traditions, their mask dances, wooden sculpture, and their architecture. Since the twentieth century, there have been significant changes in the social organisation, material culture and beliefs of the Dogon, in part because Dogon country is one of Mali's major tourist attractions. Geography and history The principal Dogon area is bisected by the Bandiagara Escarpment, a sandstone cliff of up to high, stretching about 150 km (90 miles). To the southeast of the cliff, the sandy Séno-Gond ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Marcel Griaule
Marcel Griaule (16 May 1898 – 23 February 1956) was a French author and anthropologist known for his studies of the Dogon people of West Africa, and for pioneering ethnographic field studies in France. He worked together with Germaine Dieterlen and Jean Rouch on African subjects. His publications number over 170 books and articles for scholarly journals. Biography Born in Aisy-sur-Armançon, Griaule received a good education and was preparing to become an engineer and enrolled at the prestigious Lycée Louis-le-Grand when in 1917 at the end of World War I he volunteered to become a pilot in the French Air Force. In 1920 he returned to university, where he attended the lectures of Marcel Mauss and Marcel Cohen. Intrigued by anthropology, he gave up plans for a technical career. In 1927 he received a degree from the École Nationale de Langues Orientales, where he concentrated on Amharic and Ge'ez. Between 1928 and 1933 Griaule participated in two large-scale ethnograp ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Carl Sagan
Carl Edward Sagan (; ; November 9, 1934December 20, 1996) was an American astronomer, planetary scientist, cosmologist, astrophysicist, astrobiologist, author, and science communicator. His best known scientific contribution is research on extraterrestrial life, including experimental demonstration of the production of amino acids from basic chemicals by radiation. Sagan assembled the first physical messages sent into space, the Pioneer plaque and the Voyager Golden Record, universal messages that could potentially be understood by any extraterrestrial intelligence that might find them. Sagan argued the hypothesis, accepted since, that the high surface temperatures of Venus can be attributed to, and calculated using, the greenhouse effect.Extract of page 14 Initially an assistant professor at [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Skeptical Inquirer
''Skeptical Inquirer'' is a bimonthly American general-audience magazine published by the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry (CSI) with the subtitle: ''The Magazine for Science and Reason''. Mission statement and goals Daniel Loxton, writing in 2013 about the mission and goals of the skeptical movement, criticized the idea that people wanted to read about the paranormal, Uri Geller and crystal skulls not being relevant any longer. Paul Kurtz in 2009 seemed to share this sentiment and stated that the organization would still research some paranormal subjects as they have expertise in this area, but they would begin to investigate other areas. S.I. "has reached an historic juncture: the recognition that there is a critical need to change our direction." While editor Frazier did expand the scope of the magazine to include topics less paranormal and more that were an attack on science and critical thinking such as climate change denialism, conspiracy theories and the influence of the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ian Ridpath
Ian William Ridpath (born 1 May 1947, in Ilford, Essex) is an England, English science writer and broadcaster best known as a popularizer of astronomy and a biographer of constellation history. As a UFO sceptic, he investigated and explained the Rendlesham Forest Incident of December 1980. Life and career Ridpath attended Beal High School, Beal Grammar School in Ilford where he wrote astronomy articles for the school magazine. Before entering publishing he was an assistant in the lunar research group at the University of London Observatory, Mill Hill. He now lives in Brentford, Middlesex. He is editor of the ''Oxford Dictionary of Astronomy'' and Norton's Star Atlas, and author of observing guides such as ''The Monthly Sky Guide'' and the ''Collins Stars and Planets Guide'' (the latter two with charts by Wil Tirion, and both continuously in print for over 30 years). His other books include ''Star Tales'', about the origins and mythology of the constellations, and the children' ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Luc De Heusch
Luc de Heusch (7 May 1927 Р7 August 2012) was a Belgian filmmaker, writer, and anthropologist, professor emeritus at the Free University of Brussels. His 1967 film ''Thursday We Shall Sing Like Sunday'' was entered into the 5th Moscow International Film Festival. Life Luc de Heusch began his career in film in 1947 as assistant to Henri Storck. From 1949 to 1951 he lived in an artists' commune, the Ateliers du Marais. In 1951, under the pseudonym Luc Zangrie, he directed ''Pers̩phone'', the only film produced by the CoBrA artistic movement. In 1953 and 1954 he carried out anthropological fieldwork in the Belgian Congo. Like Henri Storck and Charles Dekeukeleire, he also made documentary films about the Congo. From 1955 to 1992 he was professor of social and cultural anthropology at the Universit̩ Libre de Bruxelles Select bibliography In English *''The Cinema and Social Science. A Survey of Ethnographic and Sociological Films'', UNESCO, 1962. *''Why Marry Her? Soc ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Henri Deslandres
Henri Alexandre Deslandres (24 July 1853 – 15 January 1948) was a French astronomer, director of the Meudon and Paris Observatories, who carried out intensive studies on the behaviour of the atmosphere of the Sun. Biography Deslandres' undergraduate years at the École Polytechnique were played out against the aftermath of the Franco-Prussian War and the chaos of the Paris Commune so, on graduation in 1874, he responded to the continuing military tension with the emerging Germany by embarking on a military career. Rising to the rank of captain in the engineers, he became increasingly interested in physics and, in 1881, resigned his commission to join Alfred Cornu's laboratory at the École Polytechnique, working on spectroscopy. He continued his spectroscopic work at the Sorbonne, earning his doctorate in 1888 and created the deslandres table, which finds numerical patterns in spectral lines that paralleled the work of Johann Balmer and were to catalyse the development of q ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Solar Eclipse Of April 16, 1893
A total solar eclipse occurred on April 16, 1893. A solar eclipse occurs when the Moon passes between Earth and the Sun, thereby totally or partly obscuring the image of the Sun for a viewer on Earth. A total solar eclipse occurs when the Moon's apparent diameter is larger than the Sun's, blocking all direct sunlight, turning day into darkness. Totality occurs in a narrow path across Earth's surface, with the partial solar eclipse visible over a surrounding region thousands of kilometres wide. Observations Schaeberle observed the eclipse and made drawings of the Corona: According to Edward S. Holden, John Martin Schaeberle discovered a comet like object on the plates of the eclipse from Chile. The comet was 0.8 moondiameters from the moon. (PDF) at NASA.gov Related eclipses Saros 127 |
Noah Brosch
Noah Brosch (born 1948) is an Israeli astronomer, astrophysicist and space researcher. Biography Noah Brosch was born in Bucharest (Romania) in 1948 and immigrated with his family to Israel in 1963. Brosch studied at Tel Aviv University (BSc 1975 and MSc 1977) and at the Leiden University (PhD 1983). He is a tenured Principal Research Associate (degree equivalent to Research Associate Professor) at Tel Aviv University and served as Director of the Wise Observatory from 2000 to 2006 and again from 2007 to 2010. He is a member of the International Astronomical Union (IAU) and from 2009 to 2012 served as the Vice-President of its Division XI (Space and High-Energies Astrophysics) of the IAU. Noah Brosch has been active in the field of space ultraviolet (UV) astronomy, as one of the founding members of the Network for Ultraviolet Astrophysics (NUVA), a pan-European network set-up to identify the needs of the astronomical community in the UV spectral domain and eventually propose ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Celestial Mechanics
Celestial mechanics is the branch of astronomy that deals with the motions of objects in outer space. Historically, celestial mechanics applies principles of physics (classical mechanics) to astronomical objects, such as stars and planets, to produce ephemeris data. History Modern analytic celestial mechanics started with Isaac Newton's Principia of 1687. The name "celestial mechanics" is more recent than that. Newton wrote that the field should be called "rational mechanics." The term "dynamics" came in a little later with Gottfried Leibniz, and over a century after Newton, Pierre-Simon Laplace introduced the term "celestial mechanics." Prior to Kepler there was little connection between exact, quantitative prediction of planetary positions, using geometrical or arithmetical techniques, and contemporary discussions of the physical causes of the planets' motion. Johannes Kepler Johannes Kepler (1571–1630) was the first to closely integrate the predictive geom ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sirius A
Sirius is the brightest star in the night sky. Its name is derived from the Greek word , or , meaning 'glowing' or 'scorching'. The star is designated α Canis Majoris, Latinized to Alpha Canis Majoris, and abbreviated Alpha CMa or α CMa. With a visual apparent magnitude of −1.46, Sirius is almost twice as bright as Canopus, the next brightest star. Sirius is a binary star consisting of a main-sequence star of spectral type A0 or A1, termed Sirius A, and a faint white dwarf companion of spectral type DA2, termed Sirius B. The distance between the two varies between 8.2 and 31.5 astronomical units as they orbit every 50 years. Sirius appears bright because of its intrinsic luminosity and its proximity to the Solar System. At a distance of , the Sirius system is one of Earth's nearest neighbours. Sirius is gradually moving closer to the Solar System, so it is expected to increase in brightness slightly over the next 60,000 years, reaching a peak magnitude of â ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
White Dwarf
A white dwarf is a stellar core remnant composed mostly of electron-degenerate matter. A white dwarf is very dense: its mass is comparable to the Sun's, while its volume is comparable to the Earth's. A white dwarf's faint luminosity comes from the emission of residual thermal energy; no fusion takes place in a white dwarf. The nearest known white dwarf is at 8.6 light years, the smaller component of the Sirius binary star. There are currently thought to be eight white dwarfs among the hundred star systems nearest the Sun. The unusual faintness of white dwarfs was first recognized in 1910. The name ''white dwarf'' was coined by Willem Luyten in 1922. White dwarfs are thought to be the final evolutionary state of stars whose mass is not high enough to become a neutron star or black hole. This includes over 97% of the other stars in the Milky Way. After the hydrogen- fusing period of a main-sequence star of low or medium mass ends, such a star will expand to a red giant ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
