Geology Reference
In-Depth Information
Jupiter seemed highly promising. But (apart from the difficulty of
following Jupiter in a telescope from the deck of a ship at sea)
the problem was that the events did not happen as predicted - or,
rather, were not seen to happen as predicted - because of the time
light took to cross the varying distance between Jupiter and Earth.
The observations were eventually to lead to the first determination
of the velocity of light, by Ole Roemer. It might be argued that the
observations and Roemer's deductions from them were not astro-
nomical because they were initially related to the non-scientific
practical purposes of navigation. But it would be meaningless to
carry the emphasis on “pure” research to such lengths. Likewise,
if the megalithic solar and lunar alignments are not coincidental,
then they must be recognized as astronomical, on however basic
a level.
Thirdly, and most controversially, Thom maintained that the
megalith builders pursued their studies of the Moon with a degree
of precision that either went beyond the needs of ritual, and was
undertaken for its own sake, or else went far enough to allow pre-
diction and deduction, the two great tests of scientific insight into
natural phenomena. The first such claim concerns a north-south
“wobble” of 9 min of arc superimposed on the mean motion of
the Moon. The effect is a small one - a twelfth of a knuckle at
arm's length - but translates into a difference in rising position of
nearly a third of the Moon's disc, even at the equator. The further
north the observer is, the more marked the effect on the Moon's
rising position, and the more obvious it would be at a site that had
accurately been lined up with the average position of the edge of
the disc.
If there were an observing program systematically carried
on throughout the British Isles, by a class of astronomers who
exchanged their results, then one would expect to find align-
ments specifically related to the 9 min perturbation, even though
such alignments would be “activated” still less often. Obviously
it is only at the standstills that we can identify “wobble align-
ments,” and they differ relatively little from the average standstill
alignments, so we have to consider how the differences could be
marked. One way is to line up a stone or stones with a horizon
“foresight,” where the Moon's behavior will be significantly dif-
ferent according to the value of the wobble. An example is found
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