Word: sirius
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1970-1979
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...nuclear fuel is consumed, gravity eventually would cause the star to contract into a white dwarf, a sphere only about as big as the earth but so dense that each cubic centimeter would weigh a ton. Their calculations finally made sense of a dim companion of the star Sirius that was first observed in the 1860s and had puzzled astronomers for decades. Though the star was apparently small, it exerted an inexplicably great gravitational pull on Sirius. The dense little companion?like others that have been observed since?was a white dwarf. But would bigger stars, with greater gravity, shrink...
...Astronomer Edmund Halley of comet fame showed that Sirius, Procyon and Arcturus had changed positions−relative to other stars−since Greek times, establishing for the first time that the stars were not fixed in the heavens. By the early 1900s, astronomers had learned that the sun was merely one of billions of stars in a disc-shaped galaxy, or island of stars, then believed by many to constitute the entire universe. In 1920 Harlow Shapley calculated that the galaxy, called the Milky Way, was some 300,000 light years* in diameter, a distance too stupendous for most people...
...mysteries, an thropological dates and the tricky cross currents of comparative mythology. The kernel of his thesis lies with the Dogon, an African tribe living in Mali. After studying their legends in the works of French anthropologists, Temple became convinced that the Dogon had precise knowledge of the star Sirius thousands of years before telescope technology revealed such information to astronomers...
...Sirius system is situated in the constellation Canis Major. Only 8.6 light-years from earth, it includes the brilliant Sirius A-the Dog Star - and Sirius B, invisible to the naked eye and first seen by telescope in 1862. Yet crude Dogon drawings have for centuries depicted what Temple concludes is an ac curate rendering of the relative positions and movements of Sirius A and B. It is from B that he suspects superior beings came to earth, leaving behind evidence of their godlike existence that has filtered down to us through mythology and a few artifacts. Temple suggests...
...Dogon religious rituals contain information that is uncannily similar to astronomers' findings about Sirius is a genuine mystery. Like other writers who have attempted to explain the unknown from a preconceived position, Temple produces a dizzying patchwork of evidence that tends to support his theory, while adroitly skipping materials that may cause complications. He does not mention the legends of the lost continent Atlantis, that must surely be germane to speculation about the origins of fish gods. Even allowing for primitive artistic stylization, it is troubling that fish-god portraits resemble carp far more than dolphins...