demagogue on 14/11/2012 at 06:01
Yeah it's just an astounding coincidence (in the literal sense of the term) that in our human era the moon is just far enough away for a perfect eclipse. In the future it will be too far away; ages ago it was too close. Same thing (I've read) with Saturn's rings and Jupiter's hole. These things did not exist in the past, and they will disappear in the future. But they are there for our era.
I can't find a map of this eclipse's path, but I didn't see any sign of it here (Thailand) so it must have started around Australia and spread out over the South Pacific, or maybe it was too far south for here.
bob_doe_nz on 14/11/2012 at 09:38
Quote Posted by demagogue
I can't find a map of this eclipse's path, but I didn't see any sign of it here (Thailand) so it must have started around Australia and spread out over the South Pacific, or maybe it was too far south for here.
Here is WAS the info you would have wanted.
(
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_eclipse_of_November_13,_2012)
SubJeff on 14/11/2012 at 12:29
Quote Posted by demagogue
Yeah it's just an astounding coincidence (in the literal sense of the term) that in our human era the moon is just far enough away for a perfect eclipse. In the future it will be too far away; ages ago it was too close. Same thing (I've read) with Saturn's rings and Jupiter's hole. These things did not exist in the past, and they will disappear in the future. But they are there for our era.
Saturn and Jupiter will look different in another awesome way in the future though, and will have done in the past.
"just" an astounding coincidence is what is getting me. I'm all for coincidences (was talking about WWZ trailer vs book the other day and Shaun of the Dead came on TV) being just that. For some reason this is particular mathematical elegance seems a little too convenient.
Vivian on 14/11/2012 at 12:53
Yeah, but how many million years has the moon been the right distance away? Don't go all banana-atheist on me.
SubJeff on 14/11/2012 at 15:32
What's a banana-atheist?
I'm already an atheist anyway. Or something like it. A pagan I guess. Aaaaaah I don't know.
Vivian on 14/11/2012 at 22:44
Quote:
the fact that a banana also fits perfectly into the human ass proves that god condones homosexuality
hah, Someone just won youtube.
I meant don't let anthropocentricism fool you into considering everything optimised towards human experience. We live in the only time during their evolution that horses are big enough to ride, therefore god is real and made us horses. etc.
I guess it counts as a type of (
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agent_detection) hyperactive agency detection, e.g. the evolutionary psychology behind inventing god?
Someone say something about the eclipse, how was the eclipse? Did anyone go mental etc?
SubJeff on 15/11/2012 at 21:21
Agency detection is an interesting thing isn't it?
What would it take to make people believe? A set of "chairs" that had naturally formed on another planet that just happened to be the right fit for us? The banana video is pretty funny because it's so ridiculous. Eclipse I'm no so sure. I think I'm fairly scientific but there are some things which make me wonder. I've come across a bunch of stuff over the years that made me go "Wow, this looks like evidence of a creation agency!" (or something like that) but which I've quickly been able to explain away as natural phenomena, or read about and realised I was being naive. Fun times though, interesting discoveries.
One could argue that horses have been domesticated so we may well have bred them to be just right anyway. Or we could have evolved together somehow. I think you can explain every "coincidence" of this type in some way anyway. And sometimes it just is a coincidence.
The moon/eclipse thing has got me wondering. I thought that perhaps in a 3 body configuration of the Earth-Moon-Sun type perhaps this was some preserved ratio: distance1:distance2 = size2:size3, and perhaps the "Moon"'s orbital distance just waxes and wanes over time. Perhaps its just a physics thing. Then I though this can't be true because all of the bodies could have different densities so that would change the forces involved and it'd almost be random, no?
So I'm still left with one hell of a coincidence.
Phatose on 15/11/2012 at 21:48
Well, as noted the distance between the Earth and Moon varies, as does the Earth/Sun distance, simply because their orbits are ellipses. We get annular and total eclipses simply because the ranges happen to allow for them.
You could probably narrow the possible ranges down quite a bit. The number of possible orbits for a planet around a sun that will allow for liquid water are fairly limited. Earth is constrained to orbits that allow that by the anthropological principle - no liquid water, no life, no people. The output of a star is related to it's mass and age, and age would be somewhat restricted by the requirement of time to develop planets and for life to develop on them.
I figure the moon's possible mass and orbits would be also somewhat limited, as a more massive, or closer orbiting moon is likely to affect the viability of life on Earth. Tidal forces and orbital distortions rendering the climate too unstable and the like. Too further away, and it ceases to orbit at all.
I'm no astrophysicist, but it looks to me like there aren't really all that many possible configurations of orbits that don't rule out human life. It may be that orbits that don't allow for those kind of eclipses by and large also rule out people. But that's a shitload more math then I'm willing to do.
Oh, and lol at motherfucker on youtube claiming the banana is proof of gods existence, then opening the damn thing the wrong fucking way.
SubJeff on 15/11/2012 at 22:25
What do you mean "the wrong way"?! :mad:
That's the right way. There is only one way!!! :mad::mad::mad:
BURNHIM
