Read Who Built the Moon? Online
Authors: Christopher Knight,Alan Butler
Who Built the Moon? (26 page)
The Megalithic system of geometry is based on 366° to a circle, sixty minutes to a degree and six seconds to a minute. This sequence produces a second of arc on the Earth’s polar circumference that is 366 Megalithic Yards long, the linear measure of the Megalithic builders as identified by Alexander Thom.
As a cross-reference we had also discovered that the 4,000-year-old Minoan Foot is precisely equal to a 1,000
th
part of a Megalithic second of arc.
We applied the principles of Megalithic geometry to all of the planets and moons in the solar system and found that it only produced round integer results for the Sun and the Moon.
The Sun is very close to being a true sphere, certainly much more so than the Earth. NASA quote the mean volumetric circumference as being 4,373,096km, which we converted into Megalithic Yards and applied the 366 geometry.
Sun’s circumference = 5,270,913,968 MY
One degree = 14,401,404 MY
One minute = 240,023 MY
One second = 40,003.8 MY
The fit is 99.99per cent accurate to 40,000 and given that this is based on a best estimate of the mean circumference it has to be considered bang on.
Like the Sun, the Moon is quite close to being a sphere. NASA gives the mean volumetric circumference of 10,914.5km, which produces the following result:
Moon’s circumference = 13155300 MY
One degree = 35943 MY
One minute = 599 MY
One second = 99.83 MY
If we use the equatorial radius the result is 99.9 MY per second of lunar arc. Either way, this is as close to 100 MY as makes no difference, given the irregular surface of the Moon and the small variation in Thom’s definition of the Megalithic Yard of +/- 0.061cm.
It could have been possible for people many thousands of years ago to create a system of geometry that produces round integers for two celestial objects such as the Earth and the Sun, but it would seem impossible to achieve such a feat for three bodies. It therefore appears that the Moon was designed using units derived from the physical dimensions of the Sun and the Earth.
The duration of the Moon’s orbit (sidereal – fixed star to fixed star) is 27.322 Earth days (27.396 rotations of the Earth). This number is extraordinarily close to the size relationship of the Moon to the Earth, being 27.31 per cent of the Earth’s size.
The Earth currently turns on its axis 366.259 times for each orbit around the Sun. This number is extraordinarily close to the size relationship of the Earth to the Moon, being 366.175per cent larger than the Moon.
There is no reason why these numbers should repeat in this way:
Earth turns per orbit | per cent size of polar circumference |
Earth 366.259 | 27.31 |
Moon 27.396 | 366.175 |
It is also a consequence of the above that the Moon makes 366 orbits of the Earth in 10,000 Earth days.
The size of the Sun, Earth and Moon have been fixed for billions of years so their size ratios have not changed. But the orbital characteristics of the Earth and the Moon have changed constantly.
When the Moon was much closer to the Earth than it is now, its orbit was much shorter and the Earth day was also shorter, leading to perhaps as much as 600 days to the Earth year. The Earth’s own orbit around the Sun remains essentially unchanged. It is only the time it takes to spin on its own axis that alters.
The close number association between the size ratios of the Sun, Moon and Earth, and the orbital characteristics of the Moon, together with the present length of the Earth day, are only applicable to the time that humans have been fully formed. These relationships were not present in the distant past and they will disappear in the distant future. The number sequences which alerted us to the ‘message’ are clearly meant for the present period.
Orbital characteristics and size relationships are physical factors and any correlations are real – no matter what units of measurement are employed. No one knows the origin of the Megalithic system but the origin of the metric system is fully documented. Whilst it did have a near identical precursor in the Sumerian system of more than 4,000 years earlier, the metric system is known to have been developed from measuring the polar circumference of the Earth alone.
It was designed so that there should be 40,000km in one Earth circumference. The equator is a little longer than the polar circumference but basically the Earth turns through this distance each day.
The Moon turns through an unimpressive sounding 10,920.8 kilometres every 27.3217 days. This converts to 400km per Earth day – to an accuracy greater than 99.9 per cent. Again this is a factor that only exists in the human period of existence.
The number 400 is already central to human appreciation of the Moon because it is 400 times closer to us than the Sun, and it is 400 times smaller. The use of 400 kilometres per current Earth day could be a message that the architect of the Moon knew we would use kilometres and mean solar days.
Metric units apart, the Moon is turning at a rate that is almost exactly one per cent of the Earth’s rotation. Or to reverse the factor, the Earth is turning 100 times as fast as the Moon. All curiously round values!
To add to the idea that this is a deliberate piece of metric design, the Moon is also travelling on its journey around the Earth at a steady rate of one kilometre per second! This speed varies a little as it travels but does not drop below 0.964km per second and does not exceed 1.076km per second.
And there is something else very special about the kilometre as regards the Moon. To understand it we need to realize that there are 109.2 Earth diameters across the Sun’s diameter. There are also 109.2 Sun diameters between the Earth and the Sun at its furthest point of orbit.
The circumference of the Moon is 109.2 x 100 kilometres.
Is that not odd in the extreme?
One way of looking at the association between these ratios and numbers can be seen in the diagram in figure 16.
There are many factors here that should bear no relationship with each other at all. Taken in isolation, any one of these strange associations might be considered to be a coincidence but there comes a time, however, when coincidences become so frequent that something else must be at work.
Figure 16
The Mechanics of Eclipses
The awesome sight of a black shadow gradually crossing the face of the Moon still captivates most people, even though we now live in an age when we not only know what causes the phenomenon but can predict exactly when it is likely to happen. Early cultures did not know either and must have seriously thought, for a few minutes at least, that the world was coming to an end.
Back in the 1960s the astronomer Gerald Hawkins suggested that at least one of the functions of the structure at Stonehenge, Salisbury Plain, England, was to predict the occurrence of eclipses. Hawkins had carefully studied the ancient monument, parts of which date back five thousand years, and subjected his data to a massive number-crunching computer. He came to the conclusion that the Aubrey Holes, a series of fifty-six chalk-filled pits around the standing stones at Stonehenge, represented a sophisticated device for predicting both solar and lunar eclipses.
46
Clay tablets discovered in what is now Iraq and dating back to the Sumerian period, which commenced around 3000 BC, indicate that people in the region were doing their best to predict eclipses. And there isn’t any doubt at all that the Babylonians who followed the Sumerians were competent at accurately working out when the face of the Sun or Moon would darken.
The ancient Chinese, Indians, Egyptians, American cultures and many other societies worked hard to develop an understanding of rudimentary astronomy for the purpose of eclipse prediction. This single effort certainly caused humanity to significantly improve its naked-eye astronomy and its understanding of mathematics. There are good reasons why this should be the case and at the base of most of them is power. Any would-be ruler, secular or religious, who could predict when an eclipse was likely to take place was in a very strong position to manipulate the situation to his or her own ends.
To the average lay person, eclipses seem to be totally haphazard but this is not the case. However, such is the complicated nature of the interplay of the Earth and the Sun that understanding eclipse patterns is far from easy. Once the pattern is cracked, its secrets could be passed from one ruler to another and a whole society could be alerted to a possible eclipse. The prediction itself would have seemed to most people to be the most sophisticated sort of magic and when the king or holy man drove away the dark dragon that was trying to swallow the Sun or causing the Moon to bleed, his power would be ensured for a considerable period ahead.
What the ancients gradually discovered was that there were very definite patterns to the occurrence of all eclipses and that they were governed overall by a specific period of time that is known as the ‘saros cycle’. The word saros was first used by the astronomer Edmond Halley (1656–1742) and is supposed to have been derived from a Babylonian word. The saros cycle is 6,585.3 days in length (18 years, 11 days, 8 hours). It represents the coming together of three distinct patterns. The first of these is the Synodic Month (new Moon to new Moon,) the second is the Draconian Month (node to node [see below for information on Moon’s nodes]) and the third is the Anomalistic Month (perigee to perigee [see below for information on Moon’s perigee]).
To within about two hours, 223 synodic months, 242 draconian months and 239 anomalistic months come out to the same period of time and it is at this point that any eclipse will repeat itself. The reason for this is that the solar system runs pretty much like a gearbox and, as with a gearbox, any pattern created now will sooner or later be repeated.
Although the saros cycle is very accurate, there are many such cycles running at the same time. All that can be deduced from the saros cycle is that if an eclipse occurs today, it will occur again in 6,585.3 days and will have a quite similar geometry. The system does fall down somewhat in that it splits a day and so future eclipses in any given cycle may not be fully visible from the same part of the globe. Each saros cycle runs for around 1,200 years (around sixty-six repeat eclipses) until it expends itself. If the saros cycle commences near the South Pole it will extend itself gradually further north with each eclipse until it finally disappears at the North Pole. The same is true in reverse.
It would appear that the Babylonians understood the saros cycle, as did the Ancient Greeks. So, according to Gerald Hawkins, did the builders of Stonehenge. Something akin to the saros cycle would have been useful to ancient peoples because if the next eclipse in any given series was less impressive than the last, it would still have been predicted, and it was just as likely to be more impressive as less so. (Better by far to turn the tribes out for a less-than-spectacular display than to miss what could be a super show!)
Our own previous research demonstrates that following the saros cycle was actually very easy for the Megalithic people, who were the builders of Stonehenge and thousands of other such monuments. The ritual year of the Megalithic cultures was 366 days in length. This meant that the saros cycle to them was just two days short of eighteen years in length. The two days didn’t really matter because solar eclipses can only occur at the new Moon and lunar eclipses at the full Moon. In other words, just a couple of days short of eighteen years after a particular eclipse, the next full or new Moon would be certain to bring another.
Even today we don’t take solar eclipses for granted. A major eclipse, such as the one that was visible in northern Europe on August 11
th
1999 is treated as a time of celebration and is now revered for its sheer beauty, rather than being feared as was surely the case even not so long ago. The face of the Sun gradually begins to blacken as the Moon passes between it and the Earth. If it is a full eclipse the Sun’s disc will be covered at what is known as totality. At totality, all that is perceptible is the faint glow from the corona of the Sun. Soon after, the shadow begins to move away and a spectacular shaft of light breaks out, forming what is known as the diamond ring effect. The phenomenon is just as impressive now as it must have looked from Babylon or Stonehenge.
It might surprise readers to learn that no matter where our astronauts or cosmonauts travel in the future within our solar system, they will never stand on the surface of any other planet and watch a total eclipse. They are simply not possible anywhere else and only occur as a legacy of a series of breathtaking, apparent coincidences. The fit of the Moon’s disc across the face of the Sun during a total eclipse is not ‘near’ – it is ‘exact ’– and this fact should be the greatest sense of wonder to anyone viewing such an event because it is very unlikely. No other planet has a moon anywhere near big enough or orbiting at the right distance to fully, but not too fully, eclipse the Sun.
There are two basic sorts of eclipse, and then subcategories within the two types. The most impressive form of eclipse is known as a solar eclipse. The drawing below shows what is actually happening when a solar eclipse takes place.
Figure 17
When the Moon stands directly between the Earth and the Sun, a total eclipse is possible but totality only occurs across a relatively small area of the Earth’s surface and follows a curve known as the Path of Totality.
In this example, which is a ‘total eclipse’, to a proportion of those people living along the path of totality, the disc of the Sun will be blotted out completely. Whilst totality is achieved, all that can be seen is the sun’s corona (the halo of bright matter that is constantly being thrown off by the Sun). The larger shadow is called the penumbra and people beneath this will see a partial eclipse. There is another form of solar eclipse that can never be total and this is known as an annular eclipse. The Moon is 1/400
th
part the size of the Sun and it stands at 1/400
th
the distance between the Earth and the Sun, but not always exactly.
The Moon’s orbit around the Earth is not circular but elliptical. This means that sometimes the Moon is slightly closer to the Earth than it is at other times. If a solar eclipse takes place when the Moon is furthest from the Earth, the Moon’s disc looks smaller and can never totally blot out the Sun. Total eclipses of the Sun therefore happen when the Moon is on the part of its orbit that brings it closest to the Earth. When the Moon is closest to Earth it is said to be at
perigee
and when it is furthest away it is at
apogee.
Solar eclipses can only take place when the Moon stands between the Earth and the Sun and this is the short period on each lunar cycle known as ‘new Moon’. (The time of the lunar month when no part of the Moon is visible from Earth.)
It might be thought that because there is a new Moon each month, there should therefore be a solar eclipse each month but this is not the case. The orbit of the Moon around the Earth does not follow the same angle as the orbit of the Earth around the Sun. If it did, every new Moon would indeed bring a solar eclipse. Rather it is tilted to the Earth’s orbit (known as the ecliptic) by five degrees. Only when new Moon occurs at a point when the orbit of the Moon around the Earth crosses that of the Earth around the Sun, can a solar eclipse take place. These points north and south of the ecliptic are called the Moon’s nodes. This happens ‘at least’ twice each year and can produce a solar eclipse observable from somewhere on the Earth.
The second type of eclipse is not quite so impressive as a solar eclipse but it would have been fascinating to our ancient ancestors all the same. It is more common than a solar eclipse and is known as a lunar eclipse. A lunar eclipse takes place when the shadow of the Earth comes between the Sun and the Moon. A lunar eclipse can only take place at the exact opposite time to a solar eclipse, at the time of the full Moon when the entire disc of the Moon is visible from Earth.
During a lunar eclipse the face of the Moon does not disappear altogether. Rather it is darkened and, under some circumstances, it appears to turn a deep red. Such lunar eclipses were seen by many ancient cultures as terrible harbingers of disaster and were probably feared as much as solar eclipses.
Figure 18
The path taken by the Earth around the Sun is not the same as that taken by the Moon around the Earth. There is a 5° difference. Because of this, total eclipses can only happen when new Moons fall on what is known as the node – that point at which the two orbits cross.
Figure 19
A lunar eclipse takes place when the Earth’s shadow crosses the face of the Moon at the time of full Moon. Once again the fact that the plane of the Earth’s orbit around the Sun and that of the Moon around the Earth are not the same prevents every full Moon from being eclipsed.
Until we did some in-depth research we never realized just how unlikely or extraordinary a total eclipse actually was. It’s all a matter of ‘line of sight’ as the diagrams below should make clear. Isaac Asimov, the famed science-fiction guru, described this perfect visual alignment as being: ‘The most unlikely coincidence imaginable’.
