[meteorite-list] 8000BC Big Dipper Petroglyph

Mon Sep 12 03:46:38 EDT 2011

Dear List (still with Ron Hartman on my mind ... I think he would what 
I'm posting here).

The maximum it will "deform" from our insignificant vantage point...the 
bowl by 5% and the entire asterism they might move up to 2%.  So, yes - 
it will look basically the same unless you are an astronomer.

If you wonder how I came up with that:

Star motions are basically measured in milliarcseconds per year (mas).  
There are 3,600,000 mas in one degree.  The Moon and Sun are both about 
a half degree, and they are pretty small (About 720 of them in a 
necklace would be required to circle the heavenly sphere).

If you make believe you are looking at the inside face of a shell we 
are in, astronomers use two coordinates to locate any point (R.A. and 
declination).  The is nothing much different in the motion of this 
stars in the range of motions in either, so let’s just for fun look at 
the most separation that could happen in 8000 years without trusting 
any canned software (nothing against them - they are great, but take 
the fun of learning out and replace it with a black box and results 
delivered on a silver platter).

Here are the speeds of the motions of RA for each of the stars in the 
big dipper (the plough; el arado, el carro, the pan, etc.):

Dubhe:   136 mas/yr
Merak:    81 mas/yr
Phecda:    108 mas/yr
Megrez:    104 mas/yr
Alioth:    112 mas/yr
Mizar:    121 mas/yr
Alkaid:    121 mas/yr

If you assume the absolute worst case, of two stars running away from 
each other in opposite directions, that would be Dubhe (-136) and  
Alkaid (+121), you get a separation speed of 257 mas/yr.  In 8000 years 
that gives you 2,000,000 mas.  That is just a wee bit more than the 
angular diameter of the Sun or Moon - and that is worst case; 
declination actually looks less acute, but it is fine to estimate.

In conclusion, each star at most has moved relative to each of its 
companions one half degree in the extreme.  This compares to the size 
of the big dipper: the four stars in the "bowl" portion span about 10 
degrees.  From the end of the handle to the opposite tip of the bowl is 
about 25 degrees.

So that's the maximum it will "deform" from our insignificant vantage 
point...the bowl by 5% and the entire asterism they might move up to 
2%.  So, yes - it will look basically the same unless you are an 
astronomer.

A similar question came up with the 6000 (or whatever) year old Orion's 
belt stars when comparing them for the hypothesis that the three main 
pyramids in Giza were in the belt stars' configuration.  I believe it 
was Rob who mentioned this controversial claim.  I don't buy it, but it 
has been looked at ad naseum and the conclusion is that they are still 
close enough so it is a viable conjecture.

Kindest wishes
Doug.

-----Original Message-----
From: lebofsky <lebofsky at lpl.arizona.edu>
To: bartraj <bartraj at time.net.my>
Cc: epgrondine <epgrondine at yahoo.com>; meteorite-list 
<meteorite-list at meteoritecentral.com>
Sent: Mon, Sep 12, 2011 12:30 am
Subject: Re: [meteorite-list] 8000BC Big Dipper Petroglyph

Hi Robert:

I took "Starry Night," a planetarium program "back" about 8,000 years
(6,000 BC) and, as I would have predicted, the 7 stars in the Big Dipper
are not far off from what we see today. You would have to go back many 
10s
of thousands of years in order to see a big diffence. I remember seeing
predictions of the dipper being more of a pan cake flipper in 100,000 
and
that 100,000 years ago, the bowl was much deeper and I think the handle
flatter. I have not gone that far with the program (there might be a
preset demo of it in the program, but it is late and have not looked for
it).

Larry

> Hello Ed, Martin, Cris, List,
>
> There has been some discussion on meteorite-list about Chinese 
researcher
> Wu Jiacai, who recently announced the finding of groups of 
petroglyphs in
> Inner Mongolia. In his interpretation, the petroglyphs show that an
> intellectually advanced ethnic group, the Chifeng people of the 
Hongshan
> Culture, were forced to leave their homeland because of a singular
> destructive event, perhaps comet- or meteorite-related.
> 
http://www.globaltimes.cn/NEWS/tabid/99/ID/673451/Falling-meteor-depicted-in-5000-year-old-rock-carving-in-north-China.aspx
>
> While looking into this event, I came across reports of an earlier 
find by
> Wu Jiacai, an early Neolithic depiction of the Big Dipper. See for 
example
> http://www.megalithic.co.uk/article.php?sid=2146412586
>
> It made the news in Chinese papers. Here is a summary of a 2010 
interview
> with Wu Jiacai in a Mongolian home town newspaper.
> http://www.swcf.cn/wh/2010-01/12/content_900.htm  The newspaper 
article
> features a superimposed diagram of the shape of the Big Dipper in 
8000BC.
> Maybe some of the astronomers here can assess whether this shape is
> plausible.
>
> -------------
> Summary
>
> After more than a year of on-site research at Baimiaozi Mt., Wu had
> identified ten distinct groups of rock art, mostly depicting animals 
and
> people. Among them was a 310 cm-long yam-shaped stone on which 19 
clearly
> visible stars had been chiseled and ground into the stone's 
upward-facing
> side, with the markings depicting the seven stars of the Big Dipper 
on the
> northern part of the face.
>
> [A better view of the stone, from Wu Jiacai's personal blog, is here
> 
https://www.dropbox.com/gallery/18663629/1/Hongshan%20Culture?h=bdfa66  
]
>
> The total length of the Big Dipper is 119cm. The indentations marking 
the
> stars are 6cm in diameter, with a maximum depth of 5 cm. The shape of 
each
> star resembles an upside-down mantou (steamed bread), wide on the 
outside
> and smaller within. The star-shapes are smooth, with rounded surface
> [indentations] that also contain a natural-colored residue of dust and
> body oil [from touching].
>
> Following astronomers' reconstructions of star positions from 100,000
> years ago to today, Wu Jiacai found complete matches between the
> configuration of the Big Dipper's seven stars 10,000 years ago and the
> configuration of stars in the rock art.
>
> Gai Shanlin [a Manchu from Hebei], who is the regional archaeological
> expert on rock art, inspected the inscribing-polishing methods. He
> recognized the drawing of the seven stars of the Big Dipper as an 
early
> Neolithic artifact by ancestral people.
>
> End Summary
>
> ------------
>
> Regards
>
> Robert A. Juhl, Tokyo
>
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