Re: Another Math problem
- From: dsi1 <dsi1@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Mon, 06 Oct 2008 12:10:03 -1000
William D Clinger wrote:
dsi1 wrote:My guess is that if it is true,
As has been pointed out, it wasn't true, but...
ancient folks knew the size and distance
from the earth to the sun and moon. :-)
Eratosthenes, who died circa 194 BC, appears to
have calculated the distance from the earth to
the sun to within 1% [1].
According to Eusebius, Eratosthenes also calculated
the distance from the earth to the moon, but that
calculation was off by more than 30%. The mystery
here is not why Eratosthenes was so accurate about
the sun's distance, but why he was so far off about
the moon's. Maybe Eratosthenes got it right but
was misquoted by Eusebius.
Eratosthenes also computed one of the first good
estimates for the size of the earth.
Will
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eratosthenes
Thanks for the link. I see some goofball (probably an rmcg goofball, but not me) has as added "he was very gay." to the article in the last hour or so. My guess is that that's probably the number one most popular revision on wikipedia - now that's really gay. :-)
.
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