Great channel. I hope it takes off and you become the next PBS Spacetime.
@physicsalmanac
3 күн бұрын
Haha me too
@uhadme
3 ай бұрын
The Maya may have known about the precession wobble, or proven they did know? I see your bias, it would take 100s of years of recorded observations to discover, so you cannot admit science existed back then. But, they knew and must have recorded observations for a few centuries (Minimum) And someone would have to theorize, in order to be looking for it. Right?
@physicsalmanac
3 ай бұрын
Sorry, I’m not sure what you are saying…? Are you saying the Maya knew about precession, or not? What bias are you saying I have? I don’t recall ever saying there was no science back then… or is that what you’re saying? They almost certainly had multiple centuries worth of astronomical data. The quality is unknown. Certainly the codices we have are excellent, but they’re all from late periods. There’s no doubt at least in later periods, they were sufficiently competent astronomers to have discovered it. But that doesn’t mean they did. The only evidence we have is this 15000 year cycle which is unexplained. Maybe it refers to this precession. Maybe not. We don’t know. That’s just one hypothesis. Certainly not enough to conclude they did know about it. No one needs to theorize it or look for it. In other parts of the world it was found by noticing shifts in the data, in particular the North Star, over many years. No one had theorized it or was looking for it. And even then they didn’t know why it was happening. They just noticed the sky was slowly shifting, and made estimates on the rate.
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