Topic: Episode #360

[donmac]

On the discussion of the history of the number 360, back in a much earlier episode with guest Bill Nye (the Science Guy), he mentioned something about early scientists sometimes going off in the wrong direction and he gave as an example something about "trying to prove that there were 360 days in the year."  I wonder if that is also related to an adherence to the sexagesimal (base 60) system and how ancient cultures based things on it.

[beans]

The AU calculations were done with the transits in the 1760's, reasonably accurately too.  The Wikipedia page has plenty of references:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transit_of_venus#1761_and_1769

as well as:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1769_Transit_of_Venus_observed_from_Tahiti

From this page:

Using the solar parallax values obtained from the 1769 transit, Hornsby wrote in Philosophical Transitions December 1771 that "the mean distance from the Earth to the Sun (is) 93,726,900 English miles." The radar-based value used today for the astronomical unit is 92,955,000 miles. This is only a difference of eight-tenths of one percent. Considering what these astronomers had to work with, their results were "absolutely remarkable".[18]

Cook's voyage in 1769 continued on to New Zealand and Australia, becoming the first Europeans to set foot in NZ and eastern Australia. So unsurprisingly it's pretty well known in this part of the world - the transit of Venus is very much tied to Cooks voyage.

thanks for posting this, was going to say something similar

[rwh]

Hi all,

Av8rmike has completed transcribing this week's episode.  It's in the usual place:

http://www.sgutranscripts.org/wiki/SGU_Episode_360

We're always looking for more help, so if you can type and can spare a few minutes to transcribe a section of this week's podcast, please come along and help!  We have some simple instructions on getting started here:

http://www.sgutranscripts.org/wiki/Help:Getting_Started

It really is easy and helps the SGU community.

Cheers,

Rob