{"id":658,"date":"2010-06-21T05:28:00","date_gmt":"2010-06-21T12:28:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mjhinton.com\/wild\/?p=658"},"modified":"2010-06-21T05:28:00","modified_gmt":"2010-06-21T12:28:00","slug":"a-sphere-of-finite-dimensions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.ahwilderness.com\/?p=658","title":{"rendered":"\u2018A Sphere of Finite Dimensions\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a title=\"The Sky This Week, 2010 June 15 - 22 \u00e2\u20ac\u201d Naval Oceanography Portal\" href=\"http:\/\/www.usno.navy.mil\/USNO\/tours-events\/sky-this-week\/the-sky-this-week-2010-june-15-22\">The Sky This Week, 2010 June 15 &#8211; 22 \u00e2\u20ac\u201d Naval Oceanography Portal<\/a>&#160;<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>The summer solstice occurs on June 21st at 7:28 am EDT.&#160; At this moment the center of the Sun\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s disc stands directly overhead at a point on the Tropic of Cancer in the southeastern corner of Algeria.&#160; A few hours earlier Old Sol stood virtually overhead in the Egyptian city of Aswan, known to the Greek astronomer Eratosthenes in about 240 BCE as Syene.&#160; Eratosthenes also knew that on the summer solstice in Alexandria, Egypt the Sun was just over seven degrees from the zenith.&#160; Having traveled by camel from Syene to Alexandria, he estimated the distance between the two cities and used geometry to estimate the circumference of the Earth.&#160; His result was remarkably close to our modern value if we make certain assumptions about the units that he used.&#160; Still, his method proved that the Earth was indeed a sphere of finite dimension.&#160; <strong>For most of us, the solstice passes more or less unnoticed except as the marker of the longest day of the year.&#160; However, many ancient cultures revered the day, as evidenced by Neolithic and Paleoamerican sites throughout the world.<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.usno.navy.mil\/USNO\/tours-events\/sky-this-week\/the-sky-this-week-2010-june-15-22\">The Sky This Week, 2010 June 15 &#8211; 22 \u00e2\u20ac\u201d Naval Oceanography Portal<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Happy Solstice to all!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Sky This Week, 2010 June 15 &#8211; 22 \u00e2\u20ac\u201d Naval Oceanography Portal&#160; The summer solstice occurs on June 21st at 7:28 am EDT.&#160; At this moment the center of the Sun\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s disc stands directly overhead at a point on the Tropic of Cancer in the southeastern corner of Algeria.&#160; A few hours earlier Old &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ahwilderness.com\/?p=658\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">\u2018A Sphere of Finite Dimensions\u2019<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-658","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sky"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.ahwilderness.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/658","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.ahwilderness.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.ahwilderness.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.ahwilderness.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.ahwilderness.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=658"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.ahwilderness.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/658\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.ahwilderness.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=658"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.ahwilderness.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=658"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.ahwilderness.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=658"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}