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I have nothing to offer but confusion
A couple of musings...
On Saturday, I was prowling around in Richmond Park in London. It is very large, and has the mysterious ability to turn St Paul's into a cameo. And it has a magical bench. However, it is also very sinister.
I was wanting to look at the Isabella Plantations. After a tortuous hunt for the local tourist information office, I tracked down a map of the park, and we were all set to go to the relevant corner for the Plantations. After a pause to skip stones across a pond and decide on a route, we struck out.
"So, we're going East", I said.
West, corrected ChrisC.
East, I insisted, stubbornly.
ChrisC indicated the map and pointed out very reasonably that when the little dotted line you're walking along is going to the left, and North is at the top of the map, that's West.
I had to concede he had a point. However, I had a mastercard. If he was correct, and we were going West, then the sun was in the North. Which, even at about four o'clock on a summer afternoon, is not a common occurrence round these parts.
We both stared at the map. Then at the sun. Then checked that North really was at the top of the map. Then looked back at the sun again. There was really no getting away from it. Matching landmarks, and trying to be as generous as possible in assuming that the map might be approximate (although it matched other maps we'd seen on signs and so on), we were forced to the following set of choices:
(a) All maps of the area were wrong to the order of about 90 degrees.
(b) The sun was in, at best, the North-West.
(c) Someone had quietly and efficiently transported us to Australia.
I was secretly inclined to rule out (c), because I couldn't see a single kangaroo, platypus or other humorous mammal. I kept quiet about this. And to be fair, Richmond is supposed to be a deer park and I couldn't see any of them, either.
However, it did prompt a certain amount of wondering. I hate questions of planetary motion, as everything always seems to work out in a manner which is counter-intuitive to me, and I get confused.
The sun rises in the East and sets in the West. Everyone knows that.
But... if you lived by the North pole, you'd get some days where the sun never went down, and presumably then you'd see the sun go round the full 360 degrees of the sky. With no real concept of coming up or going down.
Presumably, this drops off pretty sharply as you go south. By the time you've reached the equator, the sun really does rise and set where (as it were) God intended it.
But what about in-between places, like the UK ? Does the sun really go round considerably more than 180 degrees, maybe rising in the North-East and setting in the North-West ?
I could plausibly believe so. But... but... the sun rises in the East. Everyone knows that. And why do they know it if it's wrong ? More to the point, why did they know it in the UK before places like the Equator had been discovered ? Doesn't sound very druidical to me - "We'll align this archway due East so the sun shines directly through it. It won't, of course, but don't tell anyone, will you ? Druid secret."
Does anyone with a bit of astrophysics and/or anthropology about their person want to help me out here ?
On Tuesday night I was heading down to London to go to a gig. In accordance with my usual custom, I was planning to go M4->M25->M40 into North London. I got scared when I saw the signs on the gantries of the M4 saying things like "Long Delays J7 - J4"
Aha, thought I, I shall go down the A404, for I am clever. (If you don't follow the road numbers - the M4 comes into the clockface of London at around 9 o'clock, the M40 at about half past ten ish. The M25 circles London, joining them all, and the A404 runs parallel to the M25 at this point, a little further away from the city). The A404 is prone to jamming up where it joins the M40, I thought, but at least it's a known quantity.
I've often queued at that junction (it's called Handy Cross), but except for one memorable occasion when I was trying to meet![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
leathellin and elethiomel for dinner when it took me a whole hour to get round the roundabout, it's never been too heinous.
My plan had been leaving work around half five, giving me plenty of time to park, catch the tube in, and meet up with people before doors at 8. At 6, having assessed the jam I was in as not going anywhere in a hurry, I phoned Base Camp to advise that I wouldn't be there when I'd expected. Over the course of the next two hours, I inched my way towards Handy Cross. Actually, inched is a bad phrase. I moved in about 30 foot sections, about every ten minutes or so.
Not long after I'd first come to a halt, I heard a furious yelling immediately behind me. No words were particularly clear apart from a "fuck" or two. Being naturally guilty, I assumed someone was shouting at me and did a quick damage assessment. Yes, it was the bloke in the pick-up behind me. And yes, I hadn't put the handbrake on properly and was rolling backwards. Not terribly close to him, and it was a novel alternative to a horn, but fair enough. Shortly afterwards, there was another burst of shouting, again not very comprehensible "... groff, groff, groff... fucking trafic". Which was odd, because no one seemed to be doing anything that was shout-worthy. I had my handbrake on and everything.
Slowly, it became apparent that the bloke in the pick-up was just (a) very cross and (b) liked shouting. " Fuck the fucking traffic" seemed to be burden of his song, and he threw it continually to the wind. Mercifully, he decided shortly after to change lanes, and thus passed harmlessly if noisily away from me in the way of traffic jams (though he did nearly scare the pants off the driver of the convertible whom he pulled up behind).
Handy Cross roundabout is a strange beastie. It is large, with more exits than the signs would have you believe, and more traffic lights than you might expect. It's multi-laned, and either badly laid out or with mistimed lights. Traffic pulling onto the roundabout into the turning-right lane blocks oncoming traffic which is trying to come round the roundabout. Which very rapidly means the whole thing deadlocks, and nobody goes anywhere at all. Previously, when I'd encountered the roundabout deadlocked, I'd determined that I wasn't going to pull across and block the roundabout. I'd wait til there was a gap to pull all the way through. After considerable time, I bowed to the wisdom of the hooting people behind me, and concluded that the gap would never arrive - it's force your way on slowly or don't get anywhere at all.
The jam on Tuesday rapidly became the sort where you can safely switch your engine off and get out the car - people milled up and down the reservations and road, sharing news, grumbling, chatting to pass the time, passing round the polos. Had it not been that I was in a hurry, it might have been a pleasantly peaceful couple of hours - crickets churruping in the reservations, a game little plane towing gliders up into the brassy blue sky, evening sunshine and odd bits of chatter. And, occasionally, brought up on a drift of wind from further down the queue, a distant "... fuck... fucking traffic...".
At about quarter past eight, I was still standing in the middle of the A404, chatting to some bikers. You know you're in a bad jam when bikers are giving up ("I'm not going through that lot, I like my fairing!") The only plus point was that when I finally made it to the M40 it was empty, because no bugger could get to it.
While queueing, I came to two conclusions: one, if the police would turn up, keep anyone new from joining the roundabout long enough to give it time to clear, everything would be ok. Two, that junction badly needs some sliproads onto the motorway.
I felt quite smug when, eventually, the police turned up and did exactly that. The lady behind me was unimpressed - she couldn't see why they weren't letting people onto the roundabout, and seemed convinced that the police had been sent specially to make things more difficult. To be fair, it was only when we actually made it to the junction that it became obvious - and by then there were police everywhere, which meant that people were being terribly well-behaved and thus the roundabout was working fine.
This morning I felt even smugger when I found the Highways page detailing their plans to add sliproads. It may have taken them months of discussion with a select committee to decide that, but I worked it out in about half an hour. Yay, I should be running the country.
Sadly, the work was supposed to start at the end of this week but has been delayed owing to a "situation". Since the improvents would involve chewing up an AONB, I suspect someone has raised an objection and they're having to look into it. But in theory... maybe one day that junction'll work.
On Saturday, I was prowling around in Richmond Park in London. It is very large, and has the mysterious ability to turn St Paul's into a cameo. And it has a magical bench. However, it is also very sinister.
I was wanting to look at the Isabella Plantations. After a tortuous hunt for the local tourist information office, I tracked down a map of the park, and we were all set to go to the relevant corner for the Plantations. After a pause to skip stones across a pond and decide on a route, we struck out.
"So, we're going East", I said.
West, corrected ChrisC.
East, I insisted, stubbornly.
ChrisC indicated the map and pointed out very reasonably that when the little dotted line you're walking along is going to the left, and North is at the top of the map, that's West.
I had to concede he had a point. However, I had a mastercard. If he was correct, and we were going West, then the sun was in the North. Which, even at about four o'clock on a summer afternoon, is not a common occurrence round these parts.
We both stared at the map. Then at the sun. Then checked that North really was at the top of the map. Then looked back at the sun again. There was really no getting away from it. Matching landmarks, and trying to be as generous as possible in assuming that the map might be approximate (although it matched other maps we'd seen on signs and so on), we were forced to the following set of choices:
(a) All maps of the area were wrong to the order of about 90 degrees.
(b) The sun was in, at best, the North-West.
(c) Someone had quietly and efficiently transported us to Australia.
I was secretly inclined to rule out (c), because I couldn't see a single kangaroo, platypus or other humorous mammal. I kept quiet about this. And to be fair, Richmond is supposed to be a deer park and I couldn't see any of them, either.
However, it did prompt a certain amount of wondering. I hate questions of planetary motion, as everything always seems to work out in a manner which is counter-intuitive to me, and I get confused.
The sun rises in the East and sets in the West. Everyone knows that.
But... if you lived by the North pole, you'd get some days where the sun never went down, and presumably then you'd see the sun go round the full 360 degrees of the sky. With no real concept of coming up or going down.
Presumably, this drops off pretty sharply as you go south. By the time you've reached the equator, the sun really does rise and set where (as it were) God intended it.
But what about in-between places, like the UK ? Does the sun really go round considerably more than 180 degrees, maybe rising in the North-East and setting in the North-West ?
I could plausibly believe so. But... but... the sun rises in the East. Everyone knows that. And why do they know it if it's wrong ? More to the point, why did they know it in the UK before places like the Equator had been discovered ? Doesn't sound very druidical to me - "We'll align this archway due East so the sun shines directly through it. It won't, of course, but don't tell anyone, will you ? Druid secret."
Does anyone with a bit of astrophysics and/or anthropology about their person want to help me out here ?
On Tuesday night I was heading down to London to go to a gig. In accordance with my usual custom, I was planning to go M4->M25->M40 into North London. I got scared when I saw the signs on the gantries of the M4 saying things like "Long Delays J7 - J4"
Aha, thought I, I shall go down the A404, for I am clever. (If you don't follow the road numbers - the M4 comes into the clockface of London at around 9 o'clock, the M40 at about half past ten ish. The M25 circles London, joining them all, and the A404 runs parallel to the M25 at this point, a little further away from the city). The A404 is prone to jamming up where it joins the M40, I thought, but at least it's a known quantity.
I've often queued at that junction (it's called Handy Cross), but except for one memorable occasion when I was trying to meet
leathellin and elethiomel for dinner when it took me a whole hour to get round the roundabout, it's never been too heinous.My plan had been leaving work around half five, giving me plenty of time to park, catch the tube in, and meet up with people before doors at 8. At 6, having assessed the jam I was in as not going anywhere in a hurry, I phoned Base Camp to advise that I wouldn't be there when I'd expected. Over the course of the next two hours, I inched my way towards Handy Cross. Actually, inched is a bad phrase. I moved in about 30 foot sections, about every ten minutes or so.
Not long after I'd first come to a halt, I heard a furious yelling immediately behind me. No words were particularly clear apart from a "fuck" or two. Being naturally guilty, I assumed someone was shouting at me and did a quick damage assessment. Yes, it was the bloke in the pick-up behind me. And yes, I hadn't put the handbrake on properly and was rolling backwards. Not terribly close to him, and it was a novel alternative to a horn, but fair enough. Shortly afterwards, there was another burst of shouting, again not very comprehensible "... groff, groff, groff... fucking trafic". Which was odd, because no one seemed to be doing anything that was shout-worthy. I had my handbrake on and everything.
Slowly, it became apparent that the bloke in the pick-up was just (a) very cross and (b) liked shouting. " Fuck the fucking traffic" seemed to be burden of his song, and he threw it continually to the wind. Mercifully, he decided shortly after to change lanes, and thus passed harmlessly if noisily away from me in the way of traffic jams (though he did nearly scare the pants off the driver of the convertible whom he pulled up behind).
Handy Cross roundabout is a strange beastie. It is large, with more exits than the signs would have you believe, and more traffic lights than you might expect. It's multi-laned, and either badly laid out or with mistimed lights. Traffic pulling onto the roundabout into the turning-right lane blocks oncoming traffic which is trying to come round the roundabout. Which very rapidly means the whole thing deadlocks, and nobody goes anywhere at all. Previously, when I'd encountered the roundabout deadlocked, I'd determined that I wasn't going to pull across and block the roundabout. I'd wait til there was a gap to pull all the way through. After considerable time, I bowed to the wisdom of the hooting people behind me, and concluded that the gap would never arrive - it's force your way on slowly or don't get anywhere at all.
The jam on Tuesday rapidly became the sort where you can safely switch your engine off and get out the car - people milled up and down the reservations and road, sharing news, grumbling, chatting to pass the time, passing round the polos. Had it not been that I was in a hurry, it might have been a pleasantly peaceful couple of hours - crickets churruping in the reservations, a game little plane towing gliders up into the brassy blue sky, evening sunshine and odd bits of chatter. And, occasionally, brought up on a drift of wind from further down the queue, a distant "... fuck... fucking traffic...".
At about quarter past eight, I was still standing in the middle of the A404, chatting to some bikers. You know you're in a bad jam when bikers are giving up ("I'm not going through that lot, I like my fairing!") The only plus point was that when I finally made it to the M40 it was empty, because no bugger could get to it.
While queueing, I came to two conclusions: one, if the police would turn up, keep anyone new from joining the roundabout long enough to give it time to clear, everything would be ok. Two, that junction badly needs some sliproads onto the motorway.
I felt quite smug when, eventually, the police turned up and did exactly that. The lady behind me was unimpressed - she couldn't see why they weren't letting people onto the roundabout, and seemed convinced that the police had been sent specially to make things more difficult. To be fair, it was only when we actually made it to the junction that it became obvious - and by then there were police everywhere, which meant that people were being terribly well-behaved and thus the roundabout was working fine.
This morning I felt even smugger when I found the Highways page detailing their plans to add sliproads. It may have taken them months of discussion with a select committee to decide that, but I worked it out in about half an hour. Yay, I should be running the country.
Sadly, the work was supposed to start at the end of this week but has been delayed owing to a "situation". Since the improvents would involve chewing up an AONB, I suspect someone has raised an objection and they're having to look into it. But in theory... maybe one day that junction'll work.
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[Note for people who don't know where Whitby is - it's on the East coast, but owing to bumpy coastline manages to be arranged such that if you're looking out to sea you're looking more or less due North.)
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I still remember seeing pre-dawn light on the northern horizon at midnight when setting off back towards Newcastle after going to a concert in Edinburgh in midsummer.
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If you mean midnight in the sense of 0100 BST, then fair play to you. But people always look at me funny if I say "I'm not going out in that sun, it's only an hour past noon" at 2pm.
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Come to think of it, it's even later than that in Edinburgh on account of being so far West.
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I do do the thing of talking about the 'real' time during the day when BST is in effect, much to the annoyance of people who think Summer Time is the greatest thing since sliced bread.
I'm back in Perth, Australia now, where our time zone is based on 120 degrees east, nearly 20 minutes away as the sun flies.
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It's Monday and I'm feeling kinda dim today, so please excuse me if I'm being stupid... but doesn't us being North mean we expect the sun to be in the South ?
In fact, looking at
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Anyone got any idea how the Earth became skewed in this way ? Seems odd, from a "spinning balls of gas" perspective.
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Where "all", in this case means 6 out of 9 :)
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Now, just wait until we get onto the topic of moons spinning the wrong way, or orbiting the planet the wrong way. Then, maybe, you'll get into the habit of saying things like "this set does foo" and "All the other ones do bar" rather than trying to enumerate them all.
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I'll concede when moons are included in the figures though.
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In the case of the direction of the planets spin, Uranus is a total oddity - because its tilt is so close to 90 degrees, some people describe it as having a tilt of more than 90 degrees, but still think of it as spinning the same way as the earth etc. Pluto is just one big oddity full stop: can't even decide if it's furthest planet, or even a planet/double planet ;-). And again it has axial tilt rather closer to 90 than to 0/180. Venus is the only one out of those three that has a very small axial tilt. And even it isn't exactly normal - its rotation period is longer than the time it takes to orbit the sun. By comparison, the others are quite normal. Although they all have their little quirks, of course.
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On the other hand, given that *fx:looks up precise numbers* Uranus's tilt is 97.77 degrees and pluto's 122.5, it would probably be stretching pedantry a teensy bit to claim 'tilted roughly 180 degrees'.
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Well, the best current hypothesis for why we have a Moon is an early collision with a roughly Mars-sized object. Presumably it's possible to come up with an impact angle which leaves the Moon still in the plane of the ecliptic, the earth's rotational axis skewed, and a shower of asteroids all over the shop.
Even better would be if there's some solar gravitational effect which tends to pull the Moon towards the ecliptic even if that isn't where it was immediately after the impact. Anyone?
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Another thing of interest (possibly!) here is that the Earth's axial tilt is not constant -- we are currently a little above the middle of the range, and it's a 40,000 year cycle.
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Er, it's not Monday where I am... ;-)
but doesn't us being North mean we expect the sun to be in the South ?
Well, at mid-day*, yes, and you grow up thinking it's east at dawn, and west at sunset. Which is why it's disconcerting when you first realise that yes that really is the sun, and yes, it really is well north of east, or north of west, because the east and west thing is rather a simplification.
*Which may be shifted by some kind of daylight saving time, and how far east/west you are within the time zone.
In fact, looking at zotz' answer above, it seems likely that it's only the fact we're not sufficiently far North that makes the sun appear in the North. (Assuming his argument's correct, that is.
The earth is, indeed, tilted, and that's what means that the more North you go, the more North the sun sets. Or put another way, the further south you go, the closer to west the sun sets.
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Bateleur works two very short weeks each week (in that he doesn't work Wednesdays). Hence, it's always either Monday or Friday.
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I think for that you win a Muppet of the Week award!
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For, as Scarlet O'Hara said... .
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I've been to the arctic circle just out of midsummer and seen the sun set in the north and rise less than 2 hours later in the north. It's really perturbing.
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I might have been mistaken - it might have been closer to 6, I suppose. And maybe the map was out a little as well.
I still think the sun was just broken at the weekend.
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(Anonymous) 2005-07-14 10:52 pm (UTC)(link)no subject
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If you have access to a globe and a monopoly house (or substitute) and a table lamp, place the house on the UK (perhaps stick it on with blu-tac?), note which side of the house is south facing, and place the globe level with the table lamp. Look at where the light lands on the house.
Rotate the globe on it's axis to see what happens through the day, or rotate the stand to see what the seasons do (winter when the pole is facing away from the table lamp, summer when it's facing towards).
Does that help?