A Conversation for Longitude

Longitude is Anything But "Arbitrary"

Post 1

Iacko

Hello, My name is Jack, I go by Iacko sometimes for pubtrivia games and such. I think about a lot of different things and talk about a lot of different things, some of which I even feel qualified for. This is one of those subjects. For some reason, it has made complete sense to me that the Prime Meridian be place where it is (As a very young child learning of geography I thought it should have been placed directly along he house where I lived, but i digress {a further digression is the infinite mathematics/finite geometry argument that I am the center of the universe--a circle in ndimensions is the locus of points equidistant from an origin; therefore, there is a locus of points an infinite distance from me in an infinite universe of ndimensions of which i am the center, but I digress.)

Now that you are thinking of maths, consider this:

(A) The location of the Prime Meridian at Greenwich, England is absolutely, unequivocally not an act of randomness.

(B) If (A) is false, the location of the Prime Meridian at such an address ranks as one of the most serendipitous events of Happenstance in the annals of human history.

The justification of the Above Statements:

Granted: The crown did provide the reward for the method of accurately determining Longitude from a given location.
Granted: That location being the Royal Observatory at Greenwich.
Granted: At other times, Rome or places in France, or the Place where Jesus might have been crucified had been offered up and used as the origin.
Granted: Great Britain was a major sea power at the time and had a very vested interest in the project, and thus had the force of will to put forth the challenge.
But why Greenwich? Why not through the Queens chambers, or the House of Lords? Because the Observatory was (is amwillbe) at Greenwich.
Why was the Observatory at Greenwich?
Because it lay on the Prime Meridian.

If anyone wants to jump off here and start a forum on circular logic, feel free.

The path of the ecliptic (the apparent motion of the sun against the background stars) crosses the equator into the Northern Hemisphere on or around March 21 (the Vernal Equinox-first of Spring) at a location in the Atlantic Ocean South and West of Africa.
If you draw a line from this point to the North Pole, you'll cross the path of little telescope pointed towards the heavens in a land where potato chips are called crisps.

180 degrees away is the international date line. On the Autumnal equinox the apparent path of the sun enters the Southern hemisphere.

hmmm... Is it just me or does that seem a little less than abitrary?
I have tried to research any prehistoric astronomic sites in the greater London (specifically Greenwich) area and have had no luck in either the poppish/spooky/ancient mystery vein, nor in scholarly texts such as 'The Pagan Religions of the Ancient British Isles' or 'The Druids' both of which are authoritative tomes by writers whose names escape me.

My childhood home, Rome, a hill in the desert: random and arbitrary.
Greenwich,England; Accra, Ghana: in step with the celestial clockwork.

And the bit about an self-taught tinkerer designing the most esquisite timekeepers? Sort of makes me wonder.


Longitude is Anything But "Arbitrary"

Post 2

Iacko

An appendix to my last posting on this subject:

My primary point is that an Observatory was established at Greenwich precisely because it lay along this line of intersection of the Equator (X), a given Longitude (Y), and the ecliptic (Z).
If you follow this model and recall some Euclidian Geometry, the earth is rendered as a 2-d rectangular form. The Equator is the one line that perfectly divides the Earth's axis evenly. In this 2-d model, there is as finite a set of hemispheres along the (Y) (longitidinal) axis as there are whims and fancies of jingoistic cartographers.
The Ecliptic (Z axis) is set by the machinations of the Universe.
I confess that I am not a mathematician (I possess a degree in History, Literature, and Popular Culture, and earn my keep in fields related to photography and graphics, for the record), so please be forgiving if I slip up in a technical term here and there.

Anyway, the revised THESIS:

X and Z are fixed values.
Y is a wildcard value of which there are as many candidates as there are digits in (Pi) in 4 dimensions.
There is one perfect value for Y which intersects X and Z.
And on that Longitude (perfect Y) there just happened (happens amwillhappen) to be the Royal Observatory, chosen, "quite arbitrarily," based on the realities in Eightteenth Century Nautical Intrigues, to be the Origin of Reckoning Time on this little Pseudosphere we all call home.

If I recall, there's also a bunch of big rocks which do something similar thereabouts.

I trust that my logic and procession has made a bit of sense to my fellow researchers, and welcome any and all feedback on this matter.

My question remains:
Does anyone have any documented citations of any prehistoric artefacts from the Greater London (specifically Greenwich) area, which allude directly or indirectly to this site as an area of astronomical significance?


Longitude is Anything But "Arbitrary"

Post 3

Gnomon - time to move on

If anybody is interested, lacko's logic is flawed. The Ecliptic is not a line on the Earth's surface that intersects the equator at the prime meridian. It is a line in the sky that intersects the celestial equator, another line in the sky. The celestial prime meridian, a third line in the sky, is defined based on the intersection of the first two.

Since the Earth turns, these lines are not permanently over any specific point on the Earth's surface, so there's nothing that ties the celestial prime meridian to the location of Greenwich or any other point on the Earth's surface.


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