Track 1 ~ Illud Tempus
Illud Tempus is ancient Latin for "the moment in time before time started," or "the primordial time of beginnings." Track 2 ~ Gamma Draconis
ELTANIN (Gamma Draconis). Because it was the pole star during a time of ancient Egypt, Thuban is the most famed star of Draco, the Dragon, and justly received Bayer's Alpha designation even though at bright fourth magnitude it is hardly the constellation's brightest star. That honor goes to bright second magnitude (2.23) Eltanin in the Dragon's head, which nevertheless was called Gamma even though notably brighter (by half a magnitude) than the other bright star of the head, Rastaban, which became Beta. The star's importance, however, is seen in its name, which stands for the whole constellation, from Arabic meaning "the serpent." The star is prominent for several other reasons as well. It is the closest bright star to the "winter" side of the "solstitial colure," the circle in the sky that passes through the poles and winter and summer solstices, the star lying almost exactly 75 degrees north of the winter solstice in Sagittarius. Eltanin's high northerly position also takes it nearly through the zenith, the point overhead, as seen from London, causing it to acquire the now obscure name "zenith star." As a result the star was heavily studied. In attempting to find stellar parallax, the annual shift in stellar position caused by the shifting position of the orbiting Earth (from which we get stellar distance), in 1728 James Bradley discovered in "aberration of starlight," which is caused by the velocity of the moving Earth relative to the speed of the light coming from the star. The discovery once and for all proved that Copernicus was right and that the Earth truly does move around the central Sun. Eltanin is also moving toward us, and will make a close pass at a distance of 28 light years 1.5 million years from now, when it will be the brightest star in the sky and will rival our current Sirius. Physically, Eltanin is a cool (4000 Kelvin) class K orange giant shining from 148 light years away with a luminosity 600 times that of the Sun, its only marked characteristic a slightly low iron abundance. Calculations from the temperature and luminosity as well as from the measured angular diameter agree that the star is 50 times the solar diameter, a bit over half the size of Mercury's orbit. As a giant it is dying, its days of core hydrogen fusion long over. Beginning life as a star with a mass about 1.7 times that of the Sun, it is now probably slowly increasing in brightness as it prepares to fire its internal helium. Track 3 ~ Flight of Feathered Serpents
Quetzalcoatl Simulacrum. God of the wind, wisdom, and life, Quetzalcoatl was a major deity in Aztec mythology, and was represented as a magnificent feathered serpent. He had an exact counterpart in Mayan legends too, called Kukulkan, and at Chichen Itza in Mexico there is a Mayan pyramid dedicated to Kukulkan. Every year at the spring and autumn equinoxes, the pyramid's shadow moves along as the sun sets, and creates a striking illusion of a feathered serpent -- an apt simulacrum invariably attracting many sightseers. Track 4 ~ The Seven Bonds of Heaven and Earth
The Christian notion of an enthroned gentleman in a celestial city originates from Aryan myths that spread throughout Europe and India. In Nordic mythology, the Valhalla was the most beautiful of the golden and silver palaces in Asgard, and when seated on his throne, Odin could overlook all heaven and earth. In India's Mahabharata, Brahma, the "grandfather," sits in a great hall "on the roof beam of heaven," which "blazes as if to light up the sun." Lesser halls and world deities were assigned to the cardinal directions.
Perhaps it is out of our profound feeling of divine estrangement that some indigenous cultures in the Americas, particularly the Mayas, Aztecs, Zunis, and Cherokees, stratified their heavens and hells like floors in a tower, placing their gods in the highest, most exalted, and most remote of the seven to thirteen subdivisions. This corresponds with a comparable structure in the complex Puranas mythology of India. Indian mystics viewed the cosmos as an egg of seven concentric spheres which, along with many netherworlds and hells, contained seven lokas (heavens), with the gods and immortals living in the upper echelons. Now compare this to the Kabbalah, which states that "seventh heaven" is where God and the high angels dwell in a state of bliss.Track 5 ~ Heliocentric Descent
he•li•o•cen•tric adj.
1. measured or considered as being seen from the center of the sun.
2. having or representing the sun as a center: a heliocentric concept of the universe.Track 6 ~ Resurrection of Nemesis
Suppose our Sun was not alone but had a companion star. Suppose that this companion star moved in an elliptical orbit, its solar distance varying between 90,000 a.u. (1.4 light years) and 20,000 a.u., with a period of 30 million years. Also suppose this star is dark or at least very faint, and because of that we haven't noticed it yet. This would mean that once every 30 million years that hypothetical companion star of the Sun would pass through the Oort cloud (a hypothetical cloud of proto-comets at a great distance from the Sun). During such a passage, the proto-comets in the Oort cloud would be stirred around. Some tens of thousands of years later, here on Earth we would notice a dramatic increase in the the number of comets passing the inner solar system. If the number of comets increases dramatically, so does the risk of the Earth colliding with the nucleus of one of those comets.
When examining the Earth's geological record, it appears that about once every 30 million years a mass extinction of life on Earth has occurred. The most well-known of those mass extinctions is of course the dinosaur extinction some 65 million years ago. About 15 million years from now it's time for the next mass extinction, according to this hypothesis.
This hypothetical "death companion" of the Sun was suggested in 1985 by Daniel P. Whitmire and John J. Matese, Univ. of Southern Louisiana. It has even received a name: Nemesis. It need not be very bright or very massive, a star much smaller and dimmer than the Sun would suffice, even a brown or a black dwarf (a planet-like body insufficiently massive to start "burning hydrogen" like a star). It is possible that this star already exists in one of the catalogues of dim stars without anyone having noted something peculiar, namely the enormous apparent motion of that star against the background of more distant stars (i.e. its parallax). If it should be found, few will doubt that it is the primary cause of periodic mass extinctions on Earth.
But this is also a notion of mythical power. If an anthropologist of a previous generation had heard such a story from his informants, the resulting scholarly tome would doubtless use words like 'primitive' or 'pre-scientific'. Consider this story:
There is another Sun in the sky, a Demon Sun we cannot see. Long ago, even before great grandmother's time, the Demon Sun attacked our Sun. Comets fell, and a terrible winter overtook the Earth. Almost all life was destroyed. The Demon Sun has attacked many times before. It will attack again.This is why some scientists thought this Nemesis theory was a joke when they first heard of it -- an invisible Sun attacking the Earth with comets sounds like delusion or myth. It deserves an additional dollop of skepticism for that reason: we are always in danger of deceiving ourselves. But even if the theory is speculative, it's serious and respectable, because its main idea is testable: you find the star and examine its properties.Track 7 ~ Tower of Syene
The "Alexandrian School" of Greek thought circa 200 B.C. made astonishing progress in the understanding of astronomy. One Eratosthenes measured (quite accurately) the size of the earth. South of Alexandria was a town called Syene. Eratosthenes heard that, in Syene, on the summer solstice, the sun shines straight down a very deep vertical well. (Syene sat on the tropic of Cancer) On this day in Alexandria, some 5000 "stadia" north of Syene, the sun cast a shadow 7.2 degrees from the vertical. Eratosthenes correctly deduced that this difference was due to the curvature of the spherical earth.
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