THE SHORES OF THE COSMIC OCEAN

THE SHORES OF COSMIC OCEAN

June 3, 2015 by dighe31 | Edit

The Shores of the Cosmic Ocean
“The surface of the Earth is the Shore of the Cosmic Ocean. Recently we have waded a little out to Sea, enough to dampen our toes or, at most,wet our ankles. The water seems inviting. The Ocean calls. Some part of beings knows this is from where we came. We long to return”….(Carl Sagan)

Welcome to this beautiful Planet Earth. It’s full of Life a place of blue nitrogen skies oceans of liquid water cool forests and soft meadows. In all our journeying through space and time this place is unique and rare. There must be many such worlds scattered through space but we have yet to find life elsewhere. With the accumulated knowledge from our ancestors over million years, we have begun our voyage to home from where we humans are born from stars and now inhabiting a world called Earth.
.Carl says
Something in us recognizes the Cosmos as home. We are made of stellar ash. Our origin and evolution have been tied to distant cosmic events. The exploration of Cosmos is a voyage of Self –discovery…..
Our History:
During third B.C. in Egyptian city of Alexandria, was flourished with scholars.
Eratosthenes was a one of them. He was a Greek astronomer historian geographer philosopher poet theatre critic and mathematician. He was the director of the the great ‘Library of Alexandria’. He deduced with experiment that our Earth is round(360 degrees) and not flat. He calculated its circumference very correctly. ..40,000kms. Its very interesting about his discovery… He had read in one of the papyrus book from the Library that at southern frontiers outpost of Syene at noon on June 21 vertical sticks casts ‘no’ shadows. He observed that in Alexandria that the vertical sticks did cast shadows at noon on June 21. A very simple experiment with these sticks he calculated that the surface of Earth is curved and not flat which was presumed. The sun is far away its rays are parallel when they strike the Earths .Sticks placed at the different angle to the sun rays casts shows of different lengths .(see dia.1) For the observed differences of the shadow lengths, the distance between Alexandria and Syene had to be about seven degrees along the surface of the Earth. Seven degree is 1/50 of three hundred and sixty degrees Eratostheses quoted. How very correct his calculations were 2200 years ago. Really Amazing!
The city was founded by Alexander the Great. Alexander encouraged knowledge from all around the world. He respected their Gods and Culture. The greatest marvel during his rule was the Library of Alexandria. He invited great scholars from India China Japan etc.etc. The Greek kings of Egypt who succeeded Alexander supported research and entertained the best minds for centuries. The Alexandrian Library is where we humans first collected seriously and systematically the knowledge of the world.
Seven centuries after its founding a Greek female Scholar Hypatia a mathemation philosopher an astronomer surpassed the philosophers of her time. Around 400 AD she became the head of Platonist school of Alexandria and taught the knowledge of Plato and Aristotle. Egypt then was ruled by Romans. By contemporary sources it is said that she was brutally murdered. The Library of Alexandria was destroyed…
Hypatia was the last light of the Library.
Socrates has written about her in his Ecclesiastical History.
We shall see more about these Scientist and Philosphers in coming
blogs..

“Death of the philosopher Hypatia, in Alexandria” from Vies des savants illustres, depuis l’antiquité jusqu’au dix-neuvième siècle, 1866, by Louis Figuier.
source: Cosmos by Carl Sagan images from web and wikipedia.