Re: earth/moon relationship

From: Anders Sandberg (asa@nada.kth.se)
Date: Tue Oct 21 1997 - 02:55:13 MDT


CALYK@aol.com writes:

> I saw somewhere a picture where someone had a triangle so it fit perfectly
> inside the earth, and within that triangle, perfectly, was the moon. Is the
> earth/moon relationship really like that?

No. The radius of a circle inscribed in a equilateral triangle inscribed
in another circle is half of the big circle, so the moon is too small.
If you inscribe a tetrahedron in the sphere, you get a smaller inscribed
sphere with a third of it's radius, which is still too large.

I think this nicely shows why one should mistrust pictures purporting
to show the secret relationships in nature - one has to check the
numbers, otherwise it is easy to be fooled.

-- 
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Anders Sandberg                                      Towards Ascension!
asa@nada.kth.se                            http://www.nada.kth.se/~asa/
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