Related papers: Arabia: from craters to stone circles
The students build and use an old navigational tool from the Arab world of the 9th century, the kamal. After an introduction to historic seafaring and navigation, they build this simple tool and understand how it can be used to measure…
Social media is subject to constant growth and evolution, yet little is known about their early phases of adoption. To shed light on this aspect, this paper empirically characterizes the initial and country-wide adoption of a new type of…
Black holes cannot be seen directly since they absorb light and emit none, the very quality which earned them their name. We suggest that black holes may be seen indirectly through a chaotic defocusing of light. A black hole can capture…
In this note, new Hajj and Umrah Event Recognition datasets (HUER) are presented. The demonstrated datasets are based on videos and images taken during 2011-2012 Hajj and Umrah seasons. HUER is the first collection of datasets covering the…
The Crab nebula and its pulsar (referred to together as "Crab") have historically played a central role in astrophysics. True to their legacy, several unique discoveries have been made recently. The Crab was found to emit gamma-ray…
Our landscape has been shaped by man throughout the millennia. It still contains many clues to how it was used in the past giving us insights into ancient cultures and their everyday life. Our summer school uses archaeology and astronomy as…
Descriptions of natural events, such as fireballs and meteorite impacts, are found within Indigenous Australian oral traditions. Studies of oral traditions demonstrate that they extend beyond the realm of myth and legend; they contain…
The traditional cultures of Aboriginal Australians include a significant astronomical component, which is usually reported in terms of songs or stories associated with stars and constellations. Here we argue that the astronomical components…
We introduce the concept of metaasabiya, the second non-material resource, to the asabiya theory of historical dynamics. We find that the resulting three variable dynamical system has peculiar features such as repelling or attracting axes…
Near-Earth Objects (NEOs) that orbit the Sun on or within Earth's orbit are tricky to detect for Earth-based observers due to their proximity to the Sun in the sky. These small bodies hold clues to the dynamical history of the inner solar…
A considerable portion of near-Earth objects could have come from the trans-Neptunian belt. Some of them have aphelia deep inside Jupiter's orbit during more than 1 Myr.
The tumuli of Newgrange and Knowth in Ireland are among the most monumental heritages of the Neolithic era. The megalithic constructions date back to around 3'200 BC, centuries before the completion of Stonehenge and the Egyptian pyramids.…
Solar activity has been recorded as auroras or sunspots in various historical sources. These records are of much importance for investigating both long-term solar activities and extremely intense solar flares. In previous studies, they were…
We examine implications of anthropogenic low pressure regions, - created by injecting heat from nuclear reactors, into atmosphere. We suggest the possibility that such artificially generated low pressure regions, near hurricanes could…
The Magellanic Clouds are a stepping stone from the overwhelming detail of the Milky Way in which we are immersed, to the global characteristics of galaxies both in the nearby and distant universe. They are interacting, gas-rich dwarf…
The megalithic enclosures of Gobekli Tepe (Urfa, Turkey) are the most ancient sacred structures of stone known so far, dating back to the 10 millennium BC. The possible presence of astronomical targets for these structures is analysed, and…
Of the hundreds of distinct Aboriginal cultures of Australia, many have oral traditions rich in descriptions and explanations of comets, meteors, meteorites, airbursts, impact events, and impact craters. These views generally attribute…
The formation of vegetation patterns in the arid and the semi-arid climatic zones is studied. Threshold for the biomass of the perennial flora is shown to be a relevant factor, leading to a frozen disordered patterns in the arid zone. In…
In studies of the oldest solar system bodies - comets and asteroids - it is their fragments - meteoroids - that provide the most accessible planetary material for detailed laboratory analysis in the form of dust particles or meteorites.…
Mars' surface bears the imprint of valley networks formed billions of years ago and their relicts can still be observed today. However, whether these networks were formed by groundwater sapping, ice melt, or fluvial runoff has been…