Oldie, but a goodie. Come spend a couple minutes with Carl Sagan as he explains how Eratosthenes figured out the circumference of the earth and that it truly was a sphere!
The pacing is a little slower than we're used to these days, but it's a relaxing five or so minutes. Rebel against the attention economy for a moment this Friday and indulge yourself.
:meow-coffee: .
Side note: Eratosthenes was born in Cyrene which was located in what is now northeast Libya near (wait for it) Benghazi. While the city was part of the Greek empire at the time, it is yet another example of how the concept of "western" culture has very much shifted over time. I don't need to say this here, but the contributions of Africa to science, history, and art cannot be overstated!
Am I wrong to think the concept of “Western Culture” is complete fucking bullshit? If you took the average fashoid to ancient Greece they would be like “what in the fuck are you blabbering about?”
Modern day Chuds walking around Athens 7th millennium BC: "Where all the white people at?"
I mean, the ancient Greeks were pretty mean about other races, just in the name of Greekness rather than whiteness
Eratosthenes is also the person thank for the fundamental properties, to this day, of prime-sieving algorithms. His algorithm generates all the prime numbers, albeit very slowly. Nowadays there are some improvements for finding all primes up to a certain size (algorithms that run more quickly), but they are fundamentally just fancier versions of Eratosthenes’ method, with the same core idea that’s at least 2200 years old.
The original sieving method to generate primes is so straightforward that 7/8 year olds could do it, it’s nice
The only reason find it hard to stay awake is because I spent nearly a decade watching these as I fell asleep.
Carl's calm, soothing voice always gets me and he made me the curious person I am today.
In retrospect, the proliferation of "flat earthers" in the years leading up to the pandemic should have been an indicator that Americans were extremely vulnerable to disinformation and easily disproved conspiracy theories.
Some weird Greek guy: "Ah-hah! So you can prove it's not flat, but can you prove we're not sitting on top of a massive turtle's shell? "
Of course it's not on the back of a turtle's shell!
spoiler
There's obviously four elephants between the disc and the turtle
That would explain the spinning, but why don't I hear these creatures doing things like sneezing?
Okay but what about all the weird elephant things they do with their trunk like self-fellatio and probing each other's butts? Erasthothenes never accounted for that.
Oh! Final bit of fun info:
Eratosthenes was measuring the circumference north to south, not around the equator, because that's the orientation of the two cities he used. He was actually only off in his calculation by ~7.86 kilometers (that's ~4.89 miles for our Amerikan friends). Amazing!
yall ever do this in primary school? easily the coolest basic experiment out there
Human beings are truly amazing! I fully believe we will be able to abolish capitalism.
The pacing is a little slower than we’re used to these days
I would really hate the TikTok version.
I changed "brains" in the title to "curiosity" because Sagan also mentions that and I believe it is more important. It doesn't matter what sort of relative intelligence you have if you're not interested in the world around you.
:party-parrot-science:
ah but have you considered that uhhh the earth is flat because i said so?
