3 QUESTIONS? Space, Time and Subaru

Splottboy

Q1. If the Uiverses is expanding, as per the Big Bang Theory, and everything is flying apart from everything else, then Why do the Constelations look the same as when the Ancient Egyptians, Aztecs, Greeks and Romans recorded them, and still look the same to us?

Q2. If Greenwich is the centre for Greenwich Mean Time, and "time" starts there, why is Australia, New Zealand and their Islands alway celebrating New Years Eve before everyone else? Souldn't they be celebrating later?

Q3. Where is the new Subaru tv advert filmed. Wales, the Lakes, Scotland?
Looks like Wales to me, Boyo...
TA!

cee

Splottboy wrote:

Q1. If the Uiverses is expanding, as per the Big Bang Theory, and everything is flying apart from everything else, then Why do the Constelations look the same as when the Ancient Egyptians, Aztecs, Greeks and Romans recorded them, and still look the same to us?

because they haven't moved anywhere near as much as the distance between us and them...so in relative terms...the difference in their position is miniscule in terms of how far away they are from us...thus they look the same from here.

Splottboy wrote:

Q2. If Greenwich is the centre for Greenwich Mean Time, and "time" starts there, why is Australia, New Zealand and their Islands alway celebrating New Years Eve before
everyone else? Souldn't they be celebrating later?

bloody antipodes :roll:

Splottboy wrote:

Q3. Where is the new Subaru tv advert filmed. Wales, the Lakes, Scotland?
Looks like Wales to me, Boyo...
TA!

Probably Wales. Scotland is too expensive to film in...even hollywood find places that look like scotland when they want to make a film based in scotland...most of braveheart was shot in ireland

Ands

GMT was initially devised as a standard for timekeeping in the British Isles. It then evolved to become a worldwide standard. It was never devised to indicate the UK being the centre of the world AFAIK!

Those who celebrate NYE first aren't Australians, NZers or their islanders!

bompington

A1. How do you know they do? They're clearly in roughly the same alignment but they're not going to move far in just a few thousand years
A2. Greenwich is the central meridian, which means you can go 12 hours ahead in one direction and 12 hours behind in the other.
A3. I don't know.

teagar

Ands wrote:

GMT was initially devised as a standard for timekeeping in the British Isles. It then evolved to become a worldwide standard. It was never devised to indicate the UK being the centre of the world AFAIK!

I thought it was devised as a standard so that British ships could consistently and accurately measure their longtiude - with the fancy clocks and what not?

It was certainly implicitly devised to being the centre of the world, because, lets be honest, it probably was for British ships!

Ands

Teagar, I'm no expert but I believe the origins were in a localised time keeping system for the railways in the early 1800s. It then evolved in the latter half of the century to being a global system.

teagar

Ands wrote:

Teagar, I'm no expert but I believe the origins were in a localised time keeping system for the railways in the early 1800s. It then evolved in the latter half of the century to being a global system.

According to wikipedia, it was originally devised as a martime tool, and for that reason was adoted globally, though only after it was adopted nationally in the UK itself, for the railways.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenwich_Mean_Time

passout

Yes, I'm sure that there is a Martitime link to GMT. At the same time the railways were linked to the first standardised time I think, although not specifically to GMT. Before the railways Devon was probably a few minutes out from London but even within the same town it would be hard to know what the real time was.

deptfordmarmoset

The Aussies and Kiwis start their New Year before us because the prime meridian (meridian = midday) in Greenwich uses noon as its basis. If midnight had been used as the standard, we'd have our New Year first.

When GMT was established as the international standard there were many other meridians, quite a few of which ran through the Canaries, and it was largely because Britain's shipping fleet was the largest in the world that Greenwich was adopted in the 1880s. I remember reading that France, which was right royalement miffed at losing Paris' meridian status, tried a counter proposal - they'd accept it if they made clocks metric, i.e 100 minutes to every hour, etc. The response was that they could have as many minutes as they wanted but they weren't going to force metric minutes on the rest of us.

I seem to remember also that the Netherlands was only tied in to GMT when the Nazis rolled over the border - before that they had kept their own locally standardised time. But I can't remember where I read that.

_Brun_

The new year thing is caused by the location of the International Date Line, which has nothing to do with GMT.

The IDL is in the middle of the Pacific Ocean for the simple reason that it affects the fewest people. Or did, before we started flying everywhere.

deptfordmarmoset

The IDL is principally located 180 degrees (or 12 hours) from the prime meridian. It doesn't follow the meridian exactly but deviates to avoid countries getting split in 2, much as time zones do. Once you have the notional prime meridian in place, the time zones and the date line are more or less held in place - the deviations being for geo-political reasons.

Pross

deptfordmarmoset wrote:

The Aussies and Kiwis start their New Year before us because the prime meridian (meridian = midday) in Greenwich uses noon as its basis. If midnight had been used as the standard, we'd have our New Year first.

When GMT was established as the international standard there were many other meridians, quite a few of which ran through the Canaries, and it was largely because Britain's shipping fleet was the largest in the world that Greenwich was adopted in the 1880s. I remember reading that France, which was right royalement miffed at losing Paris' meridian status, tried a counter proposal - they'd accept it if they made clocks metric, i.e 100 minutes to every hour, etc. The response was that they could have as many minutes as they wanted but they weren't going to force metric minutes on the rest of us.

I seem to remember also that the Netherlands was only tied in to GMT when the Nazis rolled over the border - before that they had kept their own locally standardised time. But I can't remember where I read that.

Surely they'd still be 12 hours ahead of us even if midnight was used so would still have come in ahead of us? :?

RichN95.

Splottboy wrote:

Q1. If the Uiverses is expanding, as per the Big Bang Theory, and everything is flying apart from everything else, then Why do the Constelations look the same as when the Ancient Egyptians, Aztecs, Greeks and Romans recorded them, and still look the same to us?

2000 years in 14 billion is a very small amount. It's the equivalent of saying - if that child is really growing, why is he the same height as he was 5 minutes ago?

deptfordmarmoset

Pross wrote:

Surely they'd still be 12 hours ahead of us even if midnight was used so would still have come in ahead of us? :?

You got me confused for a moment there - I had to go and look out of my kitchen window to clear my head. So, unless I'm having a brainwave, it looks like this to me:

If we adopted a ''midnight meridian'' it would effectively be a date line. So that when today starts in the UK it would still be yesterday at 23:00 in central Europe. Instead of being 1 hour ahead they'd be 23 hours behind.

And it would still be yesterday around midday in Australopithicus lands.

I think...... :!: :?: :!:

Splottboy

Read good analogy earlier: You put raisins - stars/planets - in a dough mix - the Universe. The dough expands in the oven, but the raisins are still a similar "relative" distance apart. Great idea...So, we are expanding, but not to the extent we can actually see it.

Also saw Discovery prog that stated, one day, it may be that the Universe expands so much that all we would see, if Man was still around, was cold, dark space everywhere.

Finally, there's some "theory" that the present Universe is actually what's left when 2 Universes collided, using the "Multi-Verse" theory. Makes you think eh?

I like Einsteins theory of Relativity, I just can't stand my relatives!

passout

So, the Universe is like a cake? That I understand.

What about Universes within Universes - like one of the Russian Dolls. So a whole universe could be just a particle in a bigger Universe. I think I saw that on a film once......