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Comment by mcrider | Hacker News Reader

This reminds me of a discovery I made while vacationing in the Corn Islands, Nicaragua -- There was a giant cube buried in the middle of nowhere with one corner poking out of the earth. A plaque nearby said it was the 'soul of the world' and I looked it up to find this funny old organization (http://www.souloftheworld.com) had planted the cubes around the planet, saying that their positions were the vertexes of a cube that was positioned in such a way (and only possible in this way) that every corner touched land. Apparently it has a certain spiritual significance, which is funny to me, but I thought it was really interesting that someone went through the trouble to create them.

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Looks like it's true - I threw this together over lunch and it looks pretty close:

http://callumprentice.github.io/apps/soul_of_the_world/index...

This seems like a very interesting question.

After an exhaustive investigation, we found, surprisingly, that there was only one possible combination on the whole planet that would permit the eight vertices of the cube to emerge on solid land. (The results of the investigation made with the AMQ were later corroborated in a study carried out by highway engineer D. David Fernándes-Ordóñez.)[0]

I wonder how difficult it would be to replicate this finding (or a similar finding). I'm naturally skeptical given the extreme remoteness of the islands (Points include the Cocos Islands (Australia), the Corn Islands (Nicaragua), and the Hawaiian Islands (USA))[1] and the not-perfect-sphere shape of the earth, but I also know that I don't have a good natural intuition about the shape of the earth. This would be an interesting project!

[0] http://www.souloftheworld.com/genesis.html [1] http://www.souloftheworld.com/work.html

Well a good starting approximation might be to take a WGS ellipsoid model of the earth and see if their existing coordinates forms something close to a cube.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Geodetic_System

Someone just did that in this thread!

>This seems like a very interesting question.

>After an exhaustive investigation, we found, surprisingly, that there was only one possible combination on the whole planet that would permit the eight vertices of the cube to emerge on solid land.

Not really that interesting IMHO. After enough searching your're going to find a shape that meets the criteria. If a cube had more than one configuration, they likely would have just move up a notch, and if a cube had no solution they would have moved down a notch.

"I have cubed the earth, with 4 simultaneous _corner_ days in 1 rotation of Earth!"

-- Dr. Gene Ray, Cubic and Wisest Human.

How can you quote him and not link to Time Cube? http://timecube.2enp.com/

It was from memory. I thought his website had gone...

Gone it has, but the true disciples took care to maintain mirrors eternal.

It is. Gene died in 2015 and the original domain expired the same year. The link posted above is a mirror/tribute.

TIL. Couldn't remember the original domain.

Brings back many memories. Back in around 2000/01, the website had complete contact information for Gene Ray including phone number. So I called him up and he rambled at me for about 20 minutes before he had to go because his grandkids were coming over.

Wow, he's a real person? I just assumed the whole thing was a parody, but I was never quite sure...

Wow those are going to confuse the hell out of future beings (if there are any left). I wonder if they're all "built" already?

I don't believe so. I know there is one on the island of Molokai in Hawaii, which I always wanted to visit when I used to live in Honolulu, but otherwise its not a super tourist-friendly place to visit and I opted to visit other islands instead. The Corn Islands, however I highly recommend to anyone!

Good call. I've been there. Got attacked by fish. Would not recommend.

Given the tectonic nature of the planet's surface that has to be the worlds longest running piece of performance art.

On a similar 'frequency', this sort of 'spiritual significance' question has been around for quite a while. It appears that three Temples — of Parthenon (438BC), Poseidon (440BC), and Aphaea/Aphaia (500BC) — are located at the vertices of a triangle. AKA 'Holy Triangle of antiquity'.

* http://www.goddess-athena.org/Museum/Temples/Aphaea/

* https://eyesofaroamer.com/2016/09/06/the-holy-triangle-the-p...

That's not unusual. Any three points can form the vertices of a triangle. :)

The first site claims that these three temples form an isoceles triangle, which really just means that the distances between two pairs of points are roughly equal. The second claims that they form an equilateral triangle, which would be more unusual -- but is clearly false.

Cool.

Found a pic of the one in Nicaragua:

https://retirenicaragua.wordpress.com/2014/03/05/the-soul-of...

> "A really smart mathematician, Fra Luca Pacolini, demonstrated mathematically, that the four regular solid bodies: the Tetrahedron, the Cube, the Octahedron, and the Icosahedron, correspond respectively to the four elements: fire, earth, water, and air."

Does anyone have any idea what that even means?

the idea comes from ancient philosophy, when philosophers could make claims like "everything is made of fire" or "everything is made of water" or "everything is made of triangles" and argue it reasonably. the platonic solids, also, are five in number, where the fifth is a dodecahedron. i think it was plato, among others, who also believed in a fifth element, aether, but i cant remember the details.

how one would demonstrate any of these relationships mathematically is beyond me.

I think it means that the writer doesn't really know what he is talking about.

And, by the way, there are five regular solids. The other is the dodecahedron. I imagine the writer would say that corresponds somehow to the "quintessence" some philosophers used to go on about. But that still doesn't mean this idea has anything to do with physical reality.

EDIT. By the way, in spite of all the mystical silliness that seems to surround it, personally, I think that the Soul of the World sculpture is a really cool idea.

That was it! There was nothing around the area other than cows and some shanty houses. It was really cool to stumble upon.

Cool idea. Totally new to me.

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