Manhattanhenge
haydenplanetarium.org
haydenplanetarium.org
No, if they notice this they'll go: "Any grid on the Earth's surface has the same effect, it's just question of the angle" and then they'll be quiet about it. Stonehenge is interesting because its alignment is specific to the solstice so anyone digging it up can see that it was built for a purpose. Manhattan on the other hand doesn't seem to have any specific purpose from an astronomical perspective and if you look at the shape of the island you'll see that the avenues were built parallel to the long 'sides' of it. So, I hope future people will be sensible and not start looking for some astronomical significance to Manhattan.
> Future anthropologists might conclude that, via the Sun, the people who called themselves Americans worshiped War and Baseball.
doesn't seem entirely implausible to me. (Of course, the anthropologists would be in error, it's just vaguely reasonable if you haven't seen anything else.)
More mystic crap. Memorial Day in 2012 is May 28, not May 29 and the MLB All Star Break beings July 9. Neil deGrasse Tyson shouldn't even write like this, getting drawn into mystical interpretations, even in jest, just reinforces the idea that it's worth thinking about crap like that.
Personally I think it is pretty cool that the perfect conditions for observing this are only available in a few cities - despite the fact there must be a lot of cities around the world with skyscrapers and grid like street plans.
http://www.skepticality.com/neil-degrasse-tyson/
that I'm sure his tongue is firmly in his cheek when he writes of future civilizations speculating on cultural reasons for Manhattan's grid alignment.
By the way, I especially like the last paragraph of the submitted post, which assumes a readership mostly in the temperate zone of the Northern Hemisphere: "While we are on the subject, when viewed from all latitudes north of the Tropic of Cancer (23.5 degrees north latitude), the Sun always rises at an angle up and to the right, and sets and an angle down and to the right. That's how you can spot a faked sunrise in a movie: it moves up and to the left. Filmmakers are not typically awake in the morning hours to film an actual sunrise, so they film a sunset instead, and then time-reverse it, thinking nobody will notice."
Films featuring people trapped and forced to survive in the desert are probably also good candidates. And some romances where the couple watch the sun set on a beach, or possibly watch it rise having had that "first talk" all through the night.
should be: which assumes a film industry mostly in the temperate zone of the Northern Hemisphere
Possibly the oldest 'intact' human built structure in the world. Much older than stonehenge or the Pyramids.
Although now I'm in the wikipedia rabbit hole -- looking at fascinating places like this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knap_of_Howar (potentially older than those Malta temples) and most of the other sites on this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_the_oldest_buildings_in...
It may not be via the sun but I'm afraid for those of us looking in from outside the fishbowl, the vast majority of Americans indeed worship War and Baseball.
Every. Single. Time.
Sometime's we'll double-take, realise it's an American talking, and they probably actually mean "American Football". But it's not what we think of first, and if we're not sure if it's an American speaking (like you can't on the internet) then it may well not occur to us.
It's a bit of an over-wrought setup for what is basically a tip on when to get the sun just right for a nice photo in Manhattan. Still appreciate the tip, though. The setup is no doubt amusing to some and not others. I feel like for this kind of thing, both camps' opinions are perfectly valid, since it's a matter of personal preference. And that the "negative" opinion was expressed in a HN thread is... not surprising in the least.