If we look back at the history, we have got misled by the events in the sky, many a times. Many of them had turned into false beliefs, over a period of time. I found these false beliefs more interesting than the actual truth our astrophysicists have found ;-). One good example is in believing the menstrual cycle of women related to moon's cycle; the former with a periodicity of 28 earth days, and the later being roughly the same. No wonder the word, menstruation is etymologically derived from the word moon. And of course it is just a coincidence.
The role of cosmic objects in mythology, has also interested me much. (I bet, its a great source of bed time stories). Each and every naked-eye visible object in the sky has played role in the myths. One interesting myth(or a belief) is that men lived in mars, women in Venus, long long ago. Venus (Aphrodite) is the goddess of love & beauty, 'manmathi' of the Greek mythology. But the actual facts found about the venus is disappointing, not matching much with the characteristics of women.
* Venus is the hottest planet in the system
* It rotates itself in a direction opposite to that of Earth, and of course opposite to that of Mars too :-p.. (FYI, Uranus is the only other planet to do so)
* Its atmosphere is full of droplets of sulphuric acid, and thickest atmosphere. Women & Venus are always toughest to deal with :-).
* And it has the slowest rotation rate, takes 243 earth days to make a rotation of itself, while it takes only 225 earth days to make a revolution around sun.
* It is one of the five planets that are visible to naked eye. The other four are mercury, mars, jupiter and saturn. These five visible planets played vital roles in ancient astrology. Sun & moon have also contributed their part. Later, the shaky astrologers included new planets, at their convenience. To me, astrology is nothing more than pseudo science.
Do you find them interesting?
Do you find them interesting?
