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Space.com "10 May 2002"
www.space.com...
Arcturus appears to shift its "fixed" position in the sky much more rapidly than most of the other bright stars, the sole exception being Alpha Centauri. Sir Edmund Halley was the first to discover this motion back in 1718.
Arcturus appears to whiz through space at a speed of nearly 90 miles per second in the direction of the constellation Virgo. It appears to move toward Virgo by about one-degree (which is about twice the apparent width of a full Moon) over a time span of about 1,500 years. We are thus very fortunate to live at a time when the distance separating Arcturus and our solar system is nearly at its minimum.
The star will continue to approach the Earth for several thousand years more, but then it will pass us as it continues to move toward Virgo and its distance from us will begin to steadily increase. Computations show that in approximately 500,000 years, it will probably have moved out as far as 800 light years away from us and likely will have faded completely from naked-eye visibility.
Originally posted by Parabol
Originally posted by daz___
No. The stars are entirely unrelated and have little to no effect on each other. I'm actually calculating the distance of the stars within the orion constellation in my astronomy lab on Thursday so I'll let you know the hard numbers later if you would like. The stars in the orion constellation are as connected to each other as any other star in the sky. There is nothing inherently special about the configuration of most constellations beyond the shape they make from our perspective.
But there is also this purely cosmological question: why is it that our sun and the star Sirius B have a mass ratio of 1.053 in any event? For the fraction 256/243 of which 1.053 is the decimal expression does appear to have a universal harmonic status. So by stumbling upon this coincidence we may have uncovered some hitherto unsuspected astrophysical harmonical value in operation between two neighbouring stars. I don't believe anyone before has found a precise numerical correlation which could extend the notion of a 'harmony of spheres' beyond our solar system, to link it with a neighboring one. But this appears to be the case here. Perhaps it has something to do with the inherent nature of white dwarf stars and their dimensions vis 'a vis normal stars like our sun, and this ratio would thus occur throughout the Universe frequently. It makes more sense to view the correlation as one which appeals to underlying fundamentals of cosmic structures than to view it as a special case applying only to Sirius B and our sun. But even so, the correlation is extraordinary and so precise that it suggests whole avenues of research and offers hope of absolute numerical expressions recurring in the cosmos where none had been suspected. And by discovering this, we can only be pleased, since it enables us to discern some scaling elements of concealed structure which may be cosmic in scope. I hope cosmologists will not neglect this observation. I believe it demonstrates that the Universe has more structure than we thought, and that that structure can be so precisely articulated that it can generate an exact value of this kid as a ratio between neighboring stellar bodies. For Sirius Band our sun, in terms of the cosmos, are certainly neighbors. And it all comes down to the question: how is it that two stars 8.7 light-years apart can have a mass ratio which is not random but which expresses a universal harmonic value which is precise to three decimal points? It can only be because the astrophysics of stars and their evolutionary development (such as in the formation of a white dwarf) follow certain harmonic laws which we have not yet suspected, much less expressed. And we should not overlook the fact that the universal harmonic fraction concerned is not one which today receives a lot of attention. This in turn indicates that it is ancient harmonic theory that should be dusted off and studied for clues as to what is going on. Many of us have believed this for years, even without this evidence.42 One of my 'hobbies' is trying to get to grips with ancient harmonic theory, which is why I took the fraction seriously enough to work out its decimal expression and notice its importance; needless to say, the decimal value of the fraction does not appear in Macrobius, and only someone actually doing the division and holding up the result beside the mass ratio value of Sirius B and our sun for comparison would ever have noticed anything at all.
It is not mathematically provable at all. Correlation of numbers does not equal causation. I don't see how someone can make a jump from numerical symmetry to the origin of our species.
The implication of all this is that different types of stars express different harmonical values in a surprisingly precise way. But why should stellar evolution not have a harmonical nature and structure to it? This will probably be found to be relevant to the concept of the 'stellar mass function' which astrophysicists speculate about. It may be found, for instance, that the difficulties of star formation in the first place are regularly overcome by some kind of binary-star formation; in our own solar system we could view the planet Jupiter as an incipient brown dwarf star in the making. And in 1983 I published an account of the possible existence of the possible existence of another actual small invisible star in our own solar system, which was first suggested in 1977 by the radioastronomer E. R. Harrison because of a perturbation which he discovered that our solar system was exercising on six particular pulsars in a small region of the sky.43 Star formation might thus involve a binary process in far more cases than we think, possibly in all. Binary stars may only be able to coexist according to specific harmonic relations, just as certain musical notes when struck together are consonant when they are in specific proportions such as the musical fifth or fourth.
No. It's just the way it is, no miracle involved. If Sirius wasn't this close to our mass then some other star would be, there's nothing special about it except the relationship or value you attach to it.
continues here
The discovery of the significance of the 1.053 mass ratio between Sirius B and our sun suggests that our solar system and the Sirius system are elements of a larger entity which is a self-organizing open system -- what is called in thermodynamics a "dissipative structure far from thermal equilibrium'. But let us give it an actual name. I propose to call it the Anubis Cell. The Anubis Cell clearly has long-range order extending over at least 8.7 light-years. Since all such structures increase their order and eliminate their disorder, a continuous ordering process must have been in operation inside the Anubis Cell since at least the formation of either our sun or Sirius B's condensation as a white dwarf, whichever was later. Long-range order has thus operated between the systems presumably for billions of years. Under such circumstances, both solar systems must have a shared movement in relation to the Galaxy. The two systems must also be in continuous harmonic resonance with one another. It may be presumed that a significant perturbation of one