2006-07-23 08:18:30 · 4 answers · asked by atiq 2 in Science & Mathematics ➔ Astronomy & Space
If memory serves... In Australia, there was a tribe of aboriginals that claimed that their forbears had come from a planet circling the star we now know as Sirius Minor. The mystery is this... Until our telescopes had developed resolutions high enough to see Sirius Minor... it was impossible to see with the naked eye. How did these tribesmen know it was there before then and insist emphatically that it was indeed there? Rock paintings depict the system as being binary and far outdate any technology that might have detected it's existence. I could have the wrong star... sorry. But it is an interesting little mystery!
2006-07-23 08:51:15 · answer #1 · answered by Winter Wolf 2 · 0⤊ 0⤋
The "Red Sirius" mystery is no mystery at all. That myth is mainly Greek in origin. The reason why it's red is due to the position of Sirius in the sky w.r.t. to Greece's geographical location. Sirius barely makes it over the horizon from Greece (or did in ancient times....it doesn't now), and because it's seen through the atmosphere at low angles, it glows red for the same reason the sun goes red.......lots of atmopsheric dust and such. Plus the path the light takes through the atmosphere low down is longer than what it would be if the star rose higher in the sky, therefore all the other wavelegnths of light get either absorbed or scattered, leaving the red light.
As for the other mystery......it wasn't about an Aboriginal tribe here in Oz. It was the Dogon tribe in Mali, Africa. Their legends give a good account of the principle components of the Sirius system, but also mention a possible Sirius C, which has never been seen nor detected otherwise, by modern astronomers. They claim that beings from this star system taught their ancestors about the star, and many other things.
2006-07-23 09:32:23 · answer #2 · answered by ozzie35au 3 · 0⤊ 0⤋
There are a number of ancient references to a red Sirius. No one in the modern era has been able to come up with a convincing argument as to what they were talking about.
2006-07-23 09:04:48 · answer #3 · answered by virtualguy92107 7 · 0⤊ 0⤋
Probably that Sirius is a multiple star. There is an old joke associated with this; if one of the multiplets were a black hole, it could be called Nothing Sirius.
2006-07-23 08:23:53 · answer #4 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 0⤋