Author Archives:

Christopher M. Graney

About Christopher M. Graney

Christopher M. Graney is professor of physics and astronomy at Jefferson Community & Technical College in Louisville, Kentucky (USA), where he helps keep the college’s observatory running. For some years now his research focus has been the history of astronomy, especially the late 16th and early 17th centuries. He is the author of the 2015 book Setting Aside All Authority: Giovanni Battista Riccioli and the Science Against Copernicus in the Age of Galileo, and the forthcoming book Mathematical Disquisitions: The Booklet of Theses Immortalized by Galileo, both published by the University of Notre Dame Press.

Knowing the Moon’s Distance (re-run)

The Catholic Astronomer avatarPosted on by

This is a “re-run” of a post that originally ran on March 24, 2016. How do we know what we know in science? What is the distance from the Earth to the moon? You can easily find that information using a smart phone and Google. Google says that distance is 238,900 miles. Fine, but how do you know that value is right? Google’s business is not astronomical research. No doubt Google got the value from some “Scientific Authority.” Do you believe Google? Do you believe Scientific Authority? How do you know the moon isn’t just on some dome up there, way above the clouds? Seriously—how do you know? You may simply believe Authority, but plenty of people do not. Just recently [in early 2016] Neil deGrasse Tyson felt the need to respond to rapper B.o.B’s assertion that the world is flat, an idea no more absurd than the moon being on a dome above the clouds. So how might people … Continue reading →

The Mound, the Fort, and the Church: The Trees Speak to Science (Part II)

The Catholic Astronomer avatarPosted on by

How old is Serpent Mound, a Native American monument notable in part for its astronomical alignments? Last week we saw how E. G. Squier and E. H. Davis argued that the Native American works that they surveyed in the 1840’s had to be many centuries old, by reason of the trees growing on those works. However, you may recall from my post of three weeks ago that the Ohio History Connection (formerly the Ohio Historical Society), who operates the Serpent Mounds site, states that— Thousands of years ago, Native Ohioans populated the landscape with mounds and massive earthworks. In the late 19th century, Harvard University archaeologist Frederic Ward Putnam excavated Serpent Mound, but he found no artifacts in the Serpent that might allow archaeologists to assign it to a particular culture. Based largely on the nearby presence of Adena burial mounds, later archaeologists attributed the effigy to the Adena culture that flourished from 800 B.C. to A.D. 100. This theory … Continue reading →

The Mound, the Fort, and the Church: The Trees Speak to Science (Part I)

The Catholic Astronomer avatarPosted on by

My post from two weeks ago discussed Serpent Mound, a large Native American monument, and the possible astronomical alignments in the mound, and really how uncertain is the question of those astronomical alignments. As the Ohio History Connection (formerly the Ohio Historical Society) says— Due to the short sight lines and the inability to define precise alignments… it may not be possible to determine whether the builders of the Serpent really intended it to be aligned to either the sun or the moon. Then last week’s post featured “astronomical alignments” in St. Louis Bertrand Church in my home town of Louisville, Kentucky, and how reliable the calculations and repeatable the results are regarding the position of the sun shining into that church (or into anything else). Not much is uncertain in that case. One nice thing about astronomy is just how reliable and repeatable it can be in so many cases—science at its cleanest and brightest: here are my calculations; … Continue reading →

The Light of Truth

The Catholic Astronomer avatarPosted on by

My post for last week discussed Serpent Mound in Ohio, and possible astronomical alignments present in that Native American monument. Today is the Autumnal Equinox—one of the days that supposedly is marked by the bends in Serpent Mound—so I am sticking with the theme of astronomical alignments. It turns out that astronomical alignments can be found in all sorts of places, if you think to look for them. A friend of mine, Justin Elliott, is the sort of person who thinks to look for them. He and his family regularly attend either the 9:00 AM or 10:30 AM Mass at St. Louis Bertrand Church in my hometown of Louisville. Perhaps because Justin grew up attending a “megachurch” that is relatively plain compared to St. Louis Bertrand, or perhaps because he has read too many mystery books to his own children, or perhaps because he watched too many movies of the “Indiana Jones” or “DaVinci Code” genres, Justin has a fascination … Continue reading →

Astronomy in Art & Architecture: Serpent Mound, Ohio

The Catholic Astronomer avatarPosted on by

If you have been reading The Catholic Astronomer for a while, you might be familiar with these “Astronomy in Art & Architecture” posts (click here for all of them).  This one is the first to feature ancient art! Serpent Mound in south-central Ohio is a pretty cool place.  It is a Native American monument that sits on a high ridge at the junction of two creeks, with steep drop-offs and even abrupt cliffs on either side.  According to The Ohio History Connection (formerly the Ohio Historical Society), who operates the site— Serpent Mound is an internationally known National Historic Landmark built by the ancient American Indian cultures of Ohio. It is an effigy mound (a mound in the shape of an animal) representing a snake with a curled tail. Nearby are three burial mounds—two created by the Adena culture (800 B.C.–A.D. 100), and one by the Fort Ancient culture (A.D. 1000–1650). Thousands of years ago, Native Ohioans populated the landscape with … Continue reading →

Dude, my Mom wrote me a physics book, and now I gotta read it!

The Catholic Astronomer avatarPosted on by

Take a look at a couple of entries from the Vatican Observatory Faith and Science pages, both pertaining to the Institutions de physique written by Gabrielle Émilie Le Tonnelier de Breteuil, marquise du Châtelet.  Du Châtelet wrote the book for her son (who of course then had to read a physics book his Mom wrote—homeschooling Moms, take note!).  It is an early physics textbook, so to speak, that covers Newtonian physics (she published it in 1740).  It also contains material related to astronomy.  And Du Châtelet made the second chapter of Institutions on the existence of God—not something you are likely to find in a physics textbook today. Click here and here for the Faith and Science entries on Du Châtelet, including a partial translation of that second chapter proof of the existence of God. A group of faculty and students at the University of Notre Dame have been working for four years to create a complete translation of Institutions.  … Continue reading →

The Infinite – Faith and Math

The Catholic Astronomer avatarPosted on by

Why might a person see great intrinsic value in mathematical knowledge?  Why might a person be a “math nerd”?  Consider this lengthy quotation, from a piece written by Fr. Ron Rolheiser that was published in The Record (the newspaper of the Archdiocese of Louisville, Kentucky) some months ago,* in which Fr. Rolheiser reflects upon the words of a woman who had gone through a profound spiritual experience: What she remembers most and most wants to share with others is this: “I learned that God is very close. We have no idea how close God is to us. God is closer to us than we ever imagine!” Her experience has left her forever branded with a sense of God’s warmth, love, and welcome, but what’s left the deepest brand of all inside her is the sense of God’s closeness. I was struck by this because, like millions of others, I generally don’t feel that closeness, or at least don’t feel it … Continue reading →

Seeing Too Many Enemies of Science in a Faith-Full World

The Catholic Astronomer avatarPosted on by

Planet Earth is a world of the faith-full.  And, it seems Earth is likely to become yet more faith-full during the next few decades.  The scientific community will have to embrace that faith-full world if it wants a scientifically literate world. A few years ago the Pew Research Center published an article entitled “The Future of World Religions: Population Growth Projections, 2010-2050” that projected the growth of various religious groups.  Their projections, among religions, were for Christians and Hindus to maintain their share of the world’s population, for Muslims to grow substantially, and for Buddhists and Folk Religions to shrink.  However, Pew projected the overall share of the world’s population that identifies with a religion to grow—from 83.6% of the world’s population in 2010, to 86.8% in 2050—as the religiously unaffiliated, which includes atheists and agnostics, drops from 16.4% of the population today to 13.2% in 2050.  Pew notes that while there is a belief among some that increasing economic … Continue reading →

What do the Kentucky Ark and Soviet Scientists have in common? Opposition to the Big Bang Theory! (re-run)

The Catholic Astronomer avatarPosted on by

This is a re-run of a post that I originally wrote for October 5, 2016. I think it goes well with the posts on the expanding universe from two weeks ago and last week. Last week [in 2016], in a post about discussing theories like the Big Bang theory with those who hold traditional views of the age of the universe (such as the folks who built the Kentucky Ark), I mentioned how Arthur Eddington and Edwin Hubble expressed opposition to the idea of a finite age to the universe, and how the name “Big Bang” was a derisive joke-name given to it by Fred Hoyle. Guess who else disliked the Big Bang Theory?  Soviet scientists.  Yes, in 1949 Soviet astronomers pledged to fight against the theory of the “widening of the Universe” and declared that, in order to counterbalance this pro-religious “bourgeois” idea …Soviet science must intensify its work on regions beyond our galaxy, to give a materialistic explanation of … Continue reading →

Expanding Universe? Hogwash!(?)

The Catholic Astronomer avatarPosted on by

In my last post we discussed why astronomers say “The universe is expanding.” But there is something important that we did not discuss in the last post. And that is this: We do not actually see the universe expanding. What do I mean by this? As stated in the previous post, when astronomers say the universe is expanding, they do not mean that everything is expanding. For example, the Earth, your hand, and the distance between Venus and the sun are all not expanding. What is expanding is the distance between galaxies. Galaxies are moving away from each other. Or so we think. The problem is, galaxies move so slowly, compared to their size. A galaxy can measure 100,000 light years across—in other words, a galaxy can be so large that a beam of light would require roughly 100,000 years to travel from one side of it to the other. But this also means that a galaxy is so large … Continue reading →

Imagine an Expanding Universe

The Catholic Astronomer avatarPosted on by

“The universe is expanding.”——Since you are reading a science blog such as The Catholic Astronomer, you probably are familiar with that statement. But do you know why astronomers say that the universe is expanding? What is the basis for that statement? To address that question, let’s consider this: what would an expanding universe look like? This is going to take some imagination. Let us imagine a universe. The diagram below will be our universe. It contains galaxies (the little colored ovals), but its size and shape is undefined. The galaxies extend out beyond what is seen below, but how much beyond we do not know. Furthermore, the galaxies may extend out farther to the right than to the left, or farther down than up. All we really know is that here is our universe, and it contains galaxies. Now, let us expand this universe. We will expand it uniformly—that is, equally in all directions. We will color the expanded universe … Continue reading →

The Way of St. James & The Galaxy

The Catholic Astronomer avatarPosted on by

What do the Milky Way and an ancient pilgrimage road in Spain have in common? A name: the Camino de Santiago. Here is a brief discussion from Burnham’s Celestial Handbook: In Old England it was the Way of Saint James, the equivalent of the Spanish El Camino de Santiago; the name originating, it is said, from a popular legend that Theodomir, Bishop of Idria, was guided by a miraculous star to find the burial place of St. James in 835 AD. From the Field of the Star or “Campus Stella” where the discovery was made evidently comes the title St. James of Compostella. In still another tradition, popular in the Middle Ages, the Milky Way represented the Biblical Jacob’s Ladder upon which the angles descend to Earth. (Note that James, Iago, and Jacob are essentially the same name.) The identification of the Milky Way with St. James indeed goes way back. It can be found in a 1660 English-French-Italian-Spanish dictionary … Continue reading →