OFF: New 'moon' found around Earth - DO NOT PANIC

[Doug Pearson]

On Wed, 18 Sep 2002 12:36:22 +0100, M Holmes <fofp at HOLYROOD.ED.AC.UK> wrote:

>Michael W Blackman writes:
>
>> > > Are they at all related to the Dogons?  Tribe of African(?)
>> > > peoples who were only disovered in the turn of this century
>> > > who possessed star maps (simple drawings) of the Cirius
>> > > star cluster, in very accurate detail, which we only discovered
>> > > thru high powered telescoped many decades later?
>> >
>> > Sadly this is not quite the true situation.  These rather astute
>> > African people were already well aware that strangers were asking
>> > about astronomical observations and star clusters and the like so when
>> > questioned they were more than happy to "discover" an appropriate star
>> > map for such credulous Westerners.   This explanation didn't surface
>> > though until after the TV documentary was made!
>
>This has already been debunked. The half-assed investigators told them
>about Sirius B. See the urban legends site for details.

There's also a good article about it in the Skeptical Inquirer (from 1978):
http://www.csicop.org/si/7809/sirius.html

(which really just adds more detail to Jill's explanation)

    -Doug
     jasret at mindspring.com