Uriel’s Machine corrected

Confirmation 41.14cm (Tibia, my ½ MY) by pendulum length in Orkney

During research for a piece on metrology, which is to be published soon, I came across a truly beautiful confirmation of one of my most cherished units, the Megalithic Yard (MY), in connection with a pendulum in Orkney. The MY in my system is 82.28cm, being 6.2mm smaller than Alexander Thom’s original megalithic yard of 82.9cm. (Alexander Thom’s Megalithic Yard is based on statistics, mine on geometric ratios; and possibly Heaven, read on).

I have recently tended to using halves of my original unit measures, which are based on underlying human bone length and so I frequently used the male tibia length of 41.14cm, (1MT), which is half the MY of 82.28cm. To my great surprise I found, in a scientific refutation of the claim that Thom’s Megalithic Yard was based on the swing of a pendulum length of 41.45cm in Orkney (Uriel’s Machine), that the calculation the critical author employs results in a length of the pendulum of 41.13cm; this is ‘exactly’ my ‘Megalithic male Tibia bone length measurement unit’ of 41.14cm. I can’t help it, others do this. (Remember: the rhythm of the swing of a pendulum (ideally) is only dependent on the length of the pendulum and the local gravity.)

It is an astounding new confirmation of my analysis, and in a sense the most baffling of any I have found yet, because, if the calculation is correct, and it seems to be, then it is a fact which cannot be taken away from my work, the .4114m is integral part of the calculus I present and there is no feasible objection against the 366 degrees postulate.
You may of course keep on maintaining that it is all coincidence, like you must think everything is I put down here. But then it is not me, but you creating an irrational world, because I give the data and the mathematical facts and you have only disbelief to go on, but that is not science. Soon I’ll show you some more of these ‘coincidences’.

The quote below I found under ‘Pseudo-metrology’ in Wikipedia, where the claim is at the end of the article. Here it is:

Wikipedia quote

From Wikipedia Pseudo-metrology comment by Stephen Tonkin (2002/3) criticising claims in the bestseller ‘Uriel’s Machine’, about the Megalithic Yard from: http://astunit.com/astrocrud.php?topic=uriel

“This commentary will concentrate on the astronomical assertions used. I am not competent to comment upon the archaeological or the geological assertions.
At the end of the Prologue (p. xx), the authors state:
“…ancient sites from northern Scotland to Brittany all exhibited the use of a standard unit of measurement that was accurate to a fraction of a millimetre. (…) we show beyond all reasonable doubt that this prehistoric unit was derived from observational astronomy.”
They claim that the “machine” that they built using “instructions recorded thousands of years ago” gives this curiously precise value.
Knight and Lomas claim that the pendulum that they produced had a length of 16.32″ (41.45cm), i.e. precisely half a megalithic yard. This was truly exciting, and a quick mental calculation suggested that the value they published was realistic. However, having been caught out previously when I accepted something without checking, I decided to check. (Note: The authors have objected to my calculation. See here.)
The period of a pendulum, T, is given by: T = 2π(l/g)0.5 where:
l = length of pendulum
g = acceleration due to gravity.
Knight and Lomas use a “pulse”, which I shall abbreviate as “P”, of T/2, so we then have:
P = π(l/g)0.5 or: l = g(P/π)2
T is derived from the (sidereal) revolution of Earth, from the authors’ notion of a “megalithic degree”, and the “instructions” from the distant past.
There are 86164 seconds in a sidereal day.[1]
This is divided by 366 to give the number of seconds in a megalithic degree, i.e. 235.42 secs.[2]
From the authors’ interpretation of the “instructions”, the pendulum should give 366 “pulses” per “megalithic degree”, i.e. have a pulse of 0.643 sec.
The acceleration due to gravity in the British Isles varies from 9.8116 ms-2 at latitude 51º (southern England) to 9.8183 ms-2 at 59º (Orkney). (Values derived from IGF)
Hence the length that will give this Orkney is:
l = 9.8183 (0.643/π)2 m
= 0.4113 m
= 41.13 cm (= 16.19″)

This decreases to 0.4110 m in southern England; i.e. the variation in the MY over the British Isles (excluding Shetland) would, according to Uriel’s machine, be of the order of 0.3mm – to all intents and purposes, this can be taken as being constant. At the latitude of the Algarve (38º) the length is 0.4105m, i.e. less than 1mm different from the Orkney value.
This is close, but not equal, to the value that Knight and Lomas claim to have attained, which is the precise value of Thom’s “half megalithic yard”, i.e. 41.45 cm or 16.32″. To produce this length, g would need to be 9.8946 ms-2, i.e. greater than it is at Earth’s poles (9.832 ms-2)
Gravitational cognoscenti will have noted that I have not taken the affect of altitude into account. At a mean value of 0.3086 mGal m-1 this will not affect the calculations above at their 0.1mm precision.
If, as they assert, the precise value of the megalithic yard (“accurate to a fraction of a millimetre”) was attained through physical means, Uriel’s Machine does not do it. The frequent replication of the megalithic yard would, if it is as precise as is asserted (“a precise megalithic yard”), give it a mean value slightly (but measurably – i.e. 3.5mm or 0.14″) smaller than the value that is cited for it by Thom and by Knight and Lomas. I can only assume that the authors inadvertently measured their pendulum or its period inaccurately.
Also, I find it curious that the authors did not present a calculation in the book to confirm their supposition. The high school physics required should be well within the capability of Lomas, who is said (front matter of book) to have a first class honours degree in electrical engineering.”
*************

Afterword:
I have re-calculated the above and I have specially checked the value of the Siderial day of 86164 seconds which is confirmed. Like the writer, who appears to be an astronomer, I accept the idea of a 366 degrees division by Lomas, I actually am very charmed by the idea of 366 sunrises, it would be a strong indication that Brodgar might after all have 61 stones, since 6 x 61 is 366, but that aside, indeed 86164/366 = 235.42 sec, and this again divided by 366 gives 0.643sec, the crucial variable in the equation of the pendulum (according to Lomas, see above), because the gravity value for Orkney is fixed. This value then, entered in the equation for the pendulum, gives indeed a value of 41.13 cm for the length of the pendulum in Orkney. This is certainly not what Mr Lomas had in mind when he began.

My value of the tibia bone is fixed at 41.14cm, which is half a Megalithic Yard of 82,28 cm in my system based on Orcadian ratios; the difference is trivial, 1/10 of a millimetre. It is again a most ‘celestial’ confirmation indeed. I am so surprised myself I don’t even know what to think of it. It’s eerie.

This all enormously supports my claim that time was measured at Maeshowe, turns out even in sidereal time, that is: relative to the fixed stars, as I claimed earlier with respect to their megalithic chambers with top roof ‘windows on the universe’.

4 years ago, when I had told someone about my idea of a pendulum in Maeshowe, he made me aware of Lomas’ Uriel’s Machine, but I am no admirer of the tendency of such New Age writings as these, because they tend to slightly bend their data so as to prove something spectacular on false grounds, as it shows above again; pseudo-metrology.
That is not my trade. But on the other hand what mr. Tonkin brings to bear completely vindicates my system! So anyone who believes in Uriel’s Machine and respects scientific facts will have to concede that also in this case my value prevails.

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