Measurement, and the Turning of the Earth

Measured in miles, the earth stands 7920 miles wide, while the moon weighs in at 2160 miles wide. To the mathematically inclined, both of these numbers are intriguing factors of 12 (660 and 180 respectively). To the anthropologically inclined, an intriguing fact is that these two numbers show up as foundational dimensions at Stonehenge - but translated from thousands of miles down to tens of feet (79.2 feet across the bluestone ring, and another 21.6 feet, 10.8 per side, to get to the outer Sarsen ring). To the rational skeptic, neither fact is intriguing, because neither feet nor miles are based on anything scientific - and as a result, the fact is just more digging about for coincidence and calling it significant… a common past-time in these circles.

You might have had a teacher in elementary school tell you that the foot was based on the actual foot of this, or that king. Indeed the wikipedia article on the matter states that “Historically, the human body has been used to provide the basis for units of length.” To open its section on the “Historical Origin” of the foot.

However the actual basis of the foot, yard and mile, is much, much more elegant, and is based in time, as much as space.

There are two primary rotations that give the cycles of our lives on earth their context - the earth’s rotation on its axis, yeilding day and night, and the earth’s revolution around the sun, creating our yearly dance. Because both travel in the same direction (counterclockwise when viewed from above the North Pole), while it takes 24 hours for the sun to meet the same place on the horizon, from one day to the next, it only takes 23hrs 56 minutes and 4 seconds for a star in the firmament behind to do the same thing - leaving a 3 minute and 56 second remainder, between the two.

If you add up one of these 3min 56sec remainders for each of the 365.242 days in a year, you wind up with a full 24hrs, and the cycle syncs up once again after a calendar year. Notably, if you were to follow the earths rotation, and mark, against the fixed stars, how far the equator travels in this 3:56 interval, you would discover that the earth rotates 360,000 feet on its equator, in that time period.

Stated another way the circumference of the earth, at the equator is 360,000x365.242 feet. If you were to divide the earth’s equatorial circumference by the 360 degrees of a circle, you would find that you have 365,242 feet per degree. Or 1000 feet per day of the year.

Of course it must be noted that we could divide this space by any unit. A foot could be twice as long, or 20% shorter, and in that case the inter-relationship between time and space on the equator would not be apparent in such elegance. However, if this were the only elegant number yielded by the foot and it’s related units of yard, and mile - I likely wouldn’t be writing this essay.

There’s 5280 feet in a mile, or the magical number 12 x 440. 440 and 441, for explorers of the great pyramid, and the bulge of the earth’s equator, become very useful numbers in and of themselves. More on that, in a future post.

However all kinds of magical numerical coincidences begin to arrive out of the foot and the mile, when we look at the sky. The moon’s radius, measured in miles is 1080, or 10 times the sacred number of the moon - 108 - which lends itself to the 108 beads in a Catholic rosary or a Budhist mala. 108 degrees sits as the corner of the pentagon - and thus has a relationship to the golden ratio, and all the myriad parts of the living world it oversees, our DNA included.

When measured in feet, the moon’s radius of 1080 miles, becomes 5,702,400 feet or 1x2x3x4x5x6x8x9x10x11. In this way the moon encodes every number from 1-12. For while 7 and 12 are missing from the above number, they are reserved for the circumference of the moon whose length is 12 to the power of 7. Or 12x12x12x12x12x12x12 feet.