No The problem is more fundamental. The position of the stars does not tell you the LONGITUDE whether you have a computer or a sexton or "intuition" or a neural network. It does tell you the LATITUDE. The Europeans knew their LATITUDE if they could get a clear view of the night sky. If someone tells you the LATITUDE of Hawaii and how many days of sailing west from San Francisco they could find it again (as those "hot shot" Europeans did) Local knowledge with cloud formations, how long you have been paddling, birds, wave and current information can tell you where you roughly where you are in the absence of the visibility of land assuming you "know" all the local islands etc. On a lesser scale, you have probably done the same thing in a dense fog. If you are reasonably alert to the sounds of surf, birds, waves, how long you have been paddling, you can make guess as to where you likely are. And "Australia" is a pretty big target from 17 km out just from knowing where the sun is :) On Jul 28, 2010, at 6:19 AM, rebyl_kayak_at_energysustained.com wrote: > I guess that if the position and movement of stars could be analysed > by European seamen trigonometrically, to produce a value for > longitude and determine a position around the earths axis; then that > pattern of stars could be analysed by a Pacific Islander's brain or > a computer to find that position without resorting to trigonometry > or the concept of longitude. Nowadays we'd call it something like a > neural network analysis, or pattern recognition program or some such! *************************************************************************** PaddleWise Paddling Mailing List - Any opinions or suggestions expressed here are solely those of the writer(s). You must assume the entire responsibility for reliance upon them. All postings copyright the author. Submissions: PaddleWise_at_PaddleWise.net Subscriptions: PaddleWise-request_at_PaddleWise.net Website: http://www.paddlewise.net/ ***************************************************************************Received on Wed Jul 28 2010 - 08:22:11 PDT
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