The Orion Correlation
by
Norman Scherer
Copyright © 2004, Norman Scherer
Introduction
One night in early November 1983, Robert Bauval was camping in the desert with some friends and family in Saudi Arabia. Robert, an engineer and amateur Egyptologist had recently been pre-occupied with the reasons why the third and smallest of the three pyramids of Giza was apparently not aligned along the same meridian as the two larger pyramids. For some reason that night he woke up at 3am and gazed at the stars of the Orion constellation. After awakening his friend who also shared his interest in astronomy and had a passion for sailing, they discussed how to navigate using the stars. His friend pointed out how to find the star Sirius from the alignment of the three belt stars of Orion which Robert had been looking at. As an afterthought his friend uttered these words,
Actually, the three stars of Orion's Belt are not perfectly aligned. If you look carefully you will see that the smallest of them, the one at the top, is slightly offset to the east...1
and Robert Bauval's "Orion Correlation" was born.
A True Correlation?
While many people accept as fact that there is a correlation it has quietly been shown not to be true by John Legon. In his methodical and precise article (also called The Orion Correlation), Mr. Legon leaves no doubt that there most certainly is NOT a correlation. He also makes a compelling case against one of the main assertions in Bauval's theory, namely the association of Osiris with the constellation of Orion.
One of the foremost authorities on the so-called "air shafts" of the Great Pyramid, Rudolph Gantenbrink, flatly states that these shafts could not possibly be...
.......light or "star shafts."
No! All the shafts bend, often several times. In addition, all the shafts begin,
at their lower ends, with horizontal sections about 2 meters in length. So there
is no way light from any source could ever have penetrated from the outside into
either of the chambers. In several parts of the shafts, with the exception of
the lower southern one, we even found extreme angle fluctuations. It is
therefore ridiculous for anyone to claim that the shafts could ever have pointed
precisely to certain stars. Given the many angle fluctuations, the shafts
could be construed to be pointing at some 100 different stars, especially if
construction of the pyramid is gratuitously redated to match specific stellar
constellations.
While it is true that the smallest of the three pyramids at Giza, known as Menkaura's, is offset of the south-west diagonal line linking the two larger pyramids together, it is also true that the south east corners of all three pyramids line up perfectly. See red diagonal line in illustration below:
Rate of Precession
Yet the Orion Star Correlation theory limps on, seemingly with a life all its own. So why this article? Initially, when I first read Bauval's books The Orion Mystery and The Message of the Sphinx, I was very excited to read that the Orion Correlation alluded to a pyramid construction date of circa 10,450BC. This was by associating the precessional positions of the Constellation Orion (more specifically the star Al Nitak) with the southern "air shaft" of the King's Chamber circa 2450BC and a corresponding "perfect match" of Orion with the Giza layout circa 10450BC2. These precessional calculations were done using the computer star simulation program Skyglobe 3.53. I have used this program and while it may have been state of the art in the mid 90's, it is obviously outclassed by much better star simulation programs available today. One thing it did do, however, was precess thousands of years into the past (and future too) which most programs today will not do. But this may be because the accuracy of precessing star positions this far into the past introduces more and more inaccuracies and error into the results shown on the screen. No matter what software you use though, all of them will show precession as occurring at a constant rate. As explained in my Cycles of Precession article this may not be correct. This is because our Sun may be part of a binary star system. In fact as summarized in the table4 below it seems there is better evidence for this as the cause of precession than the conventional "wobble of the axis" theory that is virtually accepted as fact.
|
Proposed Binary Model
|
Current Model
|
|
Majority of star systems are binary
|
Minority of star systems
|
|
Curved path
of Sun through space explains the
Earth’s changing orientation to inertial
space
|
No
significant curvature in Sun’s path
requires Earth’s changing orientation to
inertial space to be explained by
unproven complex theories (Occam’s Razor
applies)
|
|
Sidereal and
solar year delta are natural result of
binary orbit
|
Sidereal and
solar year delta explanation conflicts
with sidereal and solar day explanations
|
|
Angular
momentum balances with dual star
|
Peculiar
distribution of angular momentum among
planets still unexplained
|
|
Sheer edge
of solar system expected, since mass is
separated between companion stars
|
Observed
sheer edge of solar system is unexpected
and not easily explained
|
|
Precession
accelerates past apoapsis
|
Lunisolar
precession should be constant but in
fact precession calculations are
continually altered
|
|
Precession
conforms to elliptical equation
|
Precession
should be relatively constant but is not
|
|
Curved path
of Sun explains apparent wobble without
causing rotational time problems, or
requiring equinoctial slippage
|
Rotational
wobble creates time paradox that
requires unexplained concurrent motions
|
|
Some long
cycle comet paths should be channeled by
dual mass
|
Comet paths
should be random but are not
|
The Sirius Research Group is a website devoted to the idea that our Sun is part of a binary system (with Sirius) and they have the mathematical calculations to back it up. On their website in a section where they publish letters received from interested parties is the following post:
The co-author of "The Orion Mystery", Mr. Adrian G. Gilbert, had made the
following statement in a letter to me on March 23, 1997:
Thank you for your long fax and subsequent
letter, both of which I have now studied. Whilst I find some of the explanation
a little technical, I am now sure you are right: Precession is a mathematical
con-trick, just like Ptolemy's epicycles. What we see and interpret as the
earth's 'wobble' is really the effect produced by our sun going round the star
Sirius. This seems perfectly logical to me and I would have thought would come
as a great relief to astronomers, who have been scratching their heads for
decades trying to understand the forces responsible for precession.
I wonder if Mr. Gilbert understood the implications of what he said. If he
admits that our Sun is in a binary orbit with another star it most likely is an
elliptical orbit. If that is true
Kepler's Third Law would come into play and the
relative velocities of both stars would vary throughout the cycle. What this
implies is you cannot extrapolate the current rate of precession
back through time to acheive positions of stars in our remote history. As
explained by Walter Cruttendan:
Visually, the new model is one of a rotating object (the Earth) in an almost circular orbit around a second object (the Sun), which in turn is an elliptical orbit around a third object (the binary center of mass of the Sun and a companion star). If the Earth’s orbit and the Sun’s orbit are given, then the equations of classical mechanics predict that the axis of rotation of the first rotating object (the Earth) will precess (relative to inertial space) at a rate dictated by the Sun’s path around its binary center of mass. To an observer on Earth the first object’s axis will appear to precess by 360 degrees in the same amount of time it takes the second object to undergo a complete orbit around the third object, independent of the masses and distances involved. In this model the Earth’s axis does not really wobble, or change relative to the Sun, but it produces the same observable now attributed to lunisolar precession -- a precession of the equinox. From this we conclude that acceleration (and eventual deceleration) of the rate of precession will depend on the eccentricity of the binary orbit. From Kepler’s Third Law, we know that all orbits are elliptical and objects leaving apoapsis accelerate to periapsis and then decelerate leaving periapsis. Consequently, we now have an explanation for why the precession rate is accelerating, and we also have a logical reason for why the rate cannot be extrapolated ad infinitum . Indeed, the most significant clue that precession represents a binary orbit is its universally recognized but until now, unexplained acceleration.5
If this theory is true then there is no way for the "Orion Correlation" to be tenable.
The Message of the Sphinx
In a follow-up book to The Orion Mystery, Robert Bauval collaborated with Graham Hancock to write The Message of the Sphinx. In this book they took the Orion star correlation theory a step further by, among other things, extrapolating the precessional rate back to the 10,500BC era and claiming that the Sphinx, (with the body of a lion), was actually trying to convey its date of carving by gazing at its astronomical equivalent in the sky, namely the constellation of Leo which would have been "rising on the cross-quarter sunrise between the winter solstice and the spring equinox. This sunrise occurs at 14 degrees south of east, the point on the sunrise targeted by the Khafre causeway6." Try as I might with my trusty little Skyglobe program (which I assume they were still using) I could never get Leo to rise at this time (which I assume was around Feb 4, 10500BC at 6:45am in Cairo). I could only get the constellation Aries rising. In any case, they were still using the current rate of precession back through time which I think will be shown to be inaccurate. It is interesting to note, however, that if you use Yukteswar's model for precession (see diagram below) you would see that the vernal equinox precessed into 29°59' of Leo around 9500BC (when the autumnal equinox was entering 29°59' Aquarius) This is approximately the time Plato (and Cayce) had for the final destruction of Atlantis. 9500BC also marked the end of the Piscean Age (as marked by the Autumnal Equinox) which rules all the oceans and supposedly the Atlantic Ocean became the final resting place of Atlantis and signified the end of an era. Perhaps this is the significance of the Sphinx-Leo connection. The entering of the vernal equinox into Leo in 9500BC marked the dawning of a new age which would not include the evils of the final inhabitants of Atlantis. A new civilization was begun in Egypt. Maybe this is how they chose to commemorate this "new beginning".
1 Robert Bauval and Adrian Gilbert, The Orion Mystery: unlocking the secrets of the Pyramids (New York: Crown Publishers, 1994), p. 115.
2 Ibid. p. 192.
3 Ibid.
4 Walter Cruttenden and Vince Dayes , "Understanding Precession of the Equinox," New Frontiers in Science (on-line version), (2003).
5 Ibid.
6
Graham Hancock and Robert Bauval, The Message of the Sphinx (New York:
Crown Publishers, 1996), p. 260.