Five billion years ago it was poker night at Odin's house. For the previous 9 billion years, every Thursday evening he would invite his chums Jesus, Allah, Buddha, Vishnu, and Jehovah around for a no-limit game of Texas hold 'em. This being Thursday was no exception...
Odin: Ah, Jesus. I see you brought the wine again. Nice. Whose turn is it to deal?
Vishnu: Look, I'm bored with this crap. Every week we play the same damn game, and we all know Buddha is going to win cos he's such a cheating bastard.
Buddha: Hey! Hang on. What the hell am I doing here anyway? I never even claimed to be an omnipotent being!
Jehovah: Shut up fat boy. Go and put the kettle on or something. Oh, and get the cigars too.
Buddha goes to make the coffee.
Allah: He's right though, I'm bored with this too. I say we spice things up a bit.
Odin: We are not playing dice again.
Allah: Well, I say we create a planet. Stick some life on it and let them evolve for a while. Then we can place bets on how long they manage to go before they figure out what we are up to. Call it the Earth.
Jesus: Sounds interesting. How would it work?
Allah: Well, we would each leave some clues for them. Something which appears to be such a ridiculously unlikely coincidence that only a total fool would think that it could have happened by chance.
Vishnu: Hey, that sounds like a laugh. But how would the betting work?
Allah: Well, we each leave some clues, and the person whose clue is accepted by the life on the Earth as proof of our existence gets out of doing the washing up for the next 10 billion years.
Odin: Lol. Dude, awesome idea.
Allah: Right. Well, what about leaving some bloody great enormous piles of rocks all over the place. When they find them, they are sure to think there is something going on.
Jehovah: What is it with you and the rocks man? That monolith thing is so 1960's. You can't just hide a few slabs here and there and expect them to catch on that easy.
Allah: Look, I'm going to do it, but be a bit subtle about it. I will put a load of stones around the place, but line them all up with the Sun. When they find those they will catch on especially as I will do them so that they all use the same basic units of measurement.
Vishnu: You reckon? That won't do it. They will just think their ancestors must have worshipped the Sun or something.
Jesus: What?
Odin: Sap. Messing about with little rocks and "units of measurement" WTF? Look, you are thinking far too small man. I'm going to give them a bloody great moon. What I'm going to do is make it so that the moon appears exactly the same size in the sky as the Sun.
Jesus: What?
Vishnu: Na, they probably will not even notice that.
Odin: They might not, but on the the midwinter solstice, spring equinox, summer solstice, and autumn equinox the sun will set in exactly the same place. On the equinoxes the Moon will set in the same place as the Sun, but on the solstices, it will have exactly the opposite setting point. That will get them looking up in the sky. Plus every 360 Earth days each point on the surface will have a solar eclipse. When my moon passes in-front of their Sun and perfectly blocks it out it's going to be blinding obvious. They will be like "Wow, what are the chances of that?"
Vishnu: Na, they will still just think it's luck. Look, how far away are you going to put your moon?
Odin: Um, not sure. I was thinking of putting it 400 times closer than the Sun, but make it 400 times smaller so it all lined up right.
Vishnu Well, that would only work if the Earth had a perfectly circular orbit, and that would be cheating, you have to use an elliptical orbit just like everything else in the dam universe.
Odin: Hmm, OK. Fair point. Look, so long as the 400 thing works when there is an eclipse I'm happy.
Vishnu Fair enough. You have got no chance though, they still won't spot it. I'm going to take your 400 thing and run with it... I'm going to make the moon turn 400 kilometres on its axis each day, but make the Earth turn 100 times faster at 40,000 kilometres per day. I will make it 40,000 Megalithic yards in 1 megalithic second of arc of the Sun. I will also make the Moon 100 megalithic yards to each second of arc which as the Sun is 400 times bigger makes it 40,000 Megalithic Yards per second of arc of the Sun.
Jesus: What? Oh, right. So that's Odin and Vishnu sorted then, but stop going on about Megalithic yards Vishnu. No one knows what the hell you are talking about.
Jehovah: OK then, I'm going for the number of days in the year. I'll make it 366 days a year and make the Earth 366% the size of moon, and to top it off make it 10,000 days in 366 lunar orbits as well as having 366 Megalithic yards in 1 Mg second of arc of the Earth.
Jesus: Look, we said no friggin' Megalithic anything. Anyway I will have some of this 366 action. If Jehovah is having percentage size of Earth to Moon, I'm having percentage size of Moon to Earth which is 27.322. I'll make it 27.322 days in 1 lunar orbit when measured from the stars. There is absolutely no reason why the Earth/Moon size percentage should be the same as how many times the thing spins around the bugger. To 3 decimal places... They will go nuts over this one.
Allah: Lol.
Jesus: Also, sticking with the 4 thing, I will take my 27.322 * 4 to get 109.28. I will make the Sun 109.25 times bigger than the Earth and put the Earth 109.26 Sun-widths away from it at its farthest point. Just for a laugh I will make the Moon's equatorial circumference 10,920 kilometres as well.
Buddha returns with the coffee and cigars...
Buddha: Anyone got a light?
Jesus: What am I, the light of the world?
Buddha: Well, I think we just need to do something with the speed of light. By the time they figure that out, they will notice that if you accelerate at 1g for 1 year you get to the speed of light. To be honest, if they haven't spotted what is going on by then they will soon blow themselves up, so all bets will be off anyway.
Odin: He's got a point you know guys. We don't want them to blow themselves up before we get a result on this one. We had better chuck a few more coincidences at them, just to make sure they do actually spot it at some point.
Vishnu: Aright then. We will make the Moon orbit at an average speed 1 kilometre per second, and make the node cycle a round 6,800 days to complete. Oh, let's set the mass of the moon to be 1.234% that of the Earth.
Allah: You think they will spot that the circumference of the Earth multiplied by that of the Moon divided by 100 gives you the circumference of the sun correct to 99.9 per cent?
Vishnu: Hmm.
Allah: Which also obviously means that if you divide the circumference of the Sun by that of the Moon and multiply by 100 you get the circumference of the Earth. Also if you divide the size of the Sun by the size of the Earth and multiply by 100 you get the size of the Moon. Oh, we can also make a pendulum which swings at a rate of once a second on the Earth have length of precisely 1 meter. But you all knew that already I'm sure.
Odin: Allah, you are getting really boring now. Look, I'm just going to make the Moon look like some big dude with a cheesy grin looking back at them, and leave it at that. Anyway, Buddha, go and get us a pizza or something.
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