When someone refers to the Gnomes of Aristarchus, what are they talking about?

Question

I swear I've heard of the Gnomes of Aristarchus a few times, and I just found them mentioned again in Arthur C. Clarke's Imperial Earth. A Google search doesn't help much, but did reveal a thread on a Battlestar Galactica forum where someone says "The gnomes of Aristarchus express their concern that the Forum is not generating sufficient revenue from its banners and site hits." So I'm thinking the Gnomes desire money or business, they might be greedy, and maybe they live in a crater on the Moon. But how did we come to mentioning these creatures? What's the origin of this expression?

Answer 1

Runescape

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Answer 2

The Gnomes of Zurich refers to Swiss bankers who are said to be supernaturally wise about making money. Aristarchus was an ancient Greek savant who measured the distance to the Moon correctly about 250BCE, and a crater there is named after him. Gnomes are legendary dwarf-like creatures that are greedy and accumulate gold. Garden statues of them are common.