[00:00:04] Speaker A: Id the Future, a podcast about evolution and intelligent design.
[00:00:12] Speaker B: Welcome to id the future. Im your host, Andrew McDermott. Well, today I welcome back astrophysicist Guillermo Gonzalez to discuss his experience of the recent solar eclipse and the poem he wrote to commemorate the occasion.
Gonzalez is a senior fellow at Discovery Institute's center for Science and Culture. He received his PhD in astronomy in 1993 from the University of Washington. He has done postdoctoral work at the University of Texas, Austin, and at the University of Washington, and has received fellowships, grants, and awards from such institutions as NASA, the University of Washington, the Templeton foundation, the Scientific Research Society, Sigma Psi, and the National Science Foundation. Guillermo, welcome back to id the Future.
[00:00:59] Speaker A: Glad to be here again.
[00:01:01] Speaker B: Yeah. So we recently caught up with you and your co author, Jonathan Witt, to discuss the young adult novel you wrote together, the farm at the center of the universe. Enjoy that discussion. And right before the launch of that book, you co hosted Discovery Institute's total solar eclipse experience, an event that we hosted in Waxahachie, Texas. And it offered one of the best and most accessible viewing locations in the US to take in this total solar eclipse that humanity got to enjoy recently. And as part of that event, you treated participants to a reading of a poem you wrote for the occasion called a celestial theater. In a few minutes, well unpack some of the insight in your poem, and I'll ask you to read, if you will, the poem in full for listeners. But first, let me just ask you about the experience itself. Now, the weather in Waxahachie started gray and misty that day, didn't it? Did the weather cooperate for the event?
[00:01:58] Speaker A: Yes, that morning everybody was pretty depressed, frankly. It was foggy, even misty, and a little bit of drizzle.
But as we got closer to the beginning of the partial phase of the eclipse, we saw some hints of perhaps some breaks in the clouds. And we started seeing a few breaks in the clouds just about when the partial phase started.
And so we were getting more and more hopeful as the morning progressed and towards, I'd say halfway towards totality. From the beginning of the partial phase, it was mostly clear. And then by the time it was totality, it was almost completely clear. It was perfect timing.
A few of the people I talked to also commented on that from a couple of other locations. Yeah, it couldn't have been better. And I mean, our spirits were down in the early morning, and so that was part of our emotional roller coaster is just, you know, from thinking that we're going to completely miss out on this event and maybe see it get darker through the clouds to one where we were enjoying the full magnitude of the event. Completely clear.
[00:03:13] Speaker B: Oh, that's great. Now, the evening before the eclipse, you and Jay Richards announced the coming of a new book this fall. Tell us about that.
[00:03:21] Speaker A: Yes, it's going to be the 20th anniversary edition of the privileged planet. So it was published in the spring of 2004, and we've completely revised the book and really made an effort to make it more readable so it's more accessible to a wider range of readers.
The science is updated, lots of updated endnotes, citation to the scientific literature. The basic argument hasn't changed. It's just that we've kept trying to keep up with the advancements in science over the last 20 years. For example, in 2004, only about a hundred or so exoplanets were known.
But as of today, there are nearly 6000 confirmed exoplanets. So that's one of the biggest changes. The statistics on the exoplanetary systems is much improved compared to what it was 20 years ago.
[00:04:22] Speaker B: Okay. Yeah, very much looking forward to the release of that book, and I'm sure we'll be back together talking about it.
Back to the eclipse. Here you were treated to four and a half minutes of what's called totality. What was that like? And remind us what's actually happening during that part of a total solar eclipse.
[00:04:42] Speaker A: So, first of all, for those who haven't really experienced a total eclipse of the sun and perhaps may have seen a partial solar eclipse, the two phenomena are completely different, nothing like each other in terms of what you actually experience during a partial solar eclipse. You might not even notice that there's an eclipse going on.
The brightness of the sky changes subtly.
Your eyes can adjust to those subtle changes, and you're used to seeing changes in sky brightness over the course of the day from passing clouds that you hardly even pay attention to.
But during a total solar eclipse, the sky does become quite dark. Not completely dark like you have it at night, where all the stars come out, but dark enough that the brighter stars and planets become visible in the sky and it becomes noticeably cooler.
So darker, cooler, the wind may change the direction and speed. People have noticed that during eclipses, in the case of the April 8 eclipse, everybody was able to see Jupiter and Saturn on opposite sides of the sun on the sky very easily, very prominent. But because I knew ahead of time where all the planets were in the sky, I was carefully looking for a couple of others, much fainter planets, Mars and Saturn, close together to each other on the sky. And I was able to see them.
I don't think very many people were able to see them.
So I was able to see four planets during totality. And, of course, you could see the corona of the sun extending out several degrees, several times the sun's diameter on the sky.
And then I could see one prominent with my prominence, I should say, with my unaided eyes. There's a bright red spot in one corner of the sun's limb.
I was able to say many other people saw that as well. That was a prominence from the chromosphere of the sun, reddish whitish color.
And then when you look all around the horizon, it's, like, brighter all along the horizon with, of course, darker in the rest of the sky. So it was kind of a weird lighting that you're not used to seeing because it's basically like, you know, sunset all around you because you're in the middle of a big shadow that's falling on the earth.
And so the lighting is very unusual. You're not used to it. So it feels very odd.
[00:07:28] Speaker B: Yeah.
A singular experience. And, of course, they say the animals either get quiet or they start to.
[00:07:35] Speaker A: Chatter or they start to go off to go to bed, do their usual pattern, whatever they do, just before the night falls, they're fooled into thinking that nighttime is coming.
[00:07:50] Speaker B: Well, some astronomers may be quick to explain total solar eclipses, or eclipses in general, as a happy coincidence. But you and Jay pointed out at the event that the fortuitous convergence of factors that produce perfect solar eclipses when the moon, sun, and earth line up in a straight line, may be more conspiracy than coincidence. Why is it hard to put this down to coincidence?
[00:08:13] Speaker A: Well, first of all, many things have to come right to be set up right in order to see a total eclipse of the sun. In fact, the eclipses that we get are such high quality, the total eclipses, I call them perfect solar eclipses, not merely total solar eclipses. But what makes this particularly interesting is that there's a close relationship between the conditions needed for viewing a total eclipse of the sun and the conditions needed for complex life here on the earth. And so we have to be within the so called circumstellar habitable zone to have liquid water on the surface of the earth. But yet that sets the apparent size of the sun that we see in our sky, because that circumstellar habitable zone determines how far you have to be from the host star. In our case, early two, early g, two dwarf, which, for various reasons, which I argue in the privileged planet, I think is pretty close to optimal for complex life. So we have to orbit this kind of star and circumstellar habitable zone sets our distance that we have to be. So that sets how big our sun has to look in our sky. So it's a habitability requirement. How big our sun is looks on our sky. And the other, of course, the other part of the solar eclipse is the moon, the occulting body. And the fact that we have a large moon orbiting around the Earth is also related to the habitability of the Earth. It helps with the tides to wash nutrients from the continents to the oceans. It helps keeps the rotation axis stable. That reduces the climate swings. And so Earth is made more habitable by the presence of this large moon. And given its large size and relatively close distance, that makes it much more probable than not that it would produce total solar eclipses. And so there's this close relationship between our ability to see total solar eclipses and our existence on Earth as observers.
And so I think that's why it's not just a coincidence. It seems like we set up for us.
[00:10:27] Speaker B: And in the book in the privileged planet, you do some research in trying to confirm that indeed, Earth is the best and only place in the solar system where perfect eclipses occur. I think you found one other possible place, but it sort of fails when you consider it.
[00:10:45] Speaker A: Right. The match is so close between the moon and the sun on the skyd, even though the sun is 400 times farther away, it's also 400 times bigger than the moon. And because of this coincidence in sizes and distances, you get the same angular size. They're both about half a degree in the sky. That's the best match in the solar system. There's only one other moon that comes close to that, and that's Prometheus. It's a small potato shaped moon around Saturn. That's a shepherd moon at the edge of the rings. But it's because it's so small. It's not round in its shape. It's like a potato. And so it doesn't produce very good eclipses. And furthermore, since it orbits so close to its host planet, Saturn, Saturn is so much more massive than the earth that it whizzes around Saturn very quickly. And so its eclipses are very short duration, about a second or less, whereas our eclipses can last up to seven and a half minutes.
[00:11:40] Speaker B: Wow.
[00:11:41] Speaker A: So we have lots of time to really enjoy it, to measure it, to observe it as compared to moons of the outer planets.
[00:11:48] Speaker B: Yeah. And I do find it fascinating, that detail that the sun and the moon match. They have the same appearance of size.
That's just amazing and really adds to the whole experience.
Well, this is part of an eerie pattern that you and Jay explain in the privileged planet, that the rare places where observers can exist are also the best, you know, best places overall for doing science and observing these things.
Let's shift now to talk about the poem that you have written, because you do bring some of this out in poetic language.
You wrote it to mark the total solar eclipse that we all enjoyed in April, or many of us. You call the poem totality a celestial theater. What prompted you to capture the essence of a total solar eclipse in poetic form?
[00:12:38] Speaker A: Annie Dillard is a pretty well known writer, existentialist writer, wrote a famous essay called total eclipse back in the early 1980s, and it's based on her experience, her own direct experience of a total eclipse of the sun from eastern Washington on February 26, 1979.
We have something in common, by the way, me and her, in the sense that I observed that eclipse also when I was much younger. I was in Miami, Florida, at the time, and of course, at that location, it was only a partial eclipse. And so it was probably the first solar eclipse I observed, but again, only a partial one. But she saw it, the total part of the eclipse, because she was within the dark shadow of the eclipse in eastern Washington, and she saw it from an elevated position there in eastern Washington. And, of course, that would be winter, February 26. So it was very cold at the time. And her, I mean, it's a lengthy essay, so she captures a lot of the emotional response and just how things she experienced it. As a writer, I thought, oh, that's a really interesting way to capture the eclipse and describe it. And so I thought I would do something similar. So not in the form of a lengthy essay, but just a poem and try my hand at it. So my poem is kind of an homage to her essay, and there's a few lines in the poem that people will recognize coming from her essay.
[00:14:21] Speaker B: Okay. Yeah.
[00:14:21] Speaker A: Or based on her essay. Yeah.
[00:14:23] Speaker B: That's cool to learn about that inspiration. Maybe if that essay is online somewhere, I'll link to it in the.
[00:14:29] Speaker A: I think. I think you can find it online.
[00:14:31] Speaker B: That's cool. Yeah. And had you been writing poetry long? I mean, have you been interested in that form?
[00:14:37] Speaker A: Not really. I would say a very, very amateur poet. So I'd been thinking about it for a long time, but I just never really put much effort into it until this event, because I wanted to mark the event in a special way, because total eclipses given location are very rare. This is only my third one, by the way, my third total eclipse of the sun. And so I had my own experiences already to draw from in writing the poem.
[00:15:07] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. Still a very special event for you, obviously, but the way you capture it is great. And I think the poetic form, you know, lends itself to bringing out those special events that we humans can experience. I'm a poet myself. I got into it at an earlier age and really find my voice in college with the help of the former us poet laureate, Billy Collins.
I don't know if you've heard of him, but he's awesome and he uses wit and humor to get at some of the deeper things in life.
But in your poem, you describe in eloquent detail what it's actually like to experience a total solar eclipse. Let me read from it. Senses bombarded by the sudden change, emotions, too, run wild in range from awe to terror, wonder to fright. The swift transition from day to night, and then later blinded by darkness, yet illumined within a glimpse of truth amidst the shadows. Din tell us a little bit more about the emotions that you felt in this recent total solar eclipse and what you kind of felt there.
[00:16:21] Speaker A: Well, first of all, I would say awe and wonder are just the spectacular aspect of this phenomenon and it's really hard to put it into words and even a little bit of discomfort as your experience of the regular patterns of day and night are disrupted, if only for a few minutes.
I mentioned fright there in the poem and that's, there's one of those lines that alludes back to Annie Dillard's essay because she expressed fright at one point in her essay.
One reason is that she was situated in an elevated spot on a hill looking down on the valley. And she could just before totality start, she could see the shadow approaching. It moves incredibly fast.
I forget the numbers, around 1000 km/hour or so. So you see the shadow coming at you incredibly fast.
That can be frightening, depending on your perspective, exactly where you are, because think about it, the view from space is this little spot, dark spot, moving across the surface of the earth very quickly. Also, you feel connected to the cosmos in the sense that you have the shadow reaching down to you from the moon, basically, and touching you. The shadow touches you, and so you feel this intimate connection to the larger universe, almost like a portal opening up. And you can see into the rest of the universe for a brief few minutes. And so there's a lot of awe to it for me, and wonder and amazement.
I'd say, that's what I felt, though other people may feel a few other things. Like I said, fright, maybe.
[00:18:17] Speaker B: Yeah. It is hard to put into words, and some people would think, I'll just take a picture. But you took a stab at doing it through the poetry form, and I think you largely succeeded. Now, in the poem, you also write this for scientists. Treasure troves unfold of data, new and theories yet untold. The solar winds, the flares, the mysteries. Each eclipse adds a page to histories. Now, I know in the privileged planet, you do talk about the fact that total solar eclipses have taught us a lot and they've advanced scientific discovery. Can you just give us an example of that?
[00:18:59] Speaker A: Sure. So there's several examples or eclipses that taught us important lessons in science, starting with the 1715 total eclipse, visible from London, England. That one was the first one that was calculated in detail, predicted. There are maps drawn of the path of the shadow over London and the area around southern Britain at the time based on Newton's laws. The calculations for those maps were based on Newton's laws of motion, his law of gravity, which were still relatively new at the time.
In fact, Newton was still living.
I think it was Edmund Halley who drew up one of those maps that were distributed around, and they turned out to be accurate within about four minutes of time, which is pretty good for that period before computers.
So it confirmed Newton's laws in a spectacular way.
Then the discovery of helium, the second most abundant element in the universe, was made during a total eclipse. In the 19th century.
I mentioned earlier that you can see the corona around the sun during a total eclipse of the sun. So that was studied in detail during eclipses, and that's one of the remains even today. One of the main scientific experiments that scientists do at eclipse is a study of the sun's corona, which the best way to observe it is during a total eclipse of the sun, when it blocked the bright part of the sun's photosphere, and you can see this very faint outer atmosphere of the sun. During that time, we learned how the spectrum of the sun is produced by, for example, putting a prism in front of the sun during an eclipse. You can see the spectrum of the sun transforming itself from what's called an absorption line spectrum to an emission line spectrum, where only the chromosphere is left after the moon covers up the bright part of the photosphere. And most importantly, I would say, was the confirmation of prediction from general relativity during an eclipse in 1919.
Einstein had just published his general theory in 1915, and it was controversial. So Einstein thought of an experiment to try to test his theory, said, observe and measure the stars around the sun during a total eclipse. Measure the positions. I predict that they should move by a certain amount. So he predicted the amount that the star's position should be shifted, and that was indeed what they measured, and it confirmed his theory. So that led to a rapid acceptance of general relativity after that.
[00:21:36] Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah. So moving scientific discovery forward for hundreds of years, these things have. Well, your poem was
[email protected]. and that's our flagship news and commentary site, the main source to turn for information about intelligent design and the debate over evolution. It was also featured in the latest issue of Discovery Institute's regular newsletter. I picked it up the other day and was delighted to see that featured on the front there. Would you do us all the honor of reading your poem in full today?
[00:22:11] Speaker A: Well, thank you. I'll try. So totality, a celestial theater, the sky's great expanse, a cosmic sea where two orbs of primordial decree sail on their fadus fated meeting. Seldom seen, a dance of day and night, a rare convene. Behold Sol, a king of gilded throne whose fiery rays to farthest lands are known. He reigns on high, a tireless, blazing orb of gold, whose light brings life, whose absence makes us cold. Fair Luna, silver, sovereign of the night. Her changing face transforms the dark with light. She waxes, wanes in rhythmic, endless beat. Her phases mark the flow of time's retreat. Yet whispered omens fill the trembling air, a spectacle that this odd couple share. When orbits intersect in cosmic dance, their transient union a celestial trance, a specter made of shadow, swift and strange, devours the day, the world to rearrange. Unnatural night descends. An eerie hush. A sun's fair face fades to a ghostly blush. Behold a ring of light the corona's crown ethereal halo round the moon's dark gown. In skies so vast, her earthly woes seem small, the mind enchanted, heart and soul enthrall. These fleeting moments stretch an endless sigh. The march of time slowed to a lullaby. The sense is real. The mind can scarce conceive of wonders that the eyes cannot believe. The land is swallowed an unnatural night. Platinum grasses gleam in eerie light. The sky, a deep and wrong shade of indigo, renders our minds useless. What do we know? Senseless, bombarded by the sudden change, emotions, too run wild in range from awe to terror, wonder to frighten the swift transition from day to night. How can we comprehend this vast event? In mere moments before its come and went, the memory already starts to fade as if the whole spectacle were a charade, the mind reels in deep space, the heart screeches mute faced with this clockwork universe so brute loose spheres flung at stupefying speed, how do they not crash, not veer like a steed? Not day, not night, yet not quite twilight we see, yet not see by the corona's light blinded by darkness, yet illumined within a glimpse of truth amidst the shadows din we stand on darkened plains, alive but numb, transported to the strange delirium a black disk has covered reality's display revealing the abyss in which we play the moon obscures it, reveals so much more as if the sun's true face we now explore. In losing sight, we gain a deeper view of cosmos, vast in our existence, too. In this grand act, Einstein's theory does not falter as light doth bend and space time fabric does alter the cosmic test where gravity's own might reveals itself as day succumbs to night. For scientists, treasure troves unfold of data, new and theories yet untold. The solar winds, the flares, the mysteries. Each eclipse adds a page to histories. The land grows light again as shadows fade the sun emerges glorious, unafraid, we blink and stretch as from a dream we wake to ponder what is real and what's mistake. Yet something in the soul is shaken, stirred a whisper of infinity half heard, both awed and humbled by what we've seen the cosmic dance, eternal and serene until next time. The planets shift and spin and night and day embrace like long lost kin. We walk in wonder, yearning to discern the truth behind the veil for which we burn.
[00:26:13] Speaker B: Thanks, Guillermo. That was beautiful.
[00:26:15] Speaker A: Sure.
[00:26:15] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:26:16] Speaker A: Thank you.
[00:26:16] Speaker B: And I know it's hard to read verse sometimes on demand, but that was great. And you say, until next time, when the planets shift and spin, when will we see another total solar eclipse?
[00:26:27] Speaker A: Oh, let's see. 2045, I think, is the continental United States, if I'm not mistaken. But there's one before that. It may be part of Alaska, if I recall. Now, the next one, somewhere around the world before, if you're willing to travel outside the United States, is in Spain.
I think it's 2026. Either 2026, I think you have to look it up. Goes through mostly uninhabited regions, although I guess Spain, I think, is the most populated part that it intersects.
[00:27:04] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:27:05] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:27:06] Speaker B: All right. Well, listeners who want to travel can look that up, but certainly a singular experience not to be missed. And I appreciate you sharing that in poetic form and also unpacking it today.
[00:27:17] Speaker A: Thank you. I enjoyed it.
[00:27:19] Speaker B: Well, listeners, if you enjoyed today's chat, I encourage you to pre order your copy of the new 20th anniversary edition of the Privileged planet. It's a journey through the latest scientific evidence showing that far from a cosmic fluke, our world is ingeniously designed not just for life, but for discovery. Learn more and secure your
[email protected]. that's privilegedplanet.com. for id the future I'm Andrew McDermott. Thanks for listening.
[00:27:49] Speaker A: Visit
[email protected] the future.com and intelligent design.org. this program is copyright Discovery Institute and recorded by its center for Science and Culture.
