Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind from how Stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot com. Hey, you're welcome to Stuff to Blow
Speaker 1: your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick.
Speaker 1: Joe is filling in for Julie this week. You probably
Speaker 1: know Joe from Forward Thinking, our sister podcast and show brand.
Speaker 1: Uh and we're talking about the eclipse. The eclipse, Yes,
Speaker 1: the power of eclipse. That nicotine gum the name of this,
Speaker 1: No way that I think it might just be a
Speaker 1: regular gum. Okay, maybe available on nicotings later. I don't no.
Speaker 1: Eclipses our thing that they are both sort of mundane
Speaker 1: in physical terms, but also quite stunning and terrifying and
Speaker 1: significant throughout the history of humanity, significant to the observer. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because I just want to try to imagine. I know
Speaker 1: you can't really put yourself in this headspace, but just
Speaker 1: try to imagine what it would be like to sort
Speaker 1: of live in a pre scientific time. Maybe you're you're
Speaker 1: part of a you know, a hunter gatherer tribe somewhere
Speaker 1: in the world, and for the first time in your life,
Speaker 1: something very strange happens. One day, the sky starts to
Speaker 1: go dark and you see a black disc pass in
Speaker 1: front of the sun until there's just a ring of
Speaker 1: white fire and the the it's dark in the middle
Speaker 1: of the daytime. You don't know what's going on or
Speaker 1: what's causing this. I have to imagine that it would
Speaker 1: be absolutely terrifying and and completely bizarre. Yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: the cycle of night and day, you know, the one
Speaker 1: of the guiding uh, factors of your life. Even with
Speaker 1: the gay, the guiding factors for any organism, and some
Speaker 1: of the earliest organisms were still based on recognizing when
Speaker 1: it was dark and when it was daylight. And suddenly
Speaker 1: that seems to be thrown out the window by there's
Speaker 1: a random chaotic event. Yeah. Well, i'd say upsetting the
Speaker 1: clear division between night and day is like one of
Speaker 1: the most perverse things you could do to a biological organism.
Speaker 1: I mean, the sun, it's it's the mother of all
Speaker 1: on Earth. When you think about it, all energy on
Speaker 1: Earth is solar energy. Pretty much all all the energy
Speaker 1: we consume, you know, all the food we eat is
Speaker 1: a few steps down the chain, but it's solar energy. Uh.
Speaker 1: And so it's just kind of amazing to imagine not
Speaker 1: knowing what's going on, but seeing that that mother of
Speaker 1: all life suddenly blotted out. And of course maybe not
Speaker 1: equally astounding, but also very strange and and perhaps perverse
Speaker 1: and upsetting is the lunar eclipse. Uh, seeing something happen
Speaker 1: to the moon which to you might have been some
Speaker 1: kind of god or have some other kind of magical significance,
Speaker 1: seeing it change colors, or seeing a shadow pass in
Speaker 1: front of it. Um. So, yeah, I think eclipses are
Speaker 1: going to be a really interesting thing to talk about.
Speaker 1: So you might have heard a couple of years ago
Speaker 1: that the Mayan calendar predicted the end of the world.
Speaker 1: You remember this, I remember hearing a little about it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: way too much. Oh, I got so sick of hearing
Speaker 1: about that. But maybe it's just now been long enough
Speaker 1: that we can bring it up again without making people
Speaker 1: grown too much. But it was supposed to end in
Speaker 1: December twelve. Well, not only did the world not end,
Speaker 1: but the Mayan calendar, actually, this is funny, didn't predict
Speaker 1: the end of the world. Did you know this at
Speaker 1: the time? Um, I don't think I was that informed
Speaker 1: about it. But and it also it was just bombarded
Speaker 1: with that idea of you know, Mayan apocalypse. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: around that time was basically the end of their long
Speaker 1: calendar cycle, which would reset afterwards, so it wasn't really
Speaker 1: a judgment day. It was more like their December thirty first.
Speaker 1: If they had a really, really really long year, it
Speaker 1: would be like somebody looking back at our calendar system
Speaker 1: and thinking of the end of the year, is the
Speaker 1: the end of the of an era, at the end
Speaker 1: of an age and apocalypse? Right, And so they didn't
Speaker 1: predict the end of the world there, but the Mayan
Speaker 1: astronomical calendar actually did make some interesting astronomical predictions. For example,
Speaker 1: there's a book called Astronomy and the Maya Codessees by
Speaker 1: Harvey and Victoria Bricker. So they discussed the ancient Maya
Speaker 1: Mayan astronomical calendars and and they discuss some dating back
Speaker 1: to the eleventh or twelfth centuries CE. And they say
Speaker 1: that these ancient calendars that the Maya had predict the
Speaker 1: date of a solar eclipse that would have been visible
Speaker 1: in July of ninete within about a day of accuracy.
Speaker 1: And it kind of makes you wonder why predicting an
Speaker 1: eclipse would be that important to them. I mean, it's
Speaker 1: not like it had any real like physical effects of
Speaker 1: much significance on Earth. You know, it didn't like it
Speaker 1: wasn't that an eclipse would like destroy all their crops
Speaker 1: or something. So what did it mean? Well, it, I
Speaker 1: mean a lot of it really comes down to, of course,
Speaker 1: there's cosmology, your understanding of what you are as a
Speaker 1: people and what the what the world is, and then
Speaker 1: what the cosmos means. Uh, as well as just basic
Speaker 1: record keeping basic uh observation of the movement of the
Speaker 1: spheres and using this as a as a as a
Speaker 1: way to divide out time. UH. The ancient Maya believed
Speaker 1: in in recurring cycles of creation and destruction, and they
Speaker 1: believe that life was composed of eras lasting around in
Speaker 1: modern years, it would be around a fifty two hundred
Speaker 1: year periods. They believe in a flat, four cornered earth
Speaker 1: that was has been described as being like that of
Speaker 1: the back of a crocodile that's resting in the water,
Speaker 1: you know where it's just the back is emerging. And
Speaker 1: you know. There was additional stuff about the four corners
Speaker 1: and the corresponding gods and UH. And of course there
Speaker 1: are also a lot of rituals in life that are
Speaker 1: dictated by this two hundred and sixty day sacred round calendar.
Speaker 1: So within my culture, you have these priests, these are
Speaker 1: these are the guys that are that are tasked with
Speaker 1: with taking care of upkeep of the calendar as well
Speaker 1: as astronomy. So they're calculating time. Uh, They're they're figuring
Speaker 1: out when festivals should occur, when ceremonies are occurring, uh,
Speaker 1: certain fateful days and seasons. They're divining the future. Uh,
Speaker 1: they're they're trying to figure out the cures for diseases.
Speaker 1: They're writing about it all, and they're keeping track of
Speaker 1: the various genealogies. So in a sense, they are they're
Speaker 1: the keepers of time. They're concerned with Mayan time and
Speaker 1: uh and the Mayan people's place in the universe. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and obviously to the to the Maya, astronomical events had
Speaker 1: real significance, like that they might believe that an astronomical
Speaker 1: portent could give them real information about what would happen
Speaker 1: to them, you know, like it could it could bring
Speaker 1: something bad that would be dangerous, or it could bring
Speaker 1: a good omen So you actually really wanted to be
Speaker 1: able to predict and understand astronomical events. And of course
Speaker 1: the Maya weren't weren't the only ones who had believes
Speaker 1: like this. This is very common all around the world,
Speaker 1: Like the ancient Chinese were very concerned with being able
Speaker 1: to predict eclipses, even the you know, the Anti Kithera mechanism. Yes,
Speaker 1: this is sometimes heard to as the world's first computer
Speaker 1: or like the oldest astronomical calculator in existence. It's a
Speaker 1: mechanical computer that's you know, I think more than two
Speaker 1: thousand years old, that was discovered in a shipwreck in
Speaker 1: the Mediterranean off the coast I believe of the island Antikithera.
Speaker 1: And so they bring this thing up and people have
Speaker 1: been studying it and putting together reconstructions of it. And
Speaker 1: what the people who have studied this mechanism, uh decided
Speaker 1: is that, oh, yeah, so this was an ancient astronomical
Speaker 1: calculator that if you wound the gears, it would tell
Speaker 1: you the placement of different celestial objects and it would
Speaker 1: predict eclipses. So the ancient Greeks or whoever invented this
Speaker 1: amazingly advanced mechanism for the time. We're also very concerned
Speaker 1: with being able to know when was an eclipse going
Speaker 1: to happen, So we're gonna come back and discuss the
Speaker 1: human significance of eclipse more in a few minutes, But
Speaker 1: first we really need to break down the basic science
Speaker 1: of the eclipse, the basic celestial mechanics, uh, that are
Speaker 1: in play here. Okay, Robert, tell me a word that's
Speaker 1: hard to pronounce. Oh, well, you know I can. I
Speaker 1: can probably stumble over any number of difficult words pronounced,
Speaker 1: but the one in question here is ziziggi, which is ziziggi,
Speaker 1: zizigi which is s y z y g y um,
Speaker 1: which is uh. It's like they were playing a joke
Speaker 1: on you. Yeah, I mean, and it only just makes
Speaker 1: me think of Ziggy the cartoon character. But but you know,
Speaker 1: it comes from Ziggy Stardust or Ziggy start us. That's
Speaker 1: why am I going to Ziggi the cartoon character instead
Speaker 1: of Bowie. I don't know, um, but it's a It
Speaker 1: comes from from the Greek um ziogos, which means yoke together.
Speaker 1: Because ultimately we are talking about about convergence here, right,
Speaker 1: So every eclipse is a ziziggi, but not every ziziggi
Speaker 1: is an eclipse. When when a ziggi he occurs with
Speaker 1: celestial bodies, we're talking about a nearly straight line configuration
Speaker 1: of three celestial bodies. In this case, we're talking about
Speaker 1: uh configurations that involved the Sun, Moon, and the Earth
Speaker 1: lining up within a gravitation gravitational system. It also refers
Speaker 1: to when the Sun and the Moon are in conjunction,
Speaker 1: such as a new moon or in opposition, a full moon.
Speaker 1: So those are examples. Those those A full moon is
Speaker 1: a ziziggi. But obviously a full moon is not necessarily
Speaker 1: an eclipse. Okay, you need a full moon for a
Speaker 1: linear eclipse, but more on that later, right, Yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: so I get that. So ziziggi ziziggi, Yes, from the Greek.
Speaker 1: Where does the word eclipse come from? Well, with eclips
Speaker 1: we have to go back to the Greek as well,
Speaker 1: back to eclipses from eclip in, which means to omit fail, suffer, etcetera.
Speaker 1: Uh man see but this kind of dire I mean,
Speaker 1: it kind of drives home the fact that throughout human
Speaker 1: history like this is how we view eclipse. It is
Speaker 1: a thing of of dire omen totally. Well, okay, let's
Speaker 1: look at how lunar eclipses work first, and then we
Speaker 1: can turn the solar eclipses Okay, so pop quiz, which
Speaker 1: is which we you know that one you know that
Speaker 1: one is the Earth blocking light from reflecting off the Moon,
Speaker 1: and the other is the Moon blocking the direct light
Speaker 1: from the Sun that we receive on Earth. But which
Speaker 1: is which? Oh? I mean? So you're basically for a
Speaker 1: solar eclipse, a solar eclipse to occur, the Moon has
Speaker 1: to be in the way, right, So for a solar eclipse,
Speaker 1: the easy way to remember is that you're naming the
Speaker 1: object that's being obscured. So for a solar eclipse that's
Speaker 1: blocking the light from the Sun, the lunar eclipse is
Speaker 1: blocking the reflected light from the Moon. So the lunar
Speaker 1: eclipse happens. It's actually, in the most basic terms, really simple.
Speaker 1: It's when the Moon passes into the shadow of Earth. Uh.
Speaker 1: And when we describe these it will probably really help
Speaker 1: if you will try to do our best. But if
Speaker 1: you look at a picture, this is inherently kind of
Speaker 1: a geometrical or ual phenomenon. You can only say so
Speaker 1: much with words. Um, But if you picture the Earth
Speaker 1: orbiting the Sun and then the Moon orbiting the Earth,
Speaker 1: every now and then the orbits line up so that
Speaker 1: the Moon is directly behind the Earth with respect to
Speaker 1: the Sun. And of course the light we see from
Speaker 1: the moon doesn't come from the Moon, it's reflected from
Speaker 1: the Sun. So if you block the light, you know
Speaker 1: with the Earth's shadow, you're gonna not see much light
Speaker 1: reflected from the moon, or you're gonna see maybe some
Speaker 1: strange colors. So it's like standing in front of a
Speaker 1: movie projection camera facing the screen and you're suddenly asking yourself,
Speaker 1: where did the movie go? Well, the movie is on
Speaker 1: your back now because you're standing in front of the rejector.
Speaker 1: That's a good analogy. Yeah, okay, so the Earth, there
Speaker 1: there are two cone shaped shadows that come off of
Speaker 1: the Earth, and one is sort of the the outward
Speaker 1: spreading one, and one is sort of the inward focusing one.
Speaker 1: The outward spreading one is known as the pin numbra.
Speaker 1: That it's the more diffuse shadow. So that's kind of
Speaker 1: a faint shadow, and you've probably seen, you know yourself,
Speaker 1: in various scenarios that you're actually casting sort of more
Speaker 1: than one shadow, kind of a faint, bigger shadow, and
Speaker 1: then a smaller, more concentrated shadow, and then of course
Speaker 1: the the middle focused inner shadow is the umbra, and
Speaker 1: that's going to be the very dark area that the
Speaker 1: Earth is blocking out a big majority of the Sun's light.
Speaker 1: The pannumbra in cases the umbra, so the pannumbra is wide,
Speaker 1: the umbra is small. In the middle of that is
Speaker 1: futtle bull's eye there in the umbre. Because a lunar
Speaker 1: eclipse can only happen when the Moon is behind the Earth,
Speaker 1: that means that a lunar eclipse also only happens during
Speaker 1: a full moon. A full moon is when the you know,
Speaker 1: the Moon is behind the Earth, reflecting its full face
Speaker 1: to the Earth. It's it's not getting a partially out
Speaker 1: of view, but the Moon orbits the Earth all the time,
Speaker 1: like it makes a full circle roughly every month, right,
Speaker 1: So why don't we see a lunar eclipse every full moon?
Speaker 1: Why don't we see a lunar eclipse every time the
Speaker 1: Moon is on the opposite side of the Earth. So
Speaker 1: you can imagine the Earth and the Sun together on
Speaker 1: what's called an ecliptic plane. They're sort of like sitting
Speaker 1: on a flat surface together. You imagine that's a flat surface,
Speaker 1: and the Moon actually does not orbit the Earth on
Speaker 1: exactly that same plane. It's not flat with the Sun
Speaker 1: and the Earth. It's at a five degree angle from
Speaker 1: that orbit. So if you can imagine this, and it
Speaker 1: probably again will help if you look at a picture, Uh,
Speaker 1: the Earth's orbiting the Sun on a flat plane, and
Speaker 1: then the Moon is orbiting the Earth slightly diagonally. So
Speaker 1: every now and then it is just lined up on
Speaker 1: the sort of up and down y axis with where
Speaker 1: the Sun and the Earth are, and other times it's
Speaker 1: above or below. Okay, So the rotation of the Earth
Speaker 1: is like a brimmed hat that's just on perfectly, whereas
Speaker 1: the Moon's rotation is a cocked hat. Yeah, that's exactly right.
Speaker 1: So those places where the Moon crosses the ecliptic plane
Speaker 1: of the of the Sun and the Earth, those are
Speaker 1: called nodes, and that's where it's lined up correctly to
Speaker 1: be caught right in the middle of of the possible
Speaker 1: eclipse shadow that's being cast by the Earth. When those
Speaker 1: orbits line up perfectly like that is when you're going
Speaker 1: to see a lunar eclipse. It's when the Moon is
Speaker 1: it just the right hy coordinate on this graph. So
Speaker 1: remember those two different shadows I talked about. You have
Speaker 1: the the the umbra and the pin umbra and the
Speaker 1: pin numbre the big shadow. When the moon passes into
Speaker 1: that shadow, sometimes you will get like a pinnumber a
Speaker 1: lunar eclipse, and that can be difficult to see right
Speaker 1: because that shadow isn't so so dense, it's not going
Speaker 1: to block out as much light. And then you can
Speaker 1: also get a partial lunar eclipse where you know, only
Speaker 1: part of the moon is blocked out by the shadow.
Speaker 1: That the really impressive one you want to see is
Speaker 1: the total lunar eclipse where it's just right to pass
Speaker 1: into the umbro, you know, that deep center shadow, and
Speaker 1: that's where the magic happens. And so a lunar eclipses
Speaker 1: are pretty rare. On average, they can happen about three
Speaker 1: times a year, though you can have a year where
Speaker 1: you don't have any eclipses, any lunar eclipses at all
Speaker 1: um And then about a third of these are the
Speaker 1: pin number ones that are harder to see cool, and
Speaker 1: that brings us to solar eclipses. And again it comes
Speaker 1: down to three bodies, you know, again sort of the
Speaker 1: projector something in the way of the projector in the screen.
Speaker 1: But in this case, a solar eclipse is occurring when
Speaker 1: the Moon passes into direct line between the Earth and
Speaker 1: the Sun. So we're the screen as opposed to the
Speaker 1: individual standing in front of the screen in my projector
Speaker 1: analogy here, and solar eclipses are only possible during the
Speaker 1: new moon phase. Uh. This is when the Moon essentially
Speaker 1: plays monkey in the middle Sun and Earth when you
Speaker 1: normally wouldn't see it. Right. So what happens here is
Speaker 1: the Moon's shadow travels over the Earth's surface and blocks
Speaker 1: out the Sun's light as seen from Earth. Again, it
Speaker 1: all comes down to the observer. Because the Moon's the
Speaker 1: moon orbits the Earth at an angle as we already discussed,
Speaker 1: approximately five degrees tilted. The Moon crosses the Earth's over
Speaker 1: doll plane only twice a year, and these team times
Speaker 1: are called eclipse seasons because they are the only times
Speaker 1: when eclipses can occur. So for an eclipse to take place,
Speaker 1: the Moon must be in just the correct phase during
Speaker 1: an eclipse season. Uh, and then that's when the solar
Speaker 1: eclipse occurs. The condition makes this extremely rare. Now, the
Speaker 1: Moon's shadow, as we already mentioned, you have the central
Speaker 1: umbra and then the outer pannumbra. Depending on which part
Speaker 1: of the shadow passes over you, you'll see one of
Speaker 1: three different types of solar eclipses. Because as you've as
Speaker 1: you've probably noted if you've done any kind of reading,
Speaker 1: you know, online, where you're like, when's the next eclipse occurring?
Speaker 1: How am I going to see a solar eclipse? Solar
Speaker 1: eclipse depends on where you are. Yeah, it depends greatly
Speaker 1: on where you are. I mean, I'm already looking ahead
Speaker 1: to the next one, and I think, all right, how
Speaker 1: far do I have to drive? I think I have
Speaker 1: to drive to Kentucky to really get a good view
Speaker 1: of it. And I'm and I'm already thinking about my
Speaker 1: eclipse tourism, because yeah, you could get a total uh
Speaker 1: solar eclipse, and clearly this is the one you want
Speaker 1: to drive for the entire central portion of the Sun
Speaker 1: is blocked out. This is your big iconic Oh my god,
Speaker 1: the world is ending eclipse, right, But then there's the
Speaker 1: partial eclipse where only part of the Sun's surfaces blocked out. Uh.
Speaker 1: And then there's an annuler and this is when only
Speaker 1: a small ring like sliver of light is seen from
Speaker 1: the Sun's disc. Yeah, you can you can actually observe
Speaker 1: the Sun's corona sort of like a plasma halo of
Speaker 1: the Sun around the outside of the black disc, which
Speaker 1: is also pretty Oh my god, the world is gonna end.
Speaker 1: Um And that's a solar eclipse. That's how that works. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we did our best with words. Again, look at a picture. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And also I'm gonna make sure to link out to
Speaker 1: our how stuff works articles on the landing page for
Speaker 1: this episode. We have an article about solar eclipses and
Speaker 1: we have an article about lunar eclipses. Both of those
Speaker 1: have illustrations that will really help you at a better
Speaker 1: grash than what's happening here, as well as more in
Speaker 1: depth explanations. Right. Uh. And we're eventually going to get
Speaker 1: back to what eclipses mean to us in a kind
Speaker 1: of like a dark and magical way. But eclipses also
Speaker 1: do have scientific significance, and I think we should examine
Speaker 1: those claims, both the real scientific significance and the ones
Speaker 1: that have been maybe proposed but not quite validated. Yeah. Indeed,
Speaker 1: and something you might not even think about, like I
Speaker 1: had not really thought about the effect of a solar
Speaker 1: eclipse on terrestrial wind wind, Yeah, which of course makes
Speaker 1: perfect sense, right, because the Sun and its effect on
Speaker 1: the Earth is doing a lot of the work in
Speaker 1: UH in stirring our our atmosphere into the weather patterns
Speaker 1: that we perceive. Yeah, I mean a lot of what
Speaker 1: wind is is exchanging gas from one place to another
Speaker 1: because of heat differentials. And when you block out the Sun,
Speaker 1: obviously you're you're creating as kind of disturbance in the
Speaker 1: normal solar radiation levels you're getting in a certain area. Indeed,
Speaker 1: and UH. In two thousand twelve, a study from the
Speaker 1: University of Reading looked into this UH and found that
Speaker 1: solar eclipses due in fact UH slow the wind down
Speaker 1: and make it change directions. This is a team of
Speaker 1: scientists led by Dr Suzanne Gray, and they compared hourly
Speaker 1: measurements of wind speed and direction from a hundred and
Speaker 1: twenty one weather stations across southern England during the August
Speaker 1: total solar eclipse. Then they compared these to a high
Speaker 1: resolution weather forecast model UH that did not account for
Speaker 1: a solar eclipse. So every what they found is that
Speaker 1: everything lined up on these two different accounts. The model
Speaker 1: that the computer model that does not have an eclipse,
Speaker 1: and then reality which has an eclipse, everything lines up
Speaker 1: right until you get to the eclipse point. Uh. So
Speaker 1: they got to see what the weather would have been
Speaker 1: like without the eclipse occurring at that diversion point, and
Speaker 1: these were the results. They found that average wind speed
Speaker 1: across a cloud free region over southern England dropped by
Speaker 1: point seven meters per second, and that the winds direction
Speaker 1: turned counterclockwise by an average of seventeen degrees. So effectively,
Speaker 1: the eclipse was causing the winds to become more easternly,
Speaker 1: and temperatures also fell by about one degree celsius. Oh
Speaker 1: so did they know that the reason why it was
Speaker 1: changing the mother Was it what I was saying earlier
Speaker 1: about changing the temperature and solar radiation or did it
Speaker 1: have more to do with gravity from the sun and
Speaker 1: the moon. Well, I mean, temperatures fall and there's no
Speaker 1: sunlight obviously, as we see in our regular play of
Speaker 1: night and day. So so that was expected. Wind slow
Speaker 1: went atmosphere um close to the ground cool, So that
Speaker 1: was to be expected, But the changes in wind direction
Speaker 1: were a bit of a surprise. I wonder what could
Speaker 1: caused that? Well, I mean a lot of it just
Speaker 1: comes down to just the complexity of of of weather models,
Speaker 1: you know, and uh, and just how many different factors
Speaker 1: are playing into windspeed in direction right, butterflight's the sun
Speaker 1: in New York, you get rained instead of I mean exactly.
Speaker 1: So that's when we get the butterfly effect. We get
Speaker 1: the the idea of chaos area, and that stems out
Speaker 1: of our attempts to forecast weather in this entirely complex system.
Speaker 1: Here's one I've heard. I remember reading somewhere that apparently
Speaker 1: animals go nuts during an eclipse. Now is this true
Speaker 1: or is this a bunch of bunk? I believe this
Speaker 1: is a bunch of buck based on the research that
Speaker 1: I was looking at. Um basically across the board. There's
Speaker 1: there's no there's no you know, um preternatural response by
Speaker 1: animals to eclipse. Uh. They simply tend to react to
Speaker 1: the darkness as if it were occurring during a typical cycle. Uh. So,
Speaker 1: for instance, scientists have observed this in the vertical migration
Speaker 1: of zooplankton in the ocean due to lunar eclipses, as
Speaker 1: well as I mean countless higher animals when it comes
Speaker 1: to solar eclipses. Because of course, that's the more drastic change. Uh,
Speaker 1: that's weird. I mean, intuitively, I would think it would
Speaker 1: make a big difference. Like if you know, animals have
Speaker 1: circadian rhythms, and you know, rhythms that are based on
Speaker 1: the cycle of night and day and that are tied
Speaker 1: to all kinds of biological processes, not just sleep and wake,
Speaker 1: but lots of things in your body. Um, I would
Speaker 1: think if if the darkness comes before you're expecting it,
Speaker 1: that would throw you all out of whack. Well basically,
Speaker 1: I mean it comes down to you have daytime mode
Speaker 1: and nighttime mode, right, and if it seems like suddenly
Speaker 1: it's getting dark, well it's time to shift into nighttime mode.
Speaker 1: And that's that's pretty much what a lot of uh.
Speaker 1: The research out there has shown that that roughly speaking,
Speaker 1: diurnal animals react as though night we're approaching, UH, as
Speaker 1: demonstrated in you know, expedited roosting and betting behavior. And
Speaker 1: in contrast, animals that are normally active at night, nocturnal
Speaker 1: you know, animals like bats and whatnot, they may show
Speaker 1: the reverse pattern. So they're emerging into the open as
Speaker 1: if the as the sky darkens during an eclipse. So yeah,
Speaker 1: there's not there's not animals going crazy in the streets.
Speaker 1: They're not you know, wolves, They're not howling out of madness.
Speaker 1: It's just a gentle shift into sort of early nighttime,
Speaker 1: and then oaps, it's not nighttime after are all go
Speaker 1: back to your regularly scheduled program. Here's something I don't
Speaker 1: know if I've ever seen addressed in the werewolf literature.
Speaker 1: What happens during a lunar eclipse. So let's say you're
Speaker 1: a werewolf. Your transformation is triggered by the appearance of
Speaker 1: the full moon. So full moon's out, but suddenly it
Speaker 1: passes into the umbra, and you've not got a full
Speaker 1: moon anymore, at least not got a normal full moon.
Speaker 1: You've got an eclipsed full moon. What happens to your body?
Speaker 1: I would think that wolf mode is canceled at that point, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I would think you just revert back to a naked
Speaker 1: human in the woods. Yeah, I would think so. I mean,
Speaker 1: maybe even more naked than normal, like nobody hair. You
Speaker 1: would be whatever whatever is on the other side of
Speaker 1: human from the werewolf, like a almost like a ware human,
Speaker 1: a wear human plus that would be my guest. You
Speaker 1: turn into a into a one of those dog robots,
Speaker 1: you know, with the puppy bots. But you know you've hit,
Speaker 1: of course on an important question because we're talking about
Speaker 1: how out eclipses affect animals and of course the human
Speaker 1: animal like that's that's where we see most of the
Speaker 1: more impressive effects. Now we don't turn into wear wolves obviously,
Speaker 1: because of course eclipse has a huge impact on the
Speaker 1: way we perceive the universe. Have we perceive life on
Speaker 1: Earth and what it means? Yeah, it's it's importents we
Speaker 1: were talking about earlier. I mean, we are the animals
Speaker 1: that go crazy when a solar eclipse happens, are a
Speaker 1: lunar eclipse sometimes indeed, we we we are the animals
Speaker 1: that go crazy. I don't know if you've ever seen
Speaker 1: like a video of a large crowd gathered to view
Speaker 1: a solar eclipse. Sometimes there's just like sudden screaming and people.
Speaker 1: It's it's bizarre. I mean, I would be very impressed
Speaker 1: to see a lunar eclipse. I don't think I've ever
Speaker 1: actually watched one. Maybe when I was a little kid
Speaker 1: or something. I don't know, Um, but I wouldn't scream.
Speaker 1: I don't think. You don't think, but you know how
Speaker 1: can you be for certain? I mean, I've never seen
Speaker 1: I don't think i've I've never seen a solar lunar
Speaker 1: eclipse myself, not the full you know, lunar eclipse and
Speaker 1: fort of them full solar eclipse. So you know, I
Speaker 1: think I would behave calmly, but maybe I would just
Speaker 1: really mark out for it. Now. We'll talk more about
Speaker 1: the religion and myth here and a bit after the
Speaker 1: after an upcoming break. But um, according to at least
Speaker 1: one historical account to greet According to a Greek historian, Herodotus,
Speaker 1: and only according to him, keep that in mind. Baileys
Speaker 1: of Melita's predicted an eclipse that occurred during the six
Speaker 1: year of war between the Medians and the Lydians, and
Speaker 1: allegedly this eclipse resulted in a complete ceasefire. Um. So
Speaker 1: that the eclipse occurs, war has been raging for years
Speaker 1: and years and years, and then the eclipse occurs and
Speaker 1: everyone puts down their weapons and they get serious about
Speaker 1: talking peace. Um. Did it happen? I don't know. This
Speaker 1: is the only Herodotus gives us this account. Uh, And
Speaker 1: if it occurred, we're probably talking about an eclipse on
Speaker 1: May five, eighty five as as. This is when a
Speaker 1: total solar eclipse was visible in the Aegean and Asian
Speaker 1: mind or region, but there were no There was no
Speaker 1: mention of where wolves in his account either. But in
Speaker 1: sometimes the the the effects and the ramifications of eclipse
Speaker 1: go beyond life here on Earth. They go into our
Speaker 1: our understanding of how the universe itself works. Yeah, this
Speaker 1: is great. There have actually been examples of people using
Speaker 1: eclipses as a way to devise an experiment that you
Speaker 1: couldn't otherwise perform. So like on Earth, we don't have
Speaker 1: a lot of options for performing experiments that involve incredible
Speaker 1: amounts of mass or energy like now we you know,
Speaker 1: these days we can build like had drawn colliders and
Speaker 1: stuff to generate a huge amount of energy and a
Speaker 1: controlled area. But we didn't always have stuff like that,
Speaker 1: and we still can't generate, you know, enough mass to
Speaker 1: simulate like the mass of a star or the mass
Speaker 1: of a planet or something like that. We can only
Speaker 1: harness so much. But there are very clever ways to
Speaker 1: use quantities like, for example, the mass of the Sun
Speaker 1: to experimentally verify predictions based on new theories. So I
Speaker 1: want to take us to nineteen nineteen when we had
Speaker 1: this wonderful new theory from my old friend Alfred Einstein
Speaker 1: Albert Einstein I believe he was called, but his his
Speaker 1: theory was theory of general relativity. So the idea here
Speaker 1: is that gravity is actually the curvature of what Einstein
Speaker 1: called space time, that that space and time are sort
Speaker 1: of part of the same general four dimensional fabric of
Speaker 1: the universe, and that gravity was actually the effect of
Speaker 1: seeing that fabric warped or distorted or bent by a
Speaker 1: large piece of mass. But how could you test that? Yeah,
Speaker 1: because you're basically saying Einstein's basically saying a sufficiently massive
Speaker 1: object he is going to bend light. Yeah, like you
Speaker 1: could observe it. You could observe the bend in space
Speaker 1: time by seeing how the trajectory of a eam of
Speaker 1: light changes as it goes around a really massive object.
Speaker 1: But you can't put the Sun in a lab. Yeah.
Speaker 1: It's like, if you need to get you need to say, okay, Einstein,
Speaker 1: go get a sun sized object to get a bowling
Speaker 1: ball about that sis, get a flash flight, and let's
Speaker 1: watch the light curve. Right. But you know one thing
Speaker 1: you could do is try to watch what happens when
Speaker 1: a star passes behind the Sun. You could look out
Speaker 1: towards the Sun and see, hey, as the light passing
Speaker 1: the Sun comes towards us, does it get bent an
Speaker 1: amountain by the gravity of the Sun. That would be uh,
Speaker 1: there would be a number corresponding to Einstein's theory of relativity,
Speaker 1: and that would be great if you could check it out.
Speaker 1: But there's a problem. The Sun's too bright, like you
Speaker 1: can't see the light from the stars behind it. At
Speaker 1: least you certainly couldn't at the time. I'm not sure
Speaker 1: if we could now, but there might be a way
Speaker 1: around that. You could look for how the Sun bends
Speaker 1: light coming from stars behind it during a solar eclipse,
Speaker 1: and that's the solution. So Sir Frank Watson Dyson and
Speaker 1: Astronomer Royal of Britain conceived this experiment and then it
Speaker 1: was carried out by a Sir Arthur Eddington. But what
Speaker 1: they did was they they plotted out the course of
Speaker 1: an upcoming solar eclipse, and then they sent teams to
Speaker 1: a couple of locations. One of them was an island
Speaker 1: off the west coast of Africa called Prince cheep A
Speaker 1: I believe and then the other team I think, was
Speaker 1: sent to Brazil and they were supposed to measure what
Speaker 1: happened when the solar eclipse happened, to look for that
Speaker 1: light coming from the star that was passing behind the
Speaker 1: Sun to see if it bent at just the right
Speaker 1: amount to experimentally verify Einstein's theory relativity. And it did,
Speaker 1: which of course made einstein overnight sensation. So we see
Speaker 1: a case of the eclipse being the perfect scenario in
Speaker 1: which to test out a theory regarding uh nass and
Speaker 1: the bending of light. Right, and and at the time
Speaker 1: there was just like no other way we could have
Speaker 1: tested this. Yeah, you can't build a model in which
Speaker 1: to construct it. You have to depend on the model
Speaker 1: that is reality. Of course, the experimenters were very lucky
Speaker 1: that they had like clear weather and stuff when that happens. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean that's why they sent out two experiments, like
Speaker 1: one to two teams to two different locations, because what
Speaker 1: if one was cloudy, right, you needed to fail safe. Yeah,
Speaker 1: what if they've both been cloudy? I want a mess.
Speaker 1: Imagine picking up the check for that experiment. None of
Speaker 1: us would know who Einstein was. Alright, we're gonna take
Speaker 1: a quick breaking When we come back, we're gonna talk
Speaker 1: a little bit about eclipse mythology. We're not going to
Speaker 1: do an exhaustive mention of everything, because every culture has
Speaker 1: some sort of cool eclipse and my but we'll do
Speaker 1: some highlights and then talk a little more ce. Let's
Speaker 1: feel mechanics before we close it out. All right, we're back.
Speaker 1: So when you're talking about eclipse and mythology and folklore,
Speaker 1: you do see the re emerging trend of disorder and chaos. Right.
Speaker 1: It's like we were talking about earlier, where the sort
Speaker 1: of rhythm of night and day is about as basic
Speaker 1: as it gets for a biological organism, Like Disturbing that
Speaker 1: cycle is a I think I called it perverse, and
Speaker 1: I'm going to stick with that. It is a perversion
Speaker 1: of what seems to be biologically necessary. Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: you can you can basically root most of the major
Speaker 1: themes in mythology and folklore down to the basic rhythms
Speaker 1: of life. There's night and day, there's life and death,
Speaker 1: there's birth, there's disease, and the cycles of the seasons,
Speaker 1: maybe the cycles of the seasons. Uh, And so you
Speaker 1: end up personifying these movements and defining features of life.
Speaker 1: And then of course those all those gods end up
Speaker 1: having their own little personal dramas, their own their own offspring,
Speaker 1: their own parental issues, and you end up just filling
Speaker 1: up the entire pantheon and then uh and then driving
Speaker 1: stories out of each one. So yeah, we know that
Speaker 1: the ancient Chinese astronomers were very concerned with being able
Speaker 1: to predict eclipses. Like were some ancient Chinese beliefs about
Speaker 1: the eclipse. Well, one that certainly rises through the surface
Speaker 1: is just the the the basic belief that the eclipse
Speaker 1: occurred when a legendary celestial dragon devoured the sun or
Speaker 1: the moon. Uh. And it was actually tradition in ancient
Speaker 1: China to bang drums and pots and make loud noises
Speaker 1: during the eclipse to frighten away the dragon. And this
Speaker 1: the tradition of this actually carried out into the nineteenth
Speaker 1: century when the Chinese navy would fire cannons during a
Speaker 1: lunar eclipse. That's cool, Yeah, you know, it comes back
Speaker 1: to what you're talking about, like people you know, making
Speaker 1: a lot of noise, sort of freaking out and getting
Speaker 1: excited during one of these uh, these these eclipse events. Uh,
Speaker 1: so you can sort of see see this tradition as
Speaker 1: an example of that where it's just it's a time
Speaker 1: to make a lot of noise and get excited about
Speaker 1: what's happening and into varying degrees. Apply this mythical context
Speaker 1: and uh you know, as far as records of eclipses
Speaker 1: go in China, uh, they date back at least to
Speaker 1: uh C. We see that by looking at oracle bones
Speaker 1: from the Shang dynasty. Wow. Another really interesting one is
Speaker 1: the role eclipse has played in sort of the royal
Speaker 1: mythology of ancient Assyria. So if you look to Assyria
Speaker 1: in the first millennium b C. There was a type
Speaker 1: of lunar eclipse that was actually considered a bad omen
Speaker 1: for the reigning king at the time. So it's like, oh,
Speaker 1: you see this particular type of lunar eclipse, and you
Speaker 1: know the gods have it in for the king. The
Speaker 1: king's going to die. That's bad for your political standing,
Speaker 1: that's bad for the certainly bad for the king. So
Speaker 1: so what do you do? I mean, well, so you
Speaker 1: could come up with some kind of like just standard
Speaker 1: magical rituals to board off the bad omens. But what
Speaker 1: if you're afraid that's not gonna work. Well, So basically,
Speaker 1: how do you get out of cosmic trouble here? How
Speaker 1: do you get us keep your fate? Yeah, as dictated
Speaker 1: by the you know, the celestial objects. They know more
Speaker 1: than we do. I mean, so the way they figured
Speaker 1: out to get around this was a ritual substitute king
Speaker 1: or I believe it's pronounced sharp poi. And so what
Speaker 1: you what you do is you would basically create a
Speaker 1: scapegoat king to absorb the you know, the evil fate
Speaker 1: of the reigning king. And so you dethrone the real king,
Speaker 1: the reigning king, for like a hundred days, and you
Speaker 1: would substitute this fake king to eventually be killed in
Speaker 1: the king's place. And then once the the you know,
Speaker 1: the bad omen is fulfilled, then the king, the actual
Speaker 1: king can safely return to the throne without having to
Speaker 1: worry about his fate. And I understand it like the
Speaker 1: when I first started looking into it, I thought they
Speaker 1: meant that it was more like a rituals like sacrifice
Speaker 1: of the substitute king, But it sounds more and more
Speaker 1: like the substitute king quote unquote dies. So you can
Speaker 1: imagine some form of royal crier appearing before the people
Speaker 1: and saying, oh, the substitute King has died in his sleep,
Speaker 1: thus fulfilling the prophecy and any death related obligations of
Speaker 1: our returning king. Let's hear it for king what's his name?
Speaker 1: Asher banafol back in a come back? Yeah, the bad
Speaker 1: omen is behind us because the substitute king absorbed it all. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that substitute king was such a bad king anyway. It's
Speaker 1: it's I wonder what it would be like to be
Speaker 1: that substitute king. Would you? Would you feel the pressure
Speaker 1: to really get stuff done? Like maybe if I really
Speaker 1: proved myself in my hundred days in office, I can
Speaker 1: that they'll actually keep me. Or is it just sort
Speaker 1: of like, well, heck, they're gonna kill me in a
Speaker 1: hundred days. I'm just gonna ride this out in the
Speaker 1: most hedonistic did that's impossible? Did the substitute king know, like,
Speaker 1: did he think he was having the best day ever?
Speaker 1: That's true? Yeah? Is it? Or is it just the
Speaker 1: priests and the king himself that are aware of this scenario? Yeah?
Speaker 1: I don't know it would I would? I wonder if
Speaker 1: there's any fiction out there that explores this trope? If so,
Speaker 1: I would love to hear about it because it seems
Speaker 1: just perfect for exploitas. Send us that short story. Yeah. Um.
Speaker 1: Another example that came to our eyes was that of
Speaker 1: Apopus in Egyptian religion, ancient Egyptian religion and mythology. And
Speaker 1: this is a moon serpent, the moon serpent that emerged
Speaker 1: from the Great Void at the dawn of time and
Speaker 1: now lives deep within the nile Um the Nile not
Speaker 1: only in the physical sense but also in sort of
Speaker 1: the cosmic sense of ancient Egyptian religion and embodies all
Speaker 1: the dark aspects of the universe. He's night and death,
Speaker 1: he storms and chaos. He conspires was set the god
Speaker 1: of evil and sometimes the ensnare souls in their journey
Speaker 1: between this life and the next, engulfing them and not
Speaker 1: not only just like eating them and just crushing them
Speaker 1: into the non into non existence, reminding me a bit
Speaker 1: of the long Boy in Stephen King's Lissies story. I
Speaker 1: haven't read that. He's is basically a cosmic world serpent
Speaker 1: that lives outside of our reality and he eats you.
Speaker 1: It's like love crafty and levels of bad. This crushes
Speaker 1: you into non existence. Stephen King likes those cosmic world
Speaker 1: eating serpent. He's he's great when it comes to the
Speaker 1: extra dimensional entities, no doubt. Um. So, of course this
Speaker 1: cosmic world serpent from Egyptian mythology. Of course, he wants
Speaker 1: to devour the great sun disk that lights our world,
Speaker 1: which is pulled across the sky by the god Raw
Speaker 1: in his sun boat. Rob's protected, however, by another serpent,
Speaker 1: a good one, and almost always escapes um the ravenous
Speaker 1: of office. Sometimes he almost succeeds, and that's when we
Speaker 1: get into eclipse, but he's always made to vomit everything
Speaker 1: back up again. So in this we see the the
Speaker 1: traditional trope of eclipse as an example of the forces
Speaker 1: of chaos and darkness and evil almost winning but then
Speaker 1: being beaten away by the forces of order. You know,
Speaker 1: I feel like we still have not actually shucked this
Speaker 1: myth of like the monster that eats the sun, because
Speaker 1: we've got it within the past few decades with the Unicron,
Speaker 1: you know, eating planets. Yes, Unicron, And we'll come back
Speaker 1: to Unicron in a minute, because he does line up
Speaker 1: rather nicely with with a particular eclipse, the entity from
Speaker 1: Hindu religion. Let's see, I'm going to see if I
Speaker 1: can find a good YouTube clip of Unicron eating a planet,
Speaker 1: but no Unicron Galactus. Those those guys are very much
Speaker 1: in keeping with these these ancient ideas of cosmic world eaters,
Speaker 1: cosmic moon and sun eaters. It is a truly captivating idea.
Speaker 1: I mean, like, um, it is the sun and entity
Speaker 1: that can be consumed. I mean, if it could, you
Speaker 1: you could sort of see that. It's like it's like
Speaker 1: the ultimate empowering agent. It's you know, it's the pill
Speaker 1: that you take that gives you ultimate power. Yeah. But
Speaker 1: it's also it's almost kind of this idea too that
Speaker 1: like this like nothing can actually eat the Sun. So
Speaker 1: if you have an evil being or creature in your cosmology,
Speaker 1: of course it's going to try to eat the Sun,
Speaker 1: but it can't carry it out and then it just
Speaker 1: falls back to Earth, It falls back to Hell or
Speaker 1: what have you. Now we're kind of jumping around in
Speaker 1: time a little bit, but just to just to make
Speaker 1: sure we hit at least one werewolf. Example, there is
Speaker 1: a werewolf from the folklore traditions of Russia and Belarussia Uh.
Speaker 1: And this is an individual named vessus Lav Uh. The
Speaker 1: Belarussian werewolf. So now, are we actually going to find
Speaker 1: out what happens to a warwolf during the eclipse? Uh? No,
Speaker 1: haply not. But we'll see how an eclipse factors into
Speaker 1: the creation of a werewolf. The idea here is that
Speaker 1: his mother was violated by a serpent, and as a result,
Speaker 1: Vessuslav was born during a solar eclipse, and so he
Speaker 1: became a mighty warrior in life, kind of a warrior magician,
Speaker 1: a warrior, sorcerer, battle wizard if you will. Uh. But
Speaker 1: he also could turn into a wolf. He he was
Speaker 1: essentially a werewolf and could and could take on this
Speaker 1: nocturnal lupine form. Now he's based on a real guy,
Speaker 1: based on the real live vasus Lav of Polot, also
Speaker 1: known as Vasaslav, the source for Vassaslav the Seer really
Speaker 1: lived from ten thirty nine to eleven oh one, and
Speaker 1: he's the most famous ruler of the Polots and briefly
Speaker 1: Grand Prince of Kiev from ten sixty eight to ten
Speaker 1: sixty nine. UM. This more mythic uh likeanthropic version of
Speaker 1: him stems from the twelfth century Slavic epic the Tale
Speaker 1: of Egor's Campaign, and as far as I know, nothing
Speaker 1: in there tells us what happens to Vasuslav during a
Speaker 1: lunar ecliffs man, that would be really cool to be
Speaker 1: immortalized and like epic poetry and turned into a were wolf. Yeah.
Speaker 1: He we were talking about this earlier. Kind of he
Speaker 1: kind of reminds us of the Starks, right right, He's
Speaker 1: like Rob Stark, you know, like they're a legend. He's
Speaker 1: actually just a sort of warrior king, but their legends
Speaker 1: surrounding him. All. He can turn into a wolf in
Speaker 1: the full moon, and then of course there's throat ripping. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the bloody time delicious viscera. And this brings us to
Speaker 1: one of my favorite and again, you know, we're continuingly
Speaker 1: to see this trope of the moon or sun consuming entity.
Speaker 1: This brings us to the Hindu god ra who or
Speaker 1: a Frau ra who is. He's known in Thailand and
Speaker 1: he has just a fabulous stories. But he's easily my
Speaker 1: favorite of all these different eclipse entities because he was
Speaker 1: once a proud osherra Demi, god of immense power and hunger.
Speaker 1: But you know, he's a bit flight he's a little
Speaker 1: too ambitious. He wants immortality because you know, within this
Speaker 1: particular cosmology, demi gods are just another realm and the
Speaker 1: wheel of sam Sara. So demi gods may be super powerful,
Speaker 1: and they may live a long long time compared to
Speaker 1: human lives, but they're ultimately going to die. So Ra
Speaker 1: who drinks the divine nectar that's going to give him immortality.
Speaker 1: But before the this gulpful of this magical liquid could
Speaker 1: pass his throat, all powerful Vishnu jumps in and decapitates
Speaker 1: him for the transgression. Okay, so he cuts his head off,
Speaker 1: severing the esophagus before it trickles down the esophagus, right
Speaker 1: before it can actually go all the way down, So
Speaker 1: just cuts it off there. Oh man, that's such a bummer,
Speaker 1: Like how low would it have to get to have
Speaker 1: an effect? You have to fully digest it? Um. I
Speaker 1: think it's the idea. It's kind of like an Achilles
Speaker 1: kind of a situation. You know, Achilles is only as
Speaker 1: powerful as how far he's dipped in the water, and
Speaker 1: so you know he'll didn't make it end, so the
Speaker 1: heel is vulnerable, So cut him off before the liquid
Speaker 1: could pass into the body. So the body's gone, but
Speaker 1: the head, the head has the power So the idea
Speaker 1: here is that the power of the nectar makes the
Speaker 1: disembodied head of ra who immortal man. And and so
Speaker 1: this pleased and fallen god continues to seek his revenge
Speaker 1: on the two planetary deities who ratted him out to Vishnu.
Speaker 1: And that's the sun in the moon. So as such
Speaker 1: ravenous rah who regularly ascends into the sky and attempts
Speaker 1: to swallow the sun or the moon. But since he's disembodied,
Speaker 1: his meal falls back out again, so he succeeds. He
Speaker 1: eats that moon, he eats the sun, but he has
Speaker 1: nobody's just ahead with some neck flesh, so he swallows
Speaker 1: it and comes right back out the next step. That
Speaker 1: is a genius like that is an awesome myth. Now
Speaker 1: in Thailand, he's he's seen as more cut off at
Speaker 1: the stomach, however, as opposed to just ahead, so he's
Speaker 1: more of just a half god instead of astead of
Speaker 1: just ahead of a god in those motifs. Now, where
Speaker 1: this gets interesting. Uh, an area of this myth that
Speaker 1: I really find fascinating is that you see this, uh,
Speaker 1: this exchange between science and myth regarding Rahu and and
Speaker 1: his status. So there's always been less conflict between science
Speaker 1: and Hinduism due to a variety of reasons. But you
Speaker 1: could you can hone in on distinct linguistic differences between
Speaker 1: teleological and causative wise, so just the language of talking
Speaker 1: about why something happens, there's the why is in like
Speaker 1: what was the actual cause of this event? And then
Speaker 1: there's the why in the sense of what is its
Speaker 1: reason from a cosmological standp Oh, it sounds almost like
Speaker 1: a parallel between causality and synchronicity. Yeah, yeah, in a sense,
Speaker 1: because it's it's kind of like if I say why
Speaker 1: did I get sick? You could say, well, the reason
Speaker 1: you were sick is because you ate that food at
Speaker 1: that restaurant last night that was a little off. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And then then there's the why that you would ask, like,
Speaker 1: why God am I allowed to get sick on this
Speaker 1: most important day of my life when I have this
Speaker 1: job interview and my marriage on the same afternoon to
Speaker 1: humble you, yeah exactly. So the idea here is that
Speaker 1: in in the in English especially, there's there's more room
Speaker 1: for confusion here between your wins, whereas in Hinduism they're
Speaker 1: depending on linguistic models that have a clear distinction between those. Wise,
Speaker 1: I think that's really interesting. Yeah, um, anyway you shake it, though,
Speaker 1: we do see this interesting interplay between raho and astronomy
Speaker 1: of the time, because the Indian astronomy was pretty advanced
Speaker 1: UM and its scientist Rajesh Kosher discusses in his paper
Speaker 1: Rahu and Ketu in mythological and astromological context UM treatments
Speaker 1: of the disemb adi ra who actually evolved with the
Speaker 1: scientific knowledge of the time. Uh. Yeah, So go back
Speaker 1: two thousand years and Indian astronomers divided the cosmos into
Speaker 1: seven geocentric planets or graha, and then they set aside, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, particularly disastrous phenomena like meteor's comments and eclipses,
Speaker 1: and they called those outpata. So on one hand, you
Speaker 1: had us a cyclical order, the graja the planets, and
Speaker 1: then you had uh news, chaos and die are omen
Speaker 1: in the forms of outpata. But of course, as we
Speaker 1: know now, eclipses follow a pattern. We can predict them,
Speaker 1: we can prove it out. They're actually more in line
Speaker 1: with order than in chaos. But it's not necessarily easy
Speaker 1: to see that pattern, It's right, and that you might
Speaker 1: only notice after you've collected multiple generations worth of data. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: it took it took a while before someone realized that.
Speaker 1: And in four the great Indian mathematician astronomer Ari Bahada
Speaker 1: introduced a mathematical theory of eclipses that that really pretty
Speaker 1: much nailed it. Uh, just our two lunar nodes, earth
Speaker 1: shadows and moon shadows, so there's no demons required. But
Speaker 1: of course that means that there ra who needs a
Speaker 1: promotion along with his headless body that ends up being
Speaker 1: known as Kettu. So instead of them being chaotic pata,
Speaker 1: they're upgraded to order Draha. So while they're not actually
Speaker 1: considered planets, they don't get like full planetary status. Was
Speaker 1: of course they're not planets, it's just you know, the
Speaker 1: way things are lining up. They took on the distinction
Speaker 1: of being shadow planets, so that they graduated from becoming
Speaker 1: sort of like intruders on the cosmic plane to uh
Speaker 1: more like shadowy residents. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, they were really
Speaker 1: seen as more. They said, hey, we can't really classify
Speaker 1: the eclipse is just pure pure chaos, because clearly there's
Speaker 1: a pattern. Clearly it's part of the ordered system of
Speaker 1: our planets. And they realized that this. Even in four,
Speaker 1: I'm sensing more parallels with the Unicron. I mean, indeed
Speaker 1: you get when you look at Unicron, especially Unicron and Ra,
Speaker 1: who are basically the same entity, right down to just
Speaker 1: being disembodied heads, right, Because what did Unicron do in
Speaker 1: the eighties six Transformers movie tried to eat the Earth right,
Speaker 1: Transformers stopped him and he's just reduced to a head. Wow. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so I've I've looked into it. I found no clear
Speaker 1: example where someone says, yeah, we based a Unicron on
Speaker 1: Hindu God, indu entity. But it seems there's just too
Speaker 1: much coincidence there to ignore. But of course it's not
Speaker 1: just the ancient religious cosmology that assigns true like magical
Speaker 1: significance to eclipses. There are still religious movements today that
Speaker 1: are looking for the religious significance of eclipses. One example
Speaker 1: that I remember hearing about is the so called blood
Speaker 1: moon prophecy that's popular in some circles of evangelical Christianity
Speaker 1: these days. Yeah. The idea here is that it revolves
Speaker 1: around a hatred series of lunar eclipse that's four lunar
Speaker 1: eclipses within within a cycle. Uh. You know, three is
Speaker 1: rare enough, but here you would have you would have
Speaker 1: four showing up in a in a row. And it
Speaker 1: only occurs a few times within a century. For example, Um,
Speaker 1: in this century, it occurred in two thousand three, two
Speaker 1: thousand four, two thousand fourteen, and uh a few more
Speaker 1: times before the turn of the next century. So it's
Speaker 1: a rare enough account that you'll end up, you know,
Speaker 1: hitting the jackpot with four. Okay, But like, why is
Speaker 1: this popular right now? Well? Uh, it all comes down
Speaker 1: to a two thousand thirteen book, Four Blood Moons Something
Speaker 1: is about to chain, or let me say, four Blood
Speaker 1: Moons colon Something is about to change. That sounds like
Speaker 1: a like a great like rock album title. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: what It did not come from rock and roll, though,
Speaker 1: it came from the pastor of the Cornerstone Mega Church
Speaker 1: in San Antonio, Texas, John Hagey. Uh I know John
Speaker 1: Hagy you do, Okay, not personally, but yeah, you see
Speaker 1: his picture. You look at my people go oh that
Speaker 1: guy from I've seen him preaching on television. You don't
Speaker 1: know him personally, no, okay. Um. So Hagey suggests that
Speaker 1: there's a link between a new Total Lunar eclipse a tetrid,
Speaker 1: and the biblical process of prophecy about the end times. Okay,
Speaker 1: so it's certainly a case, yes, that we're still looking
Speaker 1: to the movements of the sun and moon. We're still
Speaker 1: looking at at the eclipse, and even with all of
Speaker 1: our modern scientific understanding of what's actually happening, if we're
Speaker 1: trying to understand like this wider sense of not only
Speaker 1: why is that our things occurring in the universe in
Speaker 1: that positive sense, but also in the grander magical sense
Speaker 1: and the meaningful sense, you know, we can't help but
Speaker 1: look to the movement of the sun and the moon
Speaker 1: and look to these to these anomalies that occur. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think there's something very interesting about this historical progression
Speaker 1: of us seeing eclipses originally as sort of like a strange,
Speaker 1: unpredictable events that that violated our our sense of patterns,
Speaker 1: and then finally coming to understand them as part of
Speaker 1: larger and longer patterns. It's sort of a microcosm of
Speaker 1: the whole progression of science in a way, like taking
Speaker 1: events that seem to represent chaos and disorder and then
Speaker 1: fitting them into the system of order that you finally
Speaker 1: come to understand, and of course it's an analysis of
Speaker 1: eclips and obsession of the clips continues on into a
Speaker 1: present day fiction and fiction of the modern era. Uh.
Speaker 1: For instance, Asimov's Nightfall, which exists, of course, is both
Speaker 1: a short story and there's a full novel version that
Speaker 1: he did with Robert Silverberg. Yeah, but it concerns the
Speaker 1: fictional planet. Uh. It's called lag Ash in the short
Speaker 1: story and Kyle Gash in the novel. And this a
Speaker 1: fictional planet very much like Earth for the most part,
Speaker 1: you know, like a sci fi Earth. You can think
Speaker 1: of it just kind of almost like a star trek Earth,
Speaker 1: where it's basically Earth at things that there are a
Speaker 1: few factors at play that make it interesting. Right, You've
Speaker 1: got some wrinkles on your head or something. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: it's kind of like that. It's at the ring. Goals
Speaker 1: here are that the the planet has six sons, which
Speaker 1: keep the planet illuminated in varying levels of daylight all
Speaker 1: the time. It sounds like too many suns. It does
Speaker 1: sound like too many suns, but the result is that
Speaker 1: there's no total darkness on the planet. And so on
Speaker 1: one hand, the idea of their being total darkness just
Speaker 1: seems like no one can buy For the most part,
Speaker 1: no one can buy that. They're like, how would that
Speaker 1: even work? Like the creatures depend on light. If there
Speaker 1: were periods of darkness that it would just be devastating,
Speaker 1: But it also means that no one has ever seen
Speaker 1: the stars and so. But but then there when they
Speaker 1: start looking back through through historical accounts and uh, and
Speaker 1: some individuals are you know, trying to figure out how
Speaker 1: celestial mechanics work. There's a belief that every two thousand
Speaker 1: years or so, darkness comes to the planet of of
Speaker 1: Lagash or cow Gash, and with it falls whole civilizations.
Speaker 1: You know, I can almost see that kind of thing
Speaker 1: in that scenario being a self fulfilling prophecy. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: uh it does. It is it's almost kind of like
Speaker 1: the idea of the eclipse blown up or or and
Speaker 1: and also kind of reversed that the world has always
Speaker 1: uh bathed in in varying levels of light, and but
Speaker 1: then every two thousand years there is a night into
Speaker 1: a world that has never known night. Would it just
Speaker 1: be madness? Would it be the would it be the
Speaker 1: banging in the streets times a thousand? Like, how would
Speaker 1: we deal with that and that's what what's what Asimov's
Speaker 1: novel explores, or in a much simpler level, you can
Speaker 1: look at Mark Twain's A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court,
Speaker 1: in which a time traveling Yankee saves his life in
Speaker 1: the Middle Ages by remembering the occurrence of an eclipse
Speaker 1: and claiming to have caused it. Oh well, I mean
Speaker 1: you could tie that into events in in real history actually,
Speaker 1: where you know, people have obviously been able to use
Speaker 1: their knowledge of the ordered uh sequence of eclipse cycles
Speaker 1: to impress people. Right, if you know that an eclipse
Speaker 1: is coming and other people have no idea that a
Speaker 1: elipses are on a schedule, basically you can appear to
Speaker 1: have tremendous magical power. Yeah, it's and even today, if
Speaker 1: you work in a you know, kind of uninformed workplace,
Speaker 1: like nobody's really reading Scientific American or anything or the newspaper,
Speaker 1: you might be able to pull this one off. Still,
Speaker 1: wait for the next cellar eclipse, go to work, and
Speaker 1: then claim to be a wizard. You'll surely get that
Speaker 1: promotion you've always wanted. Yeah, I mean that's a rule,
Speaker 1: and that's a business one on one always promoted was
Speaker 1: that's your solid advice right there, all right. So there
Speaker 1: you have it, the science of eclipse, you know, a
Speaker 1: brief study of some of the mythology surrounding the eclipse
Speaker 1: and just what it what it means to humanity as
Speaker 1: a whole. You would like to explore more on this
Speaker 1: topic again, check out that landing page for this episode
Speaker 1: and you'll find it at stuff to blow your mind
Speaker 1: dot com, along with all the other episodes we've ever reported,
Speaker 1: along with videos, blog posts, links out the social media accounts.
Speaker 1: You name it. And if you've got a story you'd
Speaker 1: like to share about an eclipse you've ever seen or
Speaker 1: fascinating eclipse mythology you've read about, please email it to
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