0:00

On April 8th, parts of Canada,

0:02

Mexico, and the United States will

0:04

experience a total solar eclipse. For

0:07

those of us in the path of totality, the

0:09

skies will darken. And if it's

0:11

not cloudy, you might even be able to

0:13

see the corona, the outer atmosphere of the

0:15

sun. I'll be at

0:17

the Fairbanks Museum with Planetarium Director

0:19

Mark Breen for a live special

0:21

broadcast, and you can listen. Or

0:24

watch! It's live on April

0:26

8th from 3 to 4 p.m. Eastern

0:28

time. Join us online from

0:30

anywhere in the world at vermontpublic.org.

0:34

You'll be able to call in and

0:36

ask your questions live. That's April 8th

0:38

from 3 to 4 p.m. Eastern. Just

0:40

go to vermontpublic.org. But

0:44

why is supported by Progressive? Progressive helps

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you compare direct auto rates from a

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variety of companies, so you can find

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find a rate that works with your

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1:01

in all states or situations. This

1:24

is But Why, a podcast for curious

1:26

kids from Vermont Public. I'm Jane Lindholm.

1:29

On this show we take questions from curious

1:31

kids just like you, and we find interesting

1:33

people to answer them. On

1:36

April 8th, 2024, something

1:39

is happening in the skies over

1:41

North America. A

1:43

total solar eclipse. It's

1:46

being called the Great American Eclipse because

1:48

the path of the total eclipse cuts

1:50

across parts of Mexico, almost

1:53

all the way across the U.S. from west to

1:55

east, and then into eastern Canada. I

1:58

think it should be called the Great North American Eclipse. eclipse,

2:00

personally, but they're calling it

2:02

the Great American Eclipse. What's

2:04

happening during a solar eclipse is that

2:07

the moon lines up perfectly between the

2:09

Earth and the sun to block out

2:11

our view of the sun. And

2:14

it creates a shadow on the Earth, making it

2:16

look kind of like nighttime, but just for a

2:18

couple of minutes. When

2:20

the moon completely blocks the sun,

2:22

that's called totality. Eclipses

2:25

of the US states of

2:27

Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Missouri, the

2:30

teeniest sliver of Tennessee, Illinois,

2:32

a tiny bit of Kentucky, Indiana,

2:34

Ohio, a really tiny bit of

2:37

Michigan, Pennsylvania, New York, Vermont,

2:39

New Hampshire, and Maine are all in

2:41

the path of totality. But

2:44

even if you're not in the path of

2:46

totality, if you live in North America, almost

2:48

all of you will have a chance to

2:50

see at least a partial eclipse. Today

2:53

we're going to learn more about what's happening during

2:55

a solar eclipse and what you can expect on

2:57

April 8th. And we're also

3:00

going to talk about how to watch the

3:02

eclipse safely, because you can't just watch it

3:04

happening with your bare eyes any

3:06

more than you would look at the sun on a normal

3:08

day with your bare eyes. So

3:10

let's start with the basics. Hello,

3:13

my name is Jake. I

3:15

am five years old and I live in

3:18

Altoona, Pennsylvania. And

3:24

my question is, why

3:26

does the moon, sun,

3:28

and earth all line

3:30

up for an eclipse? Hi,

3:33

my name is Camila. I

3:35

live in Dursbury, New York. And my

3:38

question is, what is a

3:40

solar eclipse and why people are going to

3:42

it? Hi, my name is

3:44

Frederick. I'm nine years old. I live

3:46

in Dallas, Texas. And my question is,

3:48

where are eclipses and how do they

3:50

happen? As I mentioned, an eclipse happens

3:52

when the moon passes between the earth

3:54

and the sun and blocks the light

3:56

of the sun. But to

3:59

get more details, we'd talk to Martina

4:01

Arndt, who's an astrophysicist. So

4:03

I study the sky and

4:05

the stars, and I really

4:07

focus actually on the sun these days, so

4:10

that makes me a solar physicist. Professor

4:12

Arndt knows a lot about solar eclipses, and

4:15

she has even seen a lot of them.

4:17

So we thought she'd be a great person to help

4:19

answer your questions. The basic definition

4:21

of an eclipse is that one

4:25

celestial body moves in front of the

4:27

other one, and in doing so, blocks

4:29

some of that object's light, and

4:32

it eclipses some of that light. And so

4:34

we have what are called eclipsing binary stars,

4:36

where you might have two stars that are

4:38

orbiting around each other, and when one passes

4:40

in front of the other, it

4:43

blocks some of the light. Or

4:47

there are stars that have exoplanets

4:49

going around them, and those planets will block

4:52

out some of the light, and that's how

4:54

we actually detect a lot of

4:57

these exoplanets that are being discovered, is that there's

4:59

something moving in front of a star, eclipsing it,

5:01

and blocking some of the light. And the one

5:04

that you're referring to is

5:07

a total solar eclipse, where we have

5:09

the moon coming between the sun and

5:11

the Earth, and blocking this

5:14

really, really bright star. Because

5:17

you mentioned celestial bodies,

5:20

and celestial just means up in the

5:22

sky, and so these are two things

5:24

that move in front of one another,

5:26

or one moves in front of the

5:28

other, and somebody at a third location

5:30

can see what's happening, or see the

5:33

shadow. So when a

5:35

solar eclipse happens for

5:38

us to see it on Earth, it's the moon

5:40

moving in front of the sun, and blocking the

5:42

light. And sometimes you get

5:44

a partial eclipse, where you only have

5:46

a part of the moon blocking the

5:48

sun, because the path is not direct.

5:51

But on April 8th, for many people,

5:53

they're going to see totality, where the

5:55

sun is totally blocked. And

5:58

Nora wants to know, what is the sun?

6:00

Why do the edges of the sun get so

6:02

bright in a solar eclipse? Given

6:05

that the moon is blocking out

6:07

the entire sun, why do

6:09

the edges of the sun get so

6:12

bright? If it's

6:14

supposedly all blocked out? Yeah, and

6:16

I love this question that Nora has. The

6:18

sun is always bright, okay, and then there's

6:21

the surface of the sun, and

6:23

then above that is an atmosphere,

6:25

like the Earth has an atmosphere.

6:27

The atmosphere is not as dense,

6:29

which means there's not as many

6:31

particles smooshed together in one place,

6:34

and as a result it's very hard to

6:36

see unless we block out the sun. And

6:39

when the moon does block the sun, what we do

6:41

get to see is a tiny,

6:43

tiny little bit of the sun's

6:46

surface, the

6:48

chromosphere and the photosphere, and that part is

6:50

really the bright part that I think she's

6:52

talking about, and it can look very red,

6:55

and it's

6:57

just that that material is denser

7:00

than the upper atmosphere, which

7:02

is the one that we're studying. One

7:04

thing we should probably note even

7:06

before that question is when

7:08

we study the Earth and the moon

7:11

and the sun in school, we learn

7:13

that the Earth is much smaller than the

7:16

sun, and the moon is even smaller than

7:18

that. So if the moon

7:20

is very, very, very small compared to

7:22

the sun, how can it block out

7:24

all the light of the sun? Yeah,

7:28

so what I do in my

7:30

classes is I have students hold

7:32

their thumb up and try to

7:34

maybe block out a light bulb, and if you

7:36

hold the thumb far away, it doesn't do as

7:38

nice of a job of blocking out the light

7:40

bulb as if you bring your thumb

7:43

really close to your eye, and it looks so

7:45

much bigger, right? And the fact that

7:47

the sun is so far away, it looks

7:49

smaller, and because the moon is much closer

7:51

to us, even though it's small, it looks

7:53

bigger, and the geometry

7:55

works out perfectly that we have the

7:58

moon being essentially looking like a star. the same size

8:00

as the Sun. Okay, so what

8:02

do we know so far? In

8:05

a solar eclipse, the moon blocks out

8:07

the light of the Sun, but you

8:09

can still see the Sun's atmosphere radiating

8:11

out from the shadow created by the

8:13

moon. Now not everyone

8:15

will get to experience this total eclipse,

8:18

but most people living in North America will

8:20

see, as we said, at least a partial

8:22

eclipse. But it actually starts out

8:24

in the Pacific. That's Mark Breen. He's

8:27

a meteorologist, someone who studies the

8:29

weather, and he's also the director

8:31

of a planetarium at the Fairbanks

8:33

Museum in St. John's Bay, Vermont.

8:36

He knows a lot about the path this solar

8:38

eclipse is going to take. It

8:40

takes a few thousand miles before it

8:42

gets to Mexico. It cuts across northern

8:44

Mexico and then through Texas.

8:46

It goes through big cities like Indianapolis,

8:50

then into Cleveland, Buffalo, and

8:52

then right across northern Vermont.

8:55

And then slightly into Canada for a little while

8:57

as well. Yes, it continues on right

8:59

into Atlantic Canada. If you live

9:01

right in the center of that path, you'll get

9:03

three minutes or more of totality when the moon

9:05

is totally covering the Sun. If

9:07

you're on the outer edge of totality, you might only

9:10

get a minute or even less. And

9:12

if you're outside the path of totality, you'll

9:14

see a partial eclipse, which is

9:16

still pretty cool. Jimmy

9:19

asks, why do eclipses happen

9:21

very rarely? So they

9:23

worked out an average that in any one

9:25

location, it's about every 400 years. Oh

9:28

my gosh, every 400 years. Yes. But

9:30

there's a place in Tennessee where the

9:33

eclipse in 2017 will

9:35

basically happen again this year. So they

9:37

get two eclipses in seven years. Martina

9:40

Arndt says there are a lot of factors

9:42

that need to line up for an eclipse

9:44

to be visible in any one location. Well,

9:47

I have good news for Jimmy because actually

9:50

an eclipse happens every month. And

9:53

I want to have to clarify this. It happens

9:55

every month because the moon comes between the Sun

9:57

and the Earth every month and it casts the

9:59

shadow. And unfortunately though, the

10:02

shadow is most of the time either

10:04

above the Earth or below the

10:06

Earth, so we'd have to jump really high to try

10:08

and see it, which we can't do. So

10:10

what we do is we wait for those two

10:13

times a year where the moon and the sun

10:15

and the Earth are lined up so that the

10:17

shadow from the eclipse falls on the Earth. Okay?

10:21

Now, so

10:23

that says that we should in principle

10:25

have two solar eclipses every year, and

10:27

sometimes we do. However, just like with

10:30

this conversation, this example I gave with

10:32

the thumb, that if the

10:35

moon is farther away, it looks smaller, and if

10:37

the moon is closer, it looks bigger, and in

10:39

fact the moon isn't always the exact same distance

10:42

away from us. So we need the perfect combination

10:44

of the shadow falling on the Earth

10:46

and the moon being the right distance

10:48

away from us to be able to

10:50

get a total solar eclipse. And that's

10:52

why they feel rare, right, because we

10:54

need those conditions to happen. But

10:58

I like to think of the fact that if I could jump really

11:00

high, I'd get an eclipse every month. Well,

11:02

and then you also have to be in

11:04

the right part of the world at the right

11:06

time. So a total solar eclipse could be a

11:08

once-in-a-lifetime event depending on where you live. Yes.

11:11

Or if you have the

11:15

ability to travel the world like I have,

11:17

you get to travel wherever the eclipse shadow

11:19

takes you. What happens if

11:22

there's bad weather, clouds or snow or rain

11:24

during an eclipse? What do you see? Well,

11:27

we can't see the sun, but we can

11:29

see that when the sun gets covered by

11:31

the moon, it's still covering the sun even

11:33

though we can't see it. So it still

11:35

makes the skies darker. And so

11:38

you will notice, even if it's

11:40

cloudy, that the skies will darken.

11:43

And it's an interesting

11:45

kind of darkness. It's not like middle of

11:47

the night darkness, but it's a

11:50

grayish darkness, a dark gray, if that

11:52

makes any sense. A

11:54

few of you have questions

11:56

about animals and eclipses. I've

12:08

seen animals respond to the

12:11

change in light in different ways. My

12:13

favorite was when I was in Zambia,

12:16

one of the eclipses, there were some hippos

12:18

near where we were set up. And the

12:20

hippos, because it's so hot out, like during

12:22

the day, they like to sit and sleep

12:25

while they lie down and they sleep. And

12:28

they relax and they tend to do more

12:30

things at night. And when it got dark

12:32

during the eclipse, they started to kind of

12:34

get up and move around and they were

12:37

like, oh, it's not so hot anymore.

12:39

Because you'll also find out that the

12:41

temperature goes down. So you'll see the

12:43

skies get darker, but you'll also feel

12:45

a difference in temperature, by quite

12:48

a few degrees actually. Hello, my

12:50

name is Charlotte. I am seven years

12:52

old. I was in Scottsdale, Arizona. My

12:55

question is, do animals have their

12:57

eyes on the solar eclipse? Charlotte,

13:00

I hope these animals listen to me. They

13:03

need to be wearing eclipse glasses during

13:05

the one and a half hours before the

13:07

sun is totally covered and for the one

13:09

and a half hours after the sun is

13:11

totally covered. Because

13:14

that's the time when you can hurt your eyes.

13:16

And so yes, animals could. I

13:18

don't think that many of them look up though. Or

13:21

if they do and it starts to be

13:23

a little too much, then they look down. If it

13:25

starts to hurt, then they look down. Sure. I

13:28

mean, I have to tell the truth. I've sometimes

13:30

looked at the sun by accident. They know if

13:33

I take off my

13:35

sunglasses or something and I look up to see

13:37

if I can see a bird that's going by

13:39

or where the helicopter might be coming from. And

13:42

I look at the sun and I know how

13:44

uncomfortable it is. And I'm sure if

13:46

it's ever happened to any of the

13:48

listeners, they know how uncomfortable it is. And

13:51

you're absolutely right. They're probably smart enough to say, you know,

13:53

that's not good for me. I'm not going to

13:55

do it anymore. We're animals too, of course. And

13:57

we should definitely not be looking at the sun.

14:00

even during an eclipse without

14:02

taking safety precautions. Let

14:04

me say that very clearly. You

14:06

should never look at a partially

14:09

eclipsed sun without protection for your

14:11

eyes. Looking at a

14:13

partial eclipse without eye protection can lead

14:15

to permanent and serious eye damage. And

14:18

you may not know it's happening because your

14:20

eyes won't necessarily feel pain. So

14:23

if you can get a pair of solar

14:25

eclipse glasses, you could put those on

14:27

and then you can look up at the sun safely.

14:30

Maybe your school or local library

14:32

or community organization has some solar

14:34

eclipse glasses. And there

14:36

may be a group nearby that has special telescopes

14:39

with solar filters that are safe to look through.

14:42

But any camera or binoculars or

14:44

telescope or even cell phone that you

14:46

wanna take pictures of or look at the

14:48

eclipse through needs to have a solar filter

14:50

too. Now, if

14:52

you're in the path of totality and the

14:54

sun is fully covered, meaning there is no

14:57

light showing, just that corona we talked about,

15:00

then it is safe to remove your eclipse

15:02

glasses and take a brief look. You

15:04

might even see that corona, the outer atmosphere

15:06

of the sun. But before

15:09

you take off your eclipse glasses, check in with

15:11

an adult and make sure they tell you

15:13

it's safe to do so. Now,

15:15

if you don't have a pair of eclipse

15:18

glasses, that doesn't mean you're out of luck

15:20

for viewing the eclipse. It just might mean

15:22

that you have to look down instead of

15:24

up in order to see it. You can

15:27

find things around your house that

15:29

have little holes in them. So I'm thinking like

15:32

a cracker that might have holes in it

15:34

or the pasta strainer that your parents might

15:36

use to strain their pasta. There's lots of

15:38

little holes in there. If

15:41

you take something that has a small, lots

15:44

of small holes on it, and if you don't have

15:46

any of that, then take a pen and poke some

15:48

holes through a piece of paper and

15:51

you put that out there

15:53

so that the sky is above the

15:55

paper and you look below the paper and

15:57

look below the colander and you will see

15:59

little tiny... images of partial solar eclipses. And you

16:01

can take a picture of that if you wanted

16:03

to. But it's a nice, safe way to do

16:05

it, because you're looking down at the ground and

16:07

not up at the sky. And

16:09

another thing, if you don't have any of those

16:12

things, maybe there are trees near you. Because trees,

16:14

when they have leaves, and in April, hopefully there'll

16:16

be some trees with leaves, those

16:19

leaves overlap. And they make little tiny

16:21

pinhole cameras just naturally. And so if

16:23

you look under a tree, you should

16:25

see lots of little partial solar eclipses

16:28

on the ground, dancing around as the leaves

16:30

move. And it can be really beautiful. Coming

16:33

up, we'll learn more about the

16:35

corona, the sun's atmosphere, that's still

16:38

visible during a total solar eclipse.

16:42

But first, a message for the adults who are listening. Support

16:44

for our show comes from Oak Meadow. How

16:47

is school going this year? If

16:49

the answer is not great, maybe

16:52

it's time to rediscover the joy of learning.

16:54

Oak Meadow provides student-centered homeschooling

16:57

curriculum and teacher-supported distance learning

16:59

for K through 12. To

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learn how homeschooling can work for

17:04

your family, visit oakmeadow.com. This

17:07

is But Why, a podcast for curious kids.

17:10

I'm Jane Lindholm, and today we're learning

17:12

about solar eclipses, how they happen,

17:14

and why people are so excited about the

17:17

Great American eclipse on April 8. Scientists

17:20

are especially excited about solar eclipses

17:22

because it's a chance for them

17:24

to observe the atmosphere of the

17:26

sun, which is tough to

17:28

do normally. That's one of

17:31

the things Martina aren't studies. The sun

17:33

itself has two main

17:35

parts. It has the

17:38

sphere, the ball itself, which is the part

17:40

that you might see at sunrise or sunset

17:42

in the clouds. And above that,

17:44

we have an atmosphere, like the Earth has an

17:47

atmosphere. And this

17:49

atmosphere is called the corona on the

17:51

sun, and it's a

17:53

lot fainter than the surface of the sun.

17:57

And if we want to study this

17:59

corona, upper atmosphere, we have to

18:01

block out the surface of the sun

18:03

because we have some interesting

18:05

problems we're trying to solve. The corona

18:08

is hotter than the surface of the

18:10

sun. The sun is spitting out particles

18:13

in two categories of speeds. We got fast

18:15

and we've got slow and we don't know

18:17

why that happens. And so there's

18:19

a lot of scientists working to figure

18:22

out the answers to these questions and

18:24

they come up with models and ideas. And

18:26

anytime you have a theory like

18:29

this, you maybe do some computer

18:31

simulations, you do the math and you

18:33

say, okay, I think this is the

18:35

explanation. And then what we need to

18:37

do is to get data to test

18:39

this hypothesis and see how close we

18:41

are. And then if

18:43

it's not right, then we go back and do it

18:45

again. So the only way to get

18:47

data from the corona is

18:49

during a total solar eclipse because the

18:52

sun is so, so, so bright, okay,

18:56

that we can get data

18:58

close to the solar surface and further away.

19:01

Now, there are some instruments in

19:03

space that take

19:07

– they have their own version of their thumb and

19:09

they block out the sun, right? But

19:11

even space images don't get

19:13

us enough information about what's happening

19:15

between the surface of the sun

19:17

and the atmosphere of the sun.

19:19

We need that information in that

19:22

crucial zone between the two. Why

19:25

is it important to learn these things about the

19:27

sun? Well, I

19:29

just like learning personally. I think it's a

19:32

wonderful thing to try and understand the world

19:34

around us. So there's two ways to answer

19:36

this. I would say

19:38

that if we want to understand

19:40

the universe around us and how things

19:42

work, we have a sun, which

19:45

is a star, literally in our

19:48

backyard, that we can take data from on a

19:50

regular basis. And if we can understand

19:53

our star, then we can understand what

19:55

happens in other places. And

19:57

I just think that's human nature to

19:59

try and understand. understand the universe

20:01

in which we live. That

20:04

being said, there are also reasons for

20:06

us to understand the sun because it

20:08

interacts with the earth that affects us.

20:10

I mean, we've got sunburns, we've got,

20:13

you know, other things that the sun

20:15

does for us and does to

20:17

us. One of them

20:19

is that all these particles that are being sent

20:21

out by the wind are

20:23

interacting with the earth's magnetic field, and

20:25

that's how we get the northern lights

20:28

and the southern lights, and so to

20:30

understand that, we,

20:33

those particles can also knock out power grids,

20:35

and so then our TVs wouldn't

20:37

work, and you know, all this, that

20:39

would be bad. And then there's another

20:41

component, too, that if we can predict

20:43

when the sun is

20:46

going to be sending us a

20:48

large quantity of charged particles, it

20:50

allows us the opportunity to protect any satellites.

20:52

You know, we can have them turn their

20:54

back on the sun for a little bit.

20:56

It also is a way to, you know,

20:59

alert maybe astronauts who are up in space

21:01

that a big storm is coming, and I

21:03

think also the

21:05

more we understand, it'll help us kind

21:07

of be prepared for, let's say,

21:09

if we ever do make it to Mars, right,

21:12

to be able to go to Mars and understand

21:14

and predict what might be happening when the sun

21:16

does a particular something. Well, that

21:18

has me convinced. Martina Arndt has

21:21

already seen a dozen total eclipses around

21:23

the world, all as part of her

21:25

work, but for most

21:27

of us, a total eclipse is

21:29

a once-in-a-lifetime experience. That's

21:32

been true throughout human history, and

21:34

throughout human history, we've been trying to

21:37

make sense of what's happening in the

21:39

sky. Before people

21:41

understood the science of eclipses, they

21:43

attached many different meanings and myths

21:45

to them. Thomas

21:47

Hockey is a professor of astronomy at

21:49

the University of Northern Iowa and the

21:52

author of a book called America's First

21:54

Eclipse Chasers. We asked

21:56

him to tell us a little bit about some

21:58

of the earliest written records of human humans experiencing

22:01

eclipses. We find

22:03

this in civilizations all over

22:06

the world, trying

22:08

to keep track of

22:11

eclipses, Mesopotamia and China,

22:14

India, the Mayans

22:16

and other cultures. The

22:19

goal was always the same, to try

22:21

to find some pattern in eclipses.

22:25

You're saying early civilizations realized this

22:27

was likely not a one-time event,

22:30

or something that they wanted to make

22:32

sure that they could be prepared for, should it happen

22:35

again. Exactly. If

22:39

you over many centuries kept track

22:42

of them, you might have a

22:44

chance of at least,

22:46

if not predicting, at least saying

22:48

when an eclipse might

22:51

occur, and then take what you

22:53

consider to be necessary steps,

22:56

which involved certain

22:58

rights, loud

23:01

noises to scare, whatever was

23:03

taking the eclipse away, or

23:06

in the case of the Babylonians,

23:08

who thought this was an omen

23:10

directed at the king, they

23:13

would pull someone off the street, put

23:15

him on the throne, crown on

23:17

his head, hide the real king.

23:20

And during that eclipse

23:22

peril, it was this

23:25

nobody who was the pretend

23:27

king, and supposedly would take whatever

23:30

bad effect the

23:33

eclipse had in store. Tell

23:35

us a little bit about some

23:38

of the other associations that civilizations

23:40

had with eclipses before we

23:42

had the science to know what

23:45

was actually happening. It

23:47

often involved something,

23:50

China, for instance, a dragon devouring

23:53

the sun, the

23:57

partial eclipse before a

23:59

total eclipse. kind of looks

24:01

like someone has taken a bite

24:04

out of the Sun and

24:09

the eclipses of course would end.

24:12

They would eventually, the

24:15

monster would disgorge

24:17

the Sun but there

24:19

was no guarantee of

24:22

that. A fire

24:24

after all will not

24:26

necessarily rekindle itself

24:29

so I'm sure there was a great deal of relief when

24:32

whatever had the Sun let go. How did

24:35

we start to gain the

24:37

knowledge about what's actually happening

24:39

scientifically and astronomically during an

24:42

eclipse? While many

24:44

civilizations reached the point of

24:46

at least being able to

24:48

anticipate possible eclipse,

24:52

it was the Greeks who had a

24:56

theory of science

24:58

that probably got closest. It

25:00

involved great shelves

25:04

spinning about the earth with

25:06

the various bodies involved, mounted

25:09

on them, the ideas they were made

25:11

of crystals so you could see through

25:13

them or some preferred

25:15

a wheel-on-wheel arrangement kind of

25:17

like a carnival

25:20

ride. Such systems did

25:23

do a fair job of predicting

25:26

where things were in the sky

25:28

under normal times, less

25:31

successful in the

25:33

exact alignment that was

25:36

necessary to predict an

25:38

actual solar eclipse. You

25:41

know today we teach

25:43

our children that this is

25:46

the moon moving in between

25:48

the earth and the Sun and just

25:50

temporarily blocking out the light of the

25:53

Sun because of the specific place the

25:55

moon is at this moment. And there's

25:57

a lot of hard facts, hard

25:59

facts. science that

26:01

we use to describe language around

26:04

the solar eclipse. And yet,

26:06

there are also still cultural

26:08

significances to a solar eclipse that

26:10

go beyond just what we know

26:12

about the path of the Earth

26:14

and the Moon. What

26:16

is the central gut feeling that

26:19

people have when they see this

26:21

remarkable we still have

26:23

within us, I think, that primal

26:27

feeling about eclipses from

26:30

as long as we

26:32

have those records going on for

26:34

millennia. And that is a not

26:38

just, oh,

26:40

that's interesting in the sky, but

26:43

it evokes a

26:46

very visceral, all

26:48

body feeling that is difficult

26:51

to describe. And

26:53

I'm always not successful

26:55

in telling people about

26:57

that. I end up just

27:00

saying, yeah, you got to go, you got to

27:02

go check out one of these. And then

27:04

you'll see why people's interaction

27:10

with total solar eclipses

27:13

since the beginning has

27:15

been strong. That's

27:18

true of Martina Arndt. Remember how

27:20

I said she has chased a whole bunch of eclipses? She

27:22

says the feeling of wonder at seeing one doesn't go away.

27:25

But having good weather certainly helps

27:28

the experience. I have traveled to 12 and it's

27:30

brought me to six of the seven continents on

27:36

the Earth. The only one I haven't been to

27:38

is Antarctica. And I would say of those 12

27:40

eclipses, we had good weather for probably half of

27:43

them. When we were in Australia, we thought we

27:46

had clear skies. But then because the sun was getting

27:48

covered and we were by the ocean, it was almost

27:51

like a little weather change instantaneously happened. And then it was

27:53

windy and raining and blowing

27:56

and we didn't get to see anything. And I think

27:58

that's a very interesting question. anything. And at my

28:01

first eclipse in Mongolia, it snowed. Here we

28:03

went, we traveled all halfway around the world

28:05

with all of this equipment and we set

28:07

up and it was snowing and you couldn't

28:09

see anything. But then, you know, in

28:11

2017, in the

28:14

last Great American eclipse that came across the

28:17

United States in the other way, we

28:20

had beautiful clear weather and it

28:22

was perfect. Given that you've seen

28:24

so many of these, is it

28:26

still exciting in a visceral human

28:28

way to see a total eclipse?

28:31

Yes, it absolutely is. And I'll tell

28:33

you that people have a variety of

28:35

responses to these sorts of

28:37

events. Some people

28:39

really are just overwhelmed,

28:41

some people are scared.

28:44

And for me, I have to be honest with you,

28:47

I see it as beautiful but I have a job

28:49

to do when I'm there which is taking the data.

28:51

And I usually stand there and go, oh my

28:53

goodness, we got it right. We were in the

28:55

right place at the right time. And it just

28:57

gives me a real appreciation for how

29:00

we understand already so much about

29:02

nature that we can predict where to stand and

29:04

it works. It's pretty amazing. I

29:06

hope those of you in the Path of Totality

29:08

get to see this amazing site. Get

29:11

your eclipse glasses ready or make a

29:13

pinhole viewer. We have a video

29:15

up on our But Why YouTube channel and

29:17

on our Instagram page showing you how to

29:19

make one. Even if

29:21

you're outside the Path of Totality, you

29:23

may be able to see a partial

29:26

eclipse. So have an adult help you

29:28

look up your location and find out

29:30

what you'll see. And if you go

29:32

to aboutwhykids.org or vermontpublic.org, you can listen

29:34

to me broadcast live during the

29:36

solar eclipse from 3 to 4 p.m.

29:39

Eastern Time on April 8th. That's

29:42

it for today. Thanks to Martina Art,

29:44

Mark Breen and Thomas Hockey for teaching

29:46

us about eclipses. As

29:48

always, if you have a question about

29:50

anything, have an adult record it. It's

29:52

easy to do on a smartphone using a

29:55

voice memo or voice recording app. Then

29:57

your adult can email the question to

29:59

questions. at butwhykids.org.

30:02

We can't answer every question we get, but

30:04

we love hearing from you. But

30:07

Why is produced by Melody Baudette, Kiana

30:09

Haskin, and me, Jane Lindholm at Vermont

30:12

Public. We're distributed by

30:14

PRX. Our theme music is by

30:16

Luke Reynolds. Special thanks this

30:18

week to David Littlefield, Joey

30:20

Palumbo, Kaylee Mumford, and Kyle

30:22

Ambus. We'll be back

30:24

in two weeks with an all

30:26

new episode. Until then, stay curious.