The Science Of The Moon, The Sun, And The Eclipse

Summary

All Of It (WNYC)

Episode: The Science Of The Moon, The Sun, And The Eclipse
Host: Kusha Navadar (in for Alison Stewart)
Guest: Rebecca Boyle, Science Journalist & Author
Date: April 8, 2024

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Overview

This episode dives into the cultural, scientific, and emotional significance of solar eclipses—specifically, the solar eclipse occurring on April 8, 2024. Host Kusha Navadar is joined by science journalist and author Rebecca Boyle (joining live from the path of totality in Hot Springs, Arkansas) to explore humanity’s relationship with eclipses, their importance in advancing science, safety tips for viewing, and why these celestial events evoke such a profound reaction.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Setting the Scene: The Day of the Eclipse [02:21–03:38]

• The episode airs just 45 minutes before the solar eclipse reaches the New York City area, where viewers will see an 87% coverage.
• The “path of totality”—the line from Dallas, TX, to Burlington, VT, where the sun will be fully obscured—sets up the context for why the eclipse is so special.
• Rebecca Boyle checks in from Hot Springs, Arkansas, in the path of totality, sharing that skies are clear, but it’s not yet dark:

  “We have an incredibly clear sky… it’s not going to be total here for another hour or so. It just looks like sunlight. As we get closer, it will look a little weird... kind of metallic.”
  — Rebecca Boyle [03:38]

2. Eclipses in the History of Science [04:13–06:29]

• Eclipses aren't just spectacles—they're historically pivotal for scientific discovery:

  • Newton’s Theory: Boyle recaps how the 1715 eclipse in England was predicted based on Newtonian gravity, with Edmund Halley (of comet fame) doing the mathematical work:

    “Edmund Halley is the one that actually did the math. This is kind of called Halley’s eclipse… it was really close. He was within a few minutes of the forecast...”
    — Rebecca Boyle [05:32]

  • Confirmation of Universal Laws: The event confirmed the predictive power of Newton’s theories—demonstrating gravity’s universality by accurately predicting the moon’s shadow.

3. Why Eclipses Matter for Science [06:29–08:46]

• Boyle explains what makes eclipses scientifically valuable:
  • Seeing the Sun’s Corona: Eclipses allow direct observation of the sun’s outer atmosphere (the corona) without specialized instruments.
  • Research Opportunities:

    “It’s a really unique opportunity to study not only the sun and the sun’s atmosphere but the Earth’s atmosphere, the movement of the moon, the orbit of the moon around the Earth, the movement of the sun across the sky, which means the rotation of the earth.”
    — Rebecca Boyle [06:41]

• Modern-Day Experiments:
  • NASA launches sounding rockets to observe atmospheric effects.
  • Studies of the impact on the energy grid (noting the role of solar power).
  • Telescopes across North America focus on the corona to study its properties during the rare few minutes of totality.

4. Listener Questions: Safety, History, and Folklore [08:46–12:40]

• Ancient Eye Damage?
  Caller Stephen asks if ancient observers suffered vision damage:

  “It’s unlikely that anybody just looked directly at it. You just sort of inherently don’t look at the sun.”
  — Rebecca Boyle [09:42]

  • The sun is “so bright… I think it’s really kind of hard to convey how many photons are coming out of that thing… we have evolved, luckily, to not want to look at that directly and harm ourselves.”

• Safe Viewing Without Glasses:

  • If not in the path of totality, don’t look at the sun at any partial phase.
  • Creative advice:

    “Go out and get a pasta colander… and look at the shadows… instead of a bunch of dots, you’ll see a bunch of crescents… or look under the leaves of a tree and you’ll see the same thing.”
    — Rebecca Boyle [11:52]

5. Eclipses and the Human Experience [12:40–13:55]

• Emotional Impact:
  • Boyle reflects on the transformative, almost mystical aspect of seeing an eclipse—how it can move viewers to tears or cheers:

    “It’s a really profound experience, and it’s a strange thing to witness the sun vanishing. Being banished from the daytime sky for even just a couple of minutes is very eerie and very otherworldly…”
    — Rebecca Boyle [12:50]

  • Recounting the 2017 eclipse:

    “People were cheering, people were crying, people were kind of, you know, hollering and flipping out.”
    — Rebecca Boyle [13:34]

  • Some become “eclipse chasers” to relive this unique sensation.

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Notable Quotes & Timestamps

• On predicting eclipses:
  “Newtonian gravity is kind of the way that people used to predict this event... Halley is also the person who predicted the return of the comet that bears his name, Halley’s comet.”
  — Rebecca Boyle [05:08]

• On why not to look at the eclipse:
  “Even a small sliver of the sun is very powerful… you will burn your retinas and you will not feel that happening.”
  — Rebecca Boyle [11:52]

• On the psychological effect:
  “We can pinpoint down to the second when this is going to be taking place across the entire continent. It still is something that’s very, very transformative.”
  — Rebecca Boyle [12:55]

• On corona viewing safety:
  “During the total phase… it’s safe to look at the sun directly because it’s not there. You’re just seeing the corona. And the light of the corona is much more diffuse and much more kind of ghostly looking.”
  — Rebecca Boyle [10:39]

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Important Segments (Timestamps)

• On-site update from Path of Totality: [03:38]
• History of Eclipses in Science (Newton, Halley): [04:57–06:29]
• What makes eclipses scientifically valuable: [06:29–08:46]
• Listener Q&A – Eye damage & folklore: [09:14–11:29]
• Viewing safety and creative alternatives: [11:29–12:40]
• Emotional/transformative power of eclipses: [12:40–13:55]

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Tone & Atmosphere

The discussion is accessible, engaging, and richly informed, blending awe for the cosmos with practical advice and historic perspective. Rebecca Boyle’s tone is warm, enthusiastic, and clear; Kusha Navadar fosters inclusivity by welcoming listener participation and steering the conversation at a lively pace.

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For more insights on eclipses or to revisit this moment, Rebecca Boyle’s book “Our Moon” explores our ongoing relationship with the moon and its celestial phenomena.

Transcript

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[Kusha Navadar]

Welcome back to all of it. I'm Kusha Navadar in for Alison Stewart, and we are just about let's look at the clock 45 minutes away from the start of today's solar eclipse in our area. You might have heard Brian Lehrer talking with Radiolabs Molly Webster about it earlier during Brian's show or maybe during one of our newscasts. And you'll be hearing about it right after the show when we'll be carrying two hours of special coverage of the eclipse from npr. But just in case you're just tuning in, the moon is about to almost block out the sun, and I'm saying almost, but it's a lot around New York City. We'll be getting about an 87% partial eclipse and if you draw A gently curved line from Dallas, Dallas, Texas, to Burlington, Vermont. That line, that's the path of totality. So, folks, closer to that line, we'll see the sun completely disappear from the sky. Joining us now is Rebecca Boyle, a science journalist with a focus on space and author of the book Our How Earth's Celestial Companion Transformed the Planet, Guided Evolution and Made Us who We Are. And she's joining us from inside the path of totality. Rebecca, welcome to all of it. Do you a flashlight? How dark is it right now?

[Rebecca Boyle]

Thanks for having me. Yeah, no, it's not dark at all, actually, because the partial eclipse is just starting here and I'm in Hot Springs, Arkansas, and we have an incredibly clear sky. We've gotten lucky here, unlike a lot of the US Today, I think. But yeah, it's not going to be total here for another hour or so. So it just looks like sunlight. As we get closer, it will look a little weird. Like the light will get kind of metallic and look like it's kind of being filtered through smoky Gl maybe. But not until the moment the moon is fully in front of the sun will the sky turn dark.

[Kusha Navadar]

Well, listeners, if you've got any questions about the science of the eclipse, we can take those calls. Give us a shout at 212-433-9692. It's 212433, WNYC. We can take questions about humanity's relationship with eclipses throughout history or questions that you have for Rebecca. Give us a call. 212-433-9692. And Rebecca, you know, we've talked a lot about what the ECL in previous segments. You just went through it a little bit about what folks can expect. I'd love to talk about the science that it has helped develop because I am really into that part of it. I understand, for instance, that an eclipse helped Sir Isaac Newton prove his theory of gravity. Is that right?

[Rebecca Boyle]

Yeah. So actually, eclipses have been used to prove the sort of two prevailing theater theory theories of gravity. And yeah, the first one is Newton's theory of universal gravitation. So his, his kind of theory, broken simply, is that all objects attract one another and their attraction is proportional to their size and their distance from each other. And so in 1715, we had a solar eclipse that was visible across England. Actually, it was the first, it was the first one that Newtonian gravity predicted. And it was able to be seen kind of right in that, in that same area where Newton did his work and it was used. So Newtonian gravity is kind of the way that people used to predict this event. But Edmund Halley is the one that actually did the math. This is kind of called Halley's eclipse. And he is also the person who predicted the return of the comet that bears his name, Halley's comet. And, you know, didn't leave, didn't live to see either of those actually. Well, didn't live to see the return of the comet, but he was able to predict this eclipse and it was really close. He was within a few minutes of the forecast of what actually happened and made a corrected map of the path that the moon's shadow would trace over the earth. And it was kind of a nice confirmation that that gravity is this universal force as Newton had predicted.

[Kusha Navadar]

What is it about the eclipse that allows big science to be done?

[Rebecca Boyle]

It's a really unusual thing to be able to see only the atmosphere of our star and to be able to perceive it in the middle of the day like that, without any kind of coronagraph, which is the term for an instrument that scientists can use to block the sun's light. It's a really unique opportunity to study not only the sun and the sun's atmosphere, but the Earth's atmosphere, the movement of the moon, the orbit of the moon around the Earth, the movement of the sun across the sky, which means the rotation of the earth. All of these things can be studied with incredible precision because of this incredible cosmic coincidence of the moon blocking the sun.

[Kusha Navadar]

So today, is there going to be a lot of, you know, experiments, science questions that scientists are going to try to answer? What are some of those questions they're going to tackle today?

[Rebecca Boyle]

Yes, scientists are really excited about this. And even though it's cloudy, they'll be able to do some really interesting work during the moments of totality and in the partial phases of the eclipse, which I about an hour and a half before and after this four minute phase of totality, NASA is sending up a bunch of sounding rockets into the atmosphere today to look at what happens to some of the clouds, to look at what happens to atmospheric temperatures. And there's going to be some interesting studies on the energy grid, actually, because, you know, we're moving a lot in the US toward using renewable energy, using solar power. And when the sun is gone for four minutes, that's going to have an effect on the grid. So there's some interesting science happening there too. And there's going to be some constant attention on the sun's atmosphere itself. The corona, which is this beautiful sort of halo of flame that circles the shadow of the moon, and that's the part of the sun that reaches out and touches us. I mean, the sun illuminates Earth and is the provider of all life on this planet. But the atmosphere is the way that we directly experience it through the solar wind. And it's actually kind of mysterious how it works and what it does and how it affects us. And this is a great way to sort of see it and in real life in full color. So telescopes around North America are going to be pointed at this event to study the corona in all kinds of detail.

[Kusha Navadar]

Wow. Listeners, we're talking to Rebecca Boyle, who's a science writer and author of the book Our Moon How Earth's Celestial Companion Transformed the Planet, Guided Evolution, and Made Us who We Are. And we're talking about the very imminent eclipse that's coming up. And we have opened up the phones. If you have questions for us, you can call us or text us. The number is 212-9692. Let's go to Stephen in Cornwall, New York. Hi, Steven. Welcome to the show.

[Stephen (Caller)]

Hello. Glad to be here. I was wondering, in ancient times, an eclipse was an awesome experience for people. They had no idea about it. Is there any evidence that people had vision problems afterwards since they didn't know that looking at the eclipse could cause damage to the eyes?

[Kusha Navadar]

Oh, interesting question, Stephen. Thank you so much for that, Rebecca. Any evidence of that? That seems like something that might be hard to track down, but maybe, you know.

[Rebecca Boyle]

Yeah, it would be hard to track down if there are specific instances of people, like being blinded by the light of an eclipse. It is known that the moon was thought to be involved in curing certain ailments of the skin. Actually, people thought that you needed to pray to the moon or use the moon for aid to be able to heal skin problems, like things like leprosy back in Babylonian era, for instance. But honestly, the sun is still so bright during partial phases of the eclipse that it's unlikely that anybody just looked directly at it. You just sort of inherently don't look at the sun. Even when it's partially eclipsed, it's still so bright. It's hard to describe how bright the sun is. I mean, it's the sun. It's like, obviously it's the brightest thing that you can imagine, but I think it is really kind of hard to convey how many photons are coming out of that thing and how every spectrum of light is flowing out of it into your retinas. And we have evolved, luckily, to not want to look at that directly and harm ourselves. So people probably didn't look at it very long, even in ancient times when they weren't sure what was happening during the total phase, when the sun is, you know, gone, essentially, it's safe to look at the sun directly because it's not there. You're just seeing the corona. And the light of the corona is much more diffuse and much more kind of ghostly looking. It's not going to do any damage to your eyes. There are phases right at the very beginning and right at the very end when you see these phenomena called Baily's beads. And this is actually just the sun shining through the craters of the moon and around the mountain valleys of the moon. And when you see that, that's when you should look away because it's about to get very bright again. But even a 1% sliver of the sun is so bright that you wouldn't want to look at it directly.

[Kusha Navadar]

And I think this is a perfect time to just put an important notice out to listeners viewing safety during the eclipse. Like you said, even a small sliver of the sun is very powerful. And we did get a call that we unfortunately can't get to from Michelle in Milford, but she was asking, if I don't have glasses, how can I look safely? So, Rebecca, break us. Break that down for us. What should we doing? What should we do?

[Rebecca Boyle]

Yeah, don't look at the partial phases. If you're not in the path of totality, you will burn your retinas and you will not feel that happening. It's not. There are no sort of nerve endings in the retina. It is a nerve cell, but you don't feel that the damage. So you would not know if you're causing damage to your. But you shouldn't look at it directly. What you should do is go out and get a pasta colander or like whatever kind of strainer you might have in your house and stand with your back to the sun, hold the pasta colander over your head or next to your side and look at the shadows that it casts on the ground. Instead of a bunch of dots, you'll see a bunch of crescents. The crescent sun will be on the ground in the shadows. And if you're somewhere where leaves are out on trees yet, just look under the leaves of a tree and you'll see the same thing, just a smattering of crescent suns on the ground.

[Kusha Navadar]

And Rebecca, it's almost showtime. But quickly, before we let you go, can you talk a bit about how celestial events like the eclipses can have a psychological or emotional impact on us quickly.

[Rebecca Boyle]

I think it's a really profound experience, and it's a strange thing to witness the sun vanishing. Being banished from the daytime sky for even just a couple of minutes is very eerie and very otherworldly. And even now we know exactly what's happening. We can pinpoint down to the second when this is going to be taking place across the entire continent. It still is something that's very, very transformative. I mean, people come away from these experiences really kind of changed. In the last eclipse. I was in Paducah, Kentucky in 2017, and there was a crowd of people kind of gathered on the river and, you know, there was a little festival and people had music and. But when it happened, when the. The shadow of the moon kind of fell on us, this curtain of darkness descended. People were cheering, people were crying, People were kind of, you know, hollering and flipping out.

[Kusha Navadar]

Really impactful.

[Rebecca Boyle]

Sounds like it's a really profound thing. And, you know, there are people who are sort of changed by this experience and dedicate themselves to chasing more of them to get that sort of adrenaline rush of the sun vanishing.

[Kusha Navadar]

Well, we'll have to leave it there. Rebecca Boyle is science writer and author of the book Our How Earth's Celestial Companion Transformed the Planet, Guided Evolution, and Made Us who We Are. Enjoy the eclipse. Rebecca, thank you so much for joining us.

[WNYC Station Announcer]

Us.

[Rebecca Boyle]

Thanks for having me.

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