The Sun’s Many Strange Neighbors (re-run)
This post originally ran in the summer of 2017.
I'm re-running it in advance of a post that will appear in two weeks that will talk about
Johannes Kepler’s ideas about the nature of stars.
Distances to and Luminosities of nearby stars. Click on the table to enlarge.
The table at right* shows the distance to and luminosity of the twenty stars closest to our solar system. Distance is measured in light years (meaning that if a star is 10 light years from Earth, then it would require 10 years to reach that star, travelling at the speed of light). Luminosity, or power output, is given in terms of the Sun’s output (so a star with the same power output as our Sun would have a luminosity of 1). The stars in this table are the solar system’s twenty nearest neighbors.
Notice what a wimpy lot our neighbors are. Yes, there are some respectable stars among the bunch—obviously Sirius A, with 22 times (22x) the Sun’s power output, is a serious*~ star. Sirius is the “Dog Star” in the constellation Canis Major, and the brightest star in the night sky. It appears bright to us both because it is very close and because it is quite powerful. Procyon, the “Little Dog”, weighing in with over 7x the Sun’s luminosity, is another respectable star. And then there are the stars of Rigil Kentaurus (“Alpha Centauri”), which are very comparable to the Sun. There is also Epsilon Eridani (a barely-visible star in the barely-visible constellation Eridanus, the River) with a bit more than a quarter the Sun’s power, and then...
Wolf 359 in Star Trek
...and then there are a bunch of lousy excuses for stars! The star Wolf 359 (Star Trek fans will know this as the site of a battle in which a single Borg ship destroyed an entire fleet of Federation star ships) puts out power equal to 0.000019 Suns. The Sun is 53,000 times more powerful than Wolf 359. The Sun is 105,000 times more powerful than Gliese 866 Ab. These stars are not the brightest bulbs in in the proverbial box!
In fact, of the 100 nearest stars,* only four are more powerful than the Sun—Sirius, Procyon, Rigil, and Altair in the constellation Aquila (the Eagle). And only 11 of the nearest 100 are more powerful than Epsilon Eridani. And only 22 have at least 1% of the Sun’s luminosity. That’s right, 78 of the 100 nearest stars can’t muster 1/100th of the Sun’s power output. All 78 of them together would not equal the Sun. In fact, as many of them are like Wolf 359 (perhaps better named “Chihuahua 359”—“Wolf” being too strong a name), all 78 would not come close to equaling the Sun.
The universe seems to be full of low-power stars. The general name given to such stars is “red dwarfs”—“dwarfs” for obvious reasons, “red” because they are not very hot and glow with a dull red color. You will often hear that the vast majority of all stars are red dwarfs.
Yet not a single star that you see in the night sky is a red dwarf. Of the 100 nearest stars, about 15 are visible to keen unaided eyes under very dark, non-light-polluted skies.~* Every single one of those “naked eye” nearest neighbor stars puts out more than 1% of the Sun’s power. Thus every single star that you see with your unaided eye—even the faintest star you might see under pristine, dark skies—would rank among the most luminous 22 of our neighboring stars.
In other words, when you look up at the night sky, you do not see the “average Joes” and “average Janes” of the stars. You see only a select group of stars—the rich and the powerful, the best and the brightest. That’s something to consider: the stars we see are not at all representative of what the vast majority of stars really are. The universe as a whole is not really that much like the stuff we see with our eyes.
This would have surprised many astronomers from the past few centuries. After Copernicus’s heliocentric theory became widely accepted, astronomers tended to assume that what we see is representative of the universe as a whole. For example, as noted in a recent post, Galileo regularly assumed that the stars were just like the sun, and his view was not uncommon. And, as noted in another post from a while back, astronomers also commonly assumed that other planets would be just like Earth. Thus you will find in astronomy books from the past few centuries illustrations showing the universe being full of innumerable star systems like our solar system.
![An illustration from the 1742 Atlas Coelestis of Johann Gabriel Doppelmayr showing the stars as being suns. The Latin reads, “Kind viewer, for your consideration we display to you in this little sketch the immense swarm of FIXED STARS, which shine not with reflected light of the Sun, in the manner of the dark bodies of the Planets, but all shine as SUNS, with light innate to them. And without doubt all are surrounded by their own Planets, in the fashion of our Sun, to which they impart their radiance. These have not been placed there in vain by the Creator.... [Benevole Spectator, Innumerabilem FIXARUM exercitum isthoc pusillo schemate tibi considerandum proponimus, quae non velut opaca Planetarum corpora, mutuatitio Solis lumine, sed innata sibi luce totidem SOLES radiant suis quoque adinstar Solis nostri haud dubie Planetis, quibus radios suos impertiantur, circumdatae, non enim frustra illuc a Creatore positas esse arbitramur....]” This image is of a modern reproduction of the Atlas Coelestis that is in the Archives and Special Collections of the Ekstrom Library of the University of Louisville (Kentucky).](https://www.vofoundation.org/blog/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/UniverseOfStars.jpg)
An illustration from the 1742 Atlas Coelestis of Johann Gabriel Doppelmayr showing the stars as being suns. The Latin reads, “Kind viewer, for your consideration we display to you in this little sketch the immense swarm of FIXED STARS, which shine not with reflected light of the Sun, in the manner of the dark bodies of the Planets, but all shine as SUNS, with light innate to them. And without doubt all are surrounded by their own Planets, in the fashion of our Sun, to which they impart their radiance. We suppose these have not been placed there in vain by the Creator.... [Benevole Spectator, Innumerabilem FIXARUM exercitum isthoc pusillo schemate tibi considerandum proponimus, quae non velut opaca Planetarum corpora, mutuatitio Solis lumine, sed innata sibi luce totidem SOLES radiant suis quoque adinstar Solis nostri haud dubie Planetis, quibus radios suos impertiantur, circumdatae, non enim frustra illuc a Creatore positas esse arbitramur....]” This image is of a modern reproduction of the Atlas Coelestis that is in the Archives and Special Collections of the Ekstrom Library of the University of Louisville (Kentucky). Image used with permission.
And, when we consider that astronomers today believe that the universe as a whole consists primarily of “dark matter” and “dark energy”—things that we cannot even find on Earth at all—we understand that neither our planet, nor our Sun, nor even our very matter and substance, is particularly representative of the universe as a whole. It’s a strange universe out there. It is not at all like that endless procession of Sun-like systems that astronomers envisioned not so long ago.
The locations in the night sky of (from left to right) Procyon, Sirius, Rigel, and Epsilon Eridani.
*All data on nearby stars are from Celestia, version 1.6.1.
*~Pun absolutely intended.
~*That is sixth magnitude or brighter (for those familiar with the magnitude system).
The Lion King’s Sky
I saw the new “Lion King” movie last month. Whether you think it is a good movie or a bad movie, you would have to agree that it is an impressive bit of computer animation. The artists at Disney worked hard to get so many details so realistic. As I watched the movie, I could almost believe that animals can talk.
So why did Disney put so little realism into the sky? As an astro-nerd, I found myself scoffing and sneering at pretty much every sky scene. For example, I think in one shot the sun rose straight up, as though Pride Rock was close to the equator (which makes sense). But then in another scene, the sun rose at a noticeable angle—up and to the right, as though the location were significantly further north. And I did not recognize any constellations among the stars in the movie sky.
I can’t be sure about those two things. I do not have a photographic memory. I might not have been looking close enough in the case of the constellations. And I did not pirate/record the film while in the theater, so I can’t double check! However, the worst sky thing in the “Lion King” was something I can be sure of. This worst thing was how the film showed oodles of stars coming out against a dark sky while another part of the sky was still light. It even had stars coming out against a light sky. I can be sure about this, because I found a clip of this on the web, and grabbed a screen shot. See? Zoom in if you need to.
Take a look under the limbs of the tree especially, where the sky is golden in color but oodles of faint stars appear nonetheless. This is utterly absurd. The sky never looks anything like this. Isn’t it strange how this movie, that features such realistic-looking animals on such a realistic-looking Earth, has such an unrealistic-looking sky?
Of course, maybe I just noticed the unrealistic sky because I am an astronomer. Maybe zoologists would say that the animals in the “Lion King” are no more realistic than the sky. Maybe botanists would say the same thing about the plants in the movie. Maybe hydrologists would say the same thing about the waterfalls and flowing streams. Maybe, if you had enough nerds watching the movie, you would learn that the computer animation is not so impressive after all.
But the lion cubs sure looked realistically cute and furry to me! And the sky did not look realistic at all.
Religious Scientists on Vatican Observatory Faith and Science
There is new thing on the Vatican Observatory Faith and Science archive! We have added a new section—“Religious Scientists”. We mean “religious scientists” in a broad sense: scientists who are people of faith, believers in God.
There are two parts to this new section. The first part is a listing of different scientists whose work is featured in the archive. For each scientist, there is a link that takes you to the different entries in the archive related to that scientist. Some of the scientists in the listing are well-known—Isaac Newton, for example. Others are not so well known—William F. Rigge, S.J., for example.
The second part is a simple listing of religious scientists. Information about each scientist is limited. However, the second part includes many more scientists compared to the first part.
It is important to understand that both parts are listings of religious scientists, not saintly scientists. Scientists are not always saintly. Scientists are also often independent-minded and confident of their own views, so sometimes even very faith-filled scientists will find themselves at odds with their fellow believers. Isaac Newton is one such example. He is arguably the greatest of all scientists, but he actually wrote more on religion that he wrote on science. His faith was deep. But he tended to keep his religious ideas to himself, as his own ideas about the nature of the Trinity were unorthodox, and definitely not in line with his fellow Anglicans. And, of course, he was prone to thinking that his ideas were right!
Of course I find all the work on of the Vatican Observatory and Vatican Observatory Foundation interesting and valuable, but I take particular interest in material like the “Religious Scientists” section. This is because of my work in a community college, where I deal with students from so many different backgrounds. I have discussed in this blog the problem of reaching religious students who come into a science class very wary of science, owing to what they have heard about science being opposed to their faith. This wariness is a barrier to their learning science. But at the same time, these same students have a great potential to learn and contribute: their wariness arises from the fact that they actually care about what they are learning (as opposed to the many, many students who simply take a science class because “it is required”, and who care little about science at all); but unlike the other group of students who care and have great potential to learn and contribute (namely, those students who really love science), these wary students have a skepticism of science that prompts them to ask the best, most probing questions. And what does a great job of breaking down the barrier and dissolving the whole “science-religion” mythology, whether it be for my students or maybe for someone reading this blog post? Scientists who were religious believers themselves!
So click here for the Vatican Observatory Faith and Science archive, and then click on “Religious Scientists”, and enjoy. The “Religious Scientists” section has a heavy focus on Catholic scientists, obviously, but you will find plenty of non-Catholic Christian scientists as well, and some who are Muslim or Jewish.
The Sun Illuminates Nuestra Señora de la Purisima Concepción
Two days ago, on the Feast of the Assumption, a remarkable and very cool thing happened at Mission Nuestra Señora de la Purisima Concepción de Acuña in San Antonio, Texas—at least it happened if the skies were clear. The sun illuminated the floor in front of the church’s altar, and the wall behind the altar, in a particularly cool fashion, at around 6:30 pm local time. This sort of illumination happens every Feast of the Assumption, and has recently become somewhat famous in San Antonio, gathering some attention from local media in the past few years.
The sun illuminating the interior of the church at Mission Concepción on August 15, 2015. Photograph courtesy of Fr. David Garcia—used with permission.
Mission Concepción is one of a series of missions established by Spanish Franciscans along the San Antonio River during the early eighteenth century. The church was completed in 1755. The San Antonio Missions are today active Catholic churches in the Archdiocese of San Antonio, while also being part of the San Antonio Missions National Historical Park, and a UN World Heritage Site.
Mission Concepción, seen from the outside (with one “anonymous tourist”!). Note in the left-hand photograph the round window visible over the front door.
The story of those parts of America that were colonized by the Spanish is considerably different from the story of those parts of America that were colonized by the English. There are at least two big differences that strike me. Both have to do with the native populations in areas the Spanish sought to colonize.
I began to understand something about the first difference during the 500th anniversary of Columbus’s arrival in the Americas. An article in a “Fall/Winter 1991 Columbus Special Issue” of Newsweek magazine discussed something the Spanish know as la leyenda negra—the Black Legend—that portrays the Spanish as “incomparably savage and avaricious”. The point of the article was to argue against la leyenda negra. It quoted Woodrow Borah of the University of California, Berkeley as saying, “The Spanish made a place for the Indians—as part of the lowest order, but at least they had a place. North Americans in many cases simply exterminated the Indians.” And it noted that today Native American ancestry is common among people in areas that were part of Spanish rule. By contrast, in my home state of Kentucky, for example, very few people can claim descent from the native Shawnee who lived along the Ohio River in the eighteenth century. Indeed, for most of the past two and a half centuries this area that was once a county of the English Virginia colony has been populated by people who claim only European or African ancestry. Native people survived in places where the Spanish colonized, in a way that they did not in places like Kentucky.
A visit I made some years later to Castillo San Marco in St. Augustine, Florida highlighted this Spanish difference. A ranger with the National Park Service emphasized that at St. Augustine there was a different African American history than the one most Americans are familiar with. Slaves of African descent would escape from the English colonies and make their way south to Spanish Florida, where they could be free, and were given land, trained in the use of weapons, and manned Ft. Mose, an African-American community that formed the northern outpost of defense for the Spanish colony.
Thus the first of the two big differences I mentioned above, between the story of the parts of America colonized by the Spanish, and those parts that were colonized by the English, is how the Spanish interacted with other peoples in the New World. This is not to paint a rosy picture of the Spanish, but it seems that in Spanish areas, non-Spanish people could live in community with the Spanish, and even share in defense, and native people survived.
The issue of defense pertains to the second big difference. In an area like Kentucky, the story of conflict between European immigrants to the area and the native people who lived in the area really goes only one way—the Europeans won, the natives lost. This was not true in Texas in the eighteenth century. Some native people, such as the Commanches and the Apaches, were able to adapt the horse, which the Spanish introduced to the New World, and new weapons, to become powerful horse-mounted-warriors. They were able to drive back the Spanish in some places, and to be a decades-long threat to Spanish holdings in others. They were also a serious threat to other native peoples, such as the Coahuiltecans who dwelled in the areas near the San Antonio River.
Thus the various interpretive panels that can be found among the San Antonio Missions describe the missions as follows:
The missions of San Antonio were far more than just churches, they were communities. Each was a fortified village, with its own church, farm, and ranch. Here, Franciscan friars gathered native peoples, converted them to Catholicism, taught them to live as Spaniards, and helped maintain Spanish control over the Texas frontier....
Franciscans obeyed the precept of the order’s founder St. Francis of Assisi—to follow the teachings of Jesus Christ in their own lives. The friars dedicated their lives to Humility, Simplicity, Poverty, and Prayer. They owned nothing, served others in their work, and considered themselves as “contemplatives in the marketplace”—prayerful participants in the life of the world....
The Indians of the San Antonio area, the Coahuiltecans, lived in small scattered groups. They took their food from the land and moved with the seasons. They spoke distinct dialects and practiced a religion close to nature. They were a tough and skillful people who made a good living from a harsh land. Threatened by warrior tribes on horseback and weakened by European diseases, many Coahuiltecans accepted the food and refuge offered by the missions....
In the mission once-scattered tribes lived together in a self-sufficient, church-oriented community. Protected and encouraged by the Church they changed from nomadic hunters and gatherers to sedentary farmers. As they became Spanish citizens, many lost their identities as Coahuiltecans....
Spanish soldiers taught the Indians how to defend the mission from Apache and Commanche raiders....
The Franciscans taught the Indians the Catholic faith by a systematic method of instruction. The heart of the method was repetition; the goal of the instruction was understanding. The Church sought converts who understood and observed Christianity and who accepted Spanish culture and language....
The friars carefully controlled the daily life of the mission. On a set schedule the Indians worked, learned vocational skills, and received religious instruction. The goal of this discipline was change—change of the behavior and religious beliefs of these native people....
[The Franciscans viewed the Indians as] Gentiles, Neophytes, and Christians. The friars recognized that conversion would be gradual. They classified as gentiles those Indians who had not yet accepted mission life. Neophytes, those converted to Christianity, lived in the mission and received religious instruction. Christians practiced Christianity and lived independently as Spanish citizens....
Today the missions are elegant reminders of the contribution of Indian and Hispanic peoples to the history of the United States.
Artist’s conception of mission life, from a National Parks brochure on the San Antonio Missions.
A film that introduces visitors to the San Antonio Missions emphasizes that the people who built the missions are still there. The descendants of the Coahuiltecans live all over the area. Mass is still celebrated in the mission churches. However, the missions have had their ups and downs. A historical overview of Mission Concepción from the Texas State Historical Association paints a picture of mission life that is less upbeat than that shown in the interpretive panels. With the passage of time, problems with disease, attacks from the Apaches and Commanches, conflicts with settlers, and the colonial government seizure of mission property, all wore down the mission and drove its people toward poverty. Political instability and wars in the early nineteenth century also took their toll, so that by the early 1850’s the church was being used as a barn by settlers, and was “filled with bats and farm animals”. Its records had been destroyed. But in 1859 Bishop John Odin turned the mission over to the Brothers of the Society of Mary, who began to restore the mission and return its fields to cultivation. Over time Mission Concepción has gradually been restored—its church was rededicated in 2010 following extensive interior and exterior restoration work.
Original paintings on the ceiling and wall of an outbuilding of the mission. Note the sun.
And so it was not until 2003 that the Feast of the Assumption illumination was re-discovered at Mission Concepción by George Dawson, a volunteer docent who happened to be in the church on a sunny day well at around 6:30 pm—after the building was usually closed. He saw the illumination and, as he told the San Antonio Express-News in 2006,
I got goose bumps. I finally knew what was going on in this church. I rushed home and told my wife. On the drive home, I was the only person in the world who knew.
In other words, he thought the illumination was unbelievably cool. This illumination is something that many people find cool, and even inspiring. A local media report on last year’s illumination notes that—
Screen shot of a story on the August 15, 2018 illumination (from the Rivard Report).
...hundreds crowded into the small church late Wednesday afternoon, spilling into the aisle and edges of the nave, onto the floor of the transept, and all around the chancel and altar and into the larger sanctuary.
This 15th day in August is a special one, the day of the annual solar double illumination when, thanks to the Spanish mission architects and the indigenous laborers who built Concepción, a setting sun in the west casts rays of light through two glass openings. One beam rises slowly toward a sacred space on a painting that hangs above the altar while the other beam pours down through the transept onto the church floor....
And then the hour was at hand, actually 6:25 p.m. by my watch. The light beams settled on their appointed destinations. Last year cloudy skies cut short the occasion, but not this day. Wednesday’s experience did not disappoint.
It was a uniquely San Antonio moment. Gasps of wonder and surprise and a sudden buzz of chatter arose from people in the crammed pews witnessing the double illumination for the first time as one light beam slowly moved onto the visage of Mary and another to the center of the transept.
For many of the worshipers, it was a moment when everything else in life and the city stopped, when science and spirituality married to provide an experience unique to San Antonio.
Part of what makes this phenomenon especially cool at Mission Concepción is the way that the church is constructed. The church has relatively few windows overall, and only four that face in the direction of the front of the church—three in the “choir loft”, and one in the dome. Of the loft windows, only one central, round window stands high enough to throw a beam forward toward the altar without the likelihood of encountering obstructions.
Left—the round window. Right—the dome window.
“So your idea for a round window for the evening sun is fantastic! But what if we make the window smaller, and put it up even higher?”
Thus the round loft window and the dome window are what produce the double illumination. The round window illuminates the floor in front of the altar. The dome window illuminates the wall behind the altar. With no other windows for light to come in, the lighting effect is no doubt pretty powerful (I was there on a rainy day in March, so I have not seen the illumination for myself).
It seems likely that the round loft window in particular was designed for the purpose of sending a beam of sunlight into the church to create just this sort of lighting effect. Some Franciscan friar or some Coahuiltecan mason probably said, “hey, this church faces the setting sun—if we put this round window right up top here to let the evening sun beam in during the warmer months, it’ll be really cool...” (or whatever the equivalent of “really cool” is in Spanish or one of the Coahuiltecan languages).
Mission Concepción in 1857.
The Mission Concepción church has not been altered much since it was finished in 1755. This illumination phenomenon has been occurring every sunny August 15 evening for over 260 years. It even occurred, and was cool, after it had been forgotten, and the church was full of farm animals!
Cool though it may be, when talking about this sort of thing we ought not to let our imaginations run too far in the direction of “Raiders of the Lost Ark” style Hollywood cool. We ought not to think of some magical instant when a shaft of sunlight blasts through like a laser, lighting things up at some exact moment, and only at that moment. And we ought not to think that this involved some sophisticated astronomical calculations. We don’t need to imagine more than the mason and the friar and “it’ll be really cool”. For example, using the reported time of 6:25 pm from above, and the date of August 15, 2018, I can figure out that at the time of the illumination the sun stood about 3.8 degrees south of due west (its azimuth), and about 35.6 degrees above the horizon (its altitude). At any time in the afternoon or evening when the sun has an azimuth of 3.8 degrees south of west, the round window and the dome window will send beams of light right down the center of the church.
The position of the sun as seen from San Antonio, Texas at 6:25 pm on August 15—as simulated via the Stellarium planetarium app.
The situation on August 14 or 16 will be little different than what is seen on August 15. And the illumination might be even more dramatic on September 15 at 7:39 pm, when the sun has the same azimuth as August 15, but a much lower altitude, so that the round window’s beam strikes the altar or the wall behind. It may be more dramatic still on September 20 or later (depending on how clear the western horizon is), when the sun will be almost setting and the color of its light is a golden-red.
The position of the sun as seen from San Antonio, Texas at 7:39 pm on September 15.
Moreover, there are equivalent days in the Spring that mirror these days in August and September. And around the solstice the windows will cast their beams more onto the aisle of the church, at around 4:45 pm. As I discussed in a post about the sun and St. Louis Bertrand Church in Louisville, Kentucky (click here for that post), any given window yields a whole season of illuminations. The key is to have a distinct window that produces dramatic lighting, as Mission Concepción does.
At the right day and time, the sun will illuminate just about any spot on Mission Concepción’s altar and the wall behind it. You just have to be a big enough astronomy nerd to figure out when.
Working out such a season of illuminations is a great illustration of what science is. The crowds in Mission Concepción on August 15 evenings suggest that discovering these illuminations—this science—can be good for the life of a church. If you subscribe to this blog and think that your church might have a great illumination, contact me (contact information only appears for readers who are paid-up members of Sacred Space, and logged in as such). After all, it’d be really cool!
The Observant Faithful find the Tears of St. Lawrence
Today is the feast of St. Lawrence. Keep a watchful eye over the next few nights for his tears!
Yes, the “Tears of St. Lawrence” is an old name for the Perseid meteor shower. The Perseid shower peaks on the morning of August 12 (more or less). It is named for the constellation of Perseus, the region of the sky where the meteors appear to originate. For a long time—dating back to Aristotle at least—astronomers did not consider meteors to be an astronomical phenomenon. They were thought to be a wholly atmospheric phenomenon, like clouds or rainbows or lightning. Think of the name meteor. Who does the weather forecast on your local TV news? The meteorologist—a scientist who studies the atmosphere.
But on the night of November 12-13 in 1833 there was a meteor storm. Meteors flashed across the sky at a rate of over 1000 per minute. That is tens of meteors each second. Multiple meteors would be visible in the sky at any given moment. This event captured the interest of a lot of people, including astronomers. This interest in meteors led several people to independently figure out that there was a recurring meteor shower in August—including the Americans Edward Claudius Herrick and John Locke (of New Haven, Connecticut, and Cincinnati, Ohio, respectively); and Adolphe Quetelet, founder and director of the Brussels Observatory in Belgium.
But in some sense neither Herrick, nor Locke, nor Quetelet was the first to figure out that there was a recurring meteor shower in August. In Herrick’s research he discovered that in certain Catholic areas people had long recognized the recurring meteor shower, and associated it with the feast of St. Lawrence, the 3rd-century martyr who was executed by being roasted alive over a fire (and who reportedly had the lip to tell his executioners, while he was being cooked, to roll him over lest they cook him unevenly!). Herrick wrote in an 1839 paper on meteors:
The annual occurrence of a meteoric display about the 10th of August appears to have been recognized for a very great length of time... a superstition has ‘for ages’ existed among the Catholics of some parts of England and Germany that the burning tears of St. Lawrence are seen in the sky on the night of the 10th of August; this day being the anniversary of his martyrdom.
He cited a newspaper in Belgium that reported:
It is not a little singular that the peasants of Franconia and Saxony have believed for ages past, that St. Lawrence weeps tears of fire, which fall from the sky every year on his fête, (the 10th of August). This ancient popular German tradition or superstition has been found, within these few years, to be a fact which engages the attention of astronomers. The inhabitants of Brussels can bear witness that on the night of the 10th, this year, St. Lawrence shed abundance of tears.
Thus average folk, at some unknown time in the past, were the first people to discover that meteors were not just an atmospheric phenomenon like a cloud or rainbow of lightning, but rather that meteors could be a regularly occurring thing. These people knew of the annual feast of St. Lawrence—which has been on the liturgical calendar for quite a long time. They observed the meteors to fall every August. They put the two together. At its heart, science is about observing the natural world and understanding it. These average folk observed the natural world, and they did not have preconceived notions about what category of phenomenon the meteors were, and so they achieved a better understanding of this particular part of it ahead of the astronomers.
Feast days of the month of August, from a 1669 English translation of Pedro de Ribadeneyra’s Lives of Saints with Other Feasts of the Year According to the Roman Calendar. Pedro de Ribadeneyra was a priest of the Society of Jesus.
A closer view. Note the feast of St. Lawrence—August 10 (at right, arrowed).
We can actually narrow down the time of discovery somewhat. While the quotation above says that the Catholic peasants had known of the Tears of St. Lawrence “for ages”, in fact they could only have known for at most a few centuries. When Pope Gregory introduced his reformed calendar in 1582, the calendar shifted by a week and a half. Therefore, prior to 1582 the Perseids were not starting to fall around August 10 (they would have been falling in July). Thus our peasants discovered this some time after 1582, but enough before 1839 for the discovery to be viewed then as having be made “ages” ago.
Today we understand the August meteors to be particles of debris that are strewn along the orbit of a comet—particles that enter the Earth’s atmosphere and are heated to glowing, by reason of their rapid motion through the air and the resulting air friction. Earth, circling the sun annually, passes through the cometary debris stream every August, and thus the meteor shower. The Perseid meteors are indeed an atmospheric phenomenon, and they are indeed fiery falling things. It is just that they have an astronomical origin.
Look for the Tears of St. Lawrence the next couple of nights. The best time is when the constellation Perseus is up over the horizon—well after midnight is best, or even before dawn, while it is still dark. (Apparently those Catholic peasants could be a late-night-August kind of people.)
For a more in-depth discussion of Herrick’s work, click here for “The Discovery of the Perseid Meteors”, by Mark Littmann, Sky & Telescope, May 17, 2005.
History of Astronomy at the University of Notre Dame, 2019
If you like the history of astronomy, then you should attend one of the History of Astronomy Workshops that are held at the University of Notre Dame every other year. The Fourteenth Biennial History of Astronomy Workshop was held this summer, June 19-22. The Vatican Observatory Foundation helped sponsor the workshop this year. After all, the workshop is a conference about astronomy and about history, and it is held at a major Catholic University. So it is just the V.O.’s sort of thing.
Attendees at the Fourteenth Biennial History of Astronomy Workshop at the University of Notre Dame. Front row (crouched): Lois Rosson, Liz Hamm, Sarah Reynolds, Scott Trigg, Joseph Baxley, Matt Dowd. Second row: Stephan Zieme, Mike Crowe, Marion Dolan, Ken Rumstay, Ken Launie, Louise Devoy, Sara Schechner, Jim Lattis, Adam Apt, Erica Meszaros, Trudy Bell, Laine Corfield, Voula Saridakis, Andrew Oakes, Christophe Wall-Romana, David DeVorkin, Beth Kessler, Marc Rothenberg, Jim Powell, Virginia Trimble. Back row: Chris Graney, Connemara Doran, Cliff Cunningham, Tom Hockey, Horace Smith, Phil Shoemaker, Stella Cottam, Todd Timberlake, Lee Minnerly, Ariel Cohen, Hannah Kaufman, Omar Nasim, Durruty Jesus de Alba Martínez, Yaakov Zik, Dana Freiburger, Jamie Brannon, Salvatore Buonocore, Allan Olley, Samantha Thompson, Irv Berlin, Robert Smith, Pedro Raposo.
Every Notre Dame workshop has a theme. This year’s theme focused on the impact that images, both captured and created, have had on the history of astronomy. A broad variety of images have served as a medium for advances and discoveries in astronomy, including
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- early depictions of constellations and cosmologies
- the many centuries of images created to record and convey astronomical knowledge
- artistic and symbolic uses of astronomical imagery
- the development of the telescope, the camera, and other technologies for manipulating and capturing physical images
- and the ongoing research use and potent societal impact of astronomical photography and visual data-representations today.
Every Notre Dame workshop features an invited speaker from overseas. This year’s speaker was Dr. Omar Nasim, Professor for the History of Science at the University of Regensburg, Germany. Dr. Nasim’s interdisciplinary research focuses on the practices of visualization and image-making in the observational sciences, especially 19th- and 20th-century astronomy. His book Observing by Hand: Sketching the Nebulae in the Nineteenth Century, was the winner of the History of Science Society’s Pfizer Award in 2016. He gave a public lecture entitled “The Astronomer’s Chair: A History of Sitting and Its Image” that talked about the portrayal of astronomers and their chairs. In his talk Dr. Nasim noted how often pictures of astronomers show them with a chair. He said that once you start to notice these chairs, you find that they are everywhere in the history of astronomy. He talked about the cultural significance of displaying chairs in engravings and photographs for nineteenth-century audiences. Specialized and task-specific observing chairs began to be designed and built by astronomers in greater numbers than ever before in the nineteenth-century. Dr. Nasim argued that these mechanized chairs were often pictured not just for other astronomers but also for broader audiences. The intent of all these chair images, he said, was to convey all sorts of messages to the broader public about who astronomers were, what their work was like, and how advanced they were over astronomers from other places and times. His talk was the first of the conference, and so for the rest of the conference every time a chair appeared anywhere we all had to make some comment. (Yes, the workshops are not overly formal.)
Dr. Omar Nasim gives the public lecture.
Lots of other image-related topics were covered in the workshop. David DeVorkin of the Smithsonian chaired a series of talks on “Electronic Imaging and Sensing in Modern Astronomy” that featured four different people speaking on the development and use of electronic imaging in the 20th century. There were talks about the use of imagery in public astronomy outreach, especially during the 19th century. 
Of course I am going to plug anything that has to do with Kentucky and the Ohio River valley, so I have to highlight a talk by Trudy Bell of Sky & Telescope magazine on Ormsby MacKnight Mitchel—Kentucky native, builder of the Cincinnati Observatory—and the imagery in his popular public outreach talks. Pedro Raposo of the Adler Planetarium chaired a series of talks on “Concepts of Space, Scale, and the Visual Culture of Astronomy” which had a very artistic bent. Among the speakers in Raposo’s series was Isaac Facio of the Art Institute of Chicago, a textile artist who used jacquard looms to create an art installation at the Adler whose purpose was to reflect data about the broad structure of the cosmos. There were even a couple of talks on how images of astronomers and observatories were used in marketing. Sara Schechner of Harvard noted how “excitement over the opening of the world’s largest telescope in 1949—the 200-inch telescope at Palomar Observatory—was used to sell Buicks and bread.” There were of course talks on familiar historical figures like Ptolemy and Galileo and William Herschel and Johannes Kepler. And no conference on the history of astronomy would be complete without a lot of Catholic Church figures—presentations by Durruty Jesús de Alba Martínez, of the Universidad de Guadalajara (on images from rare works in the libraries of Mexico) and by Dana A. Freiburger, of the University of Wisconsin-Madison (on Fr. James Curley, S. J.) included a number of these. One of my favorite talks was by Virginia Trimble of the University of California, Irvine: “Images of the Periodic Table That Encouraged the Discoveries of Nebulium, Helium, and Coronium”. It was a favorite of mine because it was delightfully and stubbornly “old school”—her slides were all hand-drawn and typed (yes, with a typewriter—Google it if you don’t know what it is) which were then scanned into a file for projection onto a screen—scanned by someone else, I imagine! All these are just a sampling of all the presentations—click here for the complete schedule of presentations; click here for all the abstracts of the presentations.
Usually the workshops include a trip to Chicago to the Adler Planetarium (the Adler co-hosts the conference along with the University of Notre Dame). However, the Rolling Stones were playing at Soldier Field next door to the Adler, right at the time of the conference. Traffic was expected to be bad enough to ruin any such trip. So this year there was no Adler trip!
This was the fourteenth of these Notre Dame conferences, and one person who has been to all of them is Mike Crowe, who has been at Notre Dame in one fashion or another since the 1950’s. Mike is an emeritus professor now, but he is one of the reasons the History of Astronomy Workshops got started in the first place. Matt Dowd of the University of Notre Dame Press, who was Mike’s student “back in the day”, is the man who makes the conference happen every two years. Matt gets help from a team of volunteers, too.
Mike Crowe (left) and Matt Dowd (right).
Mike and Matt have both been influential in my work, as has this conference. I attended my first History of Astronomy Workshop in 2009, at the encouragement of Owen Gingerich who pointed out that it was not too far away, was a good conference, and was not overly expensive. Because I attended that 2009 workshop I met Mike and Matt. Mike made a point then of encouraging my work. He has continued to offer encouragement ever since, and has provided some key bits of information at crucial times. Matt ended up serving as editor for the two books of mine that the University of Notre Dame Press published. Because of my work in the history of astronomy, including my first book with the University of Notre Dame Press, I ended up writing for Br. Guy and this blog. So without these people, this conference, and the University of Notre Dame, I would not “be here”.
The Fifteenth Biennial History of Astronomy Workshop will be held at Notre Dame July 15-18, 2021. Put it on your calendar. And check out the Astronomy Workshop web pages (click here) while you are at it.
Solar Power in Ruin
The sun puts of 3.8x1026 Watts of power. That is its luminosity: 380,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 Watts, or 380 septillion Watts. As best science can tell, this power comes from nuclear fusion reactions occurring in the sun’s core. These reactions are converting the sun’s mass into energy via E=mc2. The sun devours billions of kilograms of mass every second. If you read this blog regularly, you saw this all discussed—with math!—in my post from earlier this month (click here for it).
Since the Earth is small, and 93 million miles from the sun, we receive a minuscule fraction of that power. Nevertheless, each square meter (an area the size of a large bath towel) of sun-facing surface on Earth receives over 1000 Watts of solar power. “Sun-facing” means, of course, that the night side of Earth, for example, is not receiving any direct solar power. Moreover, the effect of those solar Watts depends on many factors; consider the difference on a summer day between a freshly blacked asphalt surface and a nearby swatch of green grass. But 1000+ Watts is enough to run a small hair dryer or room heater—from every square meter. Earth may receive a minuscule fraction of the sun’s power, but seen on a human scale, that minuscule fraction is an incredible amount of power.
We humans have always figured out ways to use the sun’s power. If you know where to look, you can find widespread ruins of an abandoned solar-power technology. Where do you find such ruins? In the U.S., you find them in older neighborhoods where the houses have some green space around them. There you will see certain odd, ‘T’-shaped metal structures standing here and there.
These structures were once part of an apparatus that harnessed solar power to perform a highly energy-intensive task: the drying of wet clothes. In its heyday, this technology was known as a “clothes line”. Strong cords, or lines, were strung from one ‘T’ to another. Wet clothes (and towels and sheets and other things that had been washed) were hung from these lines. The wet items were usually attached by clip-like devices called “clothes pins”.
In Clarksville, Indiana, across the Ohio River from my hometown of Louisville, Kentucky, there is the Falls of the Ohio State Park. In that park is a levee with a walking path on it that takes you right through one of these neighborhoods. From atop the levee you can look down and see one after another of these abandoned clothesline ‘T’s. They are utterly abandoned: walk the path whenever you wish; even on a hot, dry, sunny summer day; you will not see one of these ‘T’s being used for its intended purpose.
That is remarkable, because the clothesline is an elegant, effective, inexpensive, and “green” (that is, “climate-friendly”) technology. By contrast, a clothes dryer is a big energy hog. According to GE Appliances, which has a factory in Louisville, an electric clothes dryer uses about 5000 Watts of power—the equivalent of over 500 LED light bulbs. On a good day a full ‘T’ of clothes lines can easily outpace a clothes dryer. And it makes sense that the clotheslines would outpace the dryer, since the sun can deliver hundreds of Watts of power to each arm’s breadth of laundry hanging on the lines.
Solar power technology is often cited as a green energy source that will help humanity reduce greenhouse gas emissions and curb climate change—but not this solar power technology, obviously, or else these ‘T’s would not be abandoned. That they are abandoned is really strange, because they are a solar technology that is so elegant, effective, inexpensive, accessible, and durable (after all, they still stand!).
One might suppose that these ‘T’s are the future: that they are so elegant, effective, inexpensive, accessible, and durable that they simply will come back into use if we really believe that climate change is a problem. Indeed, one might also suppose the converse: the fact that they are abandoned despite all their advantages indicates that, when it comes right down to it, we do not really believe that climate change is a problem.
Perhaps the future will have houses that are equipped once again with these ‘T’-shaped structures that put some of the sun’s 380 septillion Watts of climate-friendly fusion power to work in the simplest possible manner. On the other hand, maybe what the future holds is for there to be a 5000 Watt clothes dryer in every home on the planet, and clothesline ‘T’s abandoned and rusting the world over.
Lunar Eavesdropping: Two Men, a Radio, and Apollo 11 (re-run)
In honor of the Fiftieth Anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing,
I am today "re-running" this slightly edited combination of two posts that originally ran last summer.
Today we celebrate the Fiftieth Anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing.* I wish those celebrations included more recognition of a unique accomplishment that is part of the Apollo 11 story but that is widely unknown: the work of Larry Baysinger—a man from my home town of Louisville, Kentucky—who independently detected signals from the Apollo 11 astronauts as they walked on the lunar surface. Baysinger's accomplishments were recorded and promptly published in the Louisville Courier-Journal, by another Louisvillian by the name of Glenn Rutherford, who later went on to be editor of the newspaper of the Archdiocese of Louisville, The Record.
Rutherford was a 23-year-old reporter for the Courier-Journal, and his article about Baysinger was published under the headline “Lunar Eavesdropping: Louisvillians hear moon walk talk on homemade equipment”. Baysinger was a technician for Louisville’s WHAS 840 AM radio, and only a few years older than Rutherford. The story garnered some attention for Baysinger at the time. He was interviewed by the Collins Radio Company, who made the communications equipment that was used for the Apollo, Gemini and Mercury programs. They were very impressed that anyone could detect the Apollo signals with home-built equipment. However, in time the story faded from view. In 2009, when I first learned of the story, I saw just how much it had faded by doing searches for information using keywords such as “Baysinger” and “Apollo” in Google, as well as in EBSCO and JSTOR databases. These searches yielded no references to Baysinger’s work. Searching “Lunar Eavesdropping” yielded no returns of any sort at all. (Today such searches return more results, thanks in part to a 2010 article about Baysinger that I wrote for the National Association for Amateur Radio.)
Rutherford's story, from the July 23, 1969 issue of the Louisville Courier-Journal, on the front page of section B. Click on the image for a high-resolution version (although since this image is from microfilm, the image quality is poor, even in the high-resolution version).
Glenn Rutherford in 2009, when he was assistant editor for The Record newspaper in Louisville. Rutherford went on to become editor of, and then to retire from, The Record, which is the newspaper of the Archdiocese of Louisville.
I learned about the story thanks to a discussion between Rutherford and me about some of the research Henry Sipes and I had going on at Otter Creek-South Harrison observatory. Rutherford had written about this research in a July 2009 article in The Record. Our discussion drifted into the issue of Kentuckians doing scientific research. That reminded Rutherford of the story of Baysinger’s work, and he told me the story. I later had the pleasure of speaking to Baysinger directly. It was remarkable that these two gentlemen, forty years later, should both still be here in Louisville, just a phone call away!
Baysinger told me that his Apollo lunar eavesdropping project arose because in the late 1960’s he was an amateur radio astronomer with an interest in NASA, in astronomy, in UFOs, and in other such things that were hot topics at a time when America was on the verge of landing its first men on the moon. He experimented with satellite tracking and capturing pictures of Earth transmitted from weather satellites. He had some success in these matters—for example, he was able to print out crude images from weather satellites using an impact printer that printed using carbon paper. These interests and efforts led to the idea that he might independently verify the information that NASA had been providing about the Apollo program. Could he get unedited, unfiltered information about the Apollo 11 landing by eavesdropping on the radio signals transmitted from the lunar surface? And could he find out things that NASA did not want the public to know about? But most of all, successfully detecting a transmission from the lunar surface would be a great technical accomplishment.
Left: Larry Baysinger in 2009. Right: Baysinger in 1969. The photo is taken through the frame of the antenna he built to listen in on the Apollo missions.
According to Baysinger, various local experts had said that it could not be done. However, information about the communication frequencies used by the Apollo missions was widely available. The March and June 1969 issues of CG: The Radio Amateur’s Journal, for example, contained this sort of information. If a person could build a good radio, he or she should be able to listen to Apollo. And not only did Baysinger listen to Apollo, but he recorded it, and saved those recordings for decades.
The March and June 1969 issues of CG. Click here and here to download selections from their articles concerning Apollo communications. These scans are from Baysinger's collection.
And, four decades later, Baysinger still had the reel-to-reel tape recordings that he had made. He transferred the salvageable sections of the tape to digital format. You can listen to his recording and compare it to NASA’s own recording here:
 Click on the image or click here to listen to Baysinger's own recording of the signals he received from Apollo 11 and recorded on his reel-to-reel tape recorder. The audio is a 9 MB WMA file. This image, from a 1969 newspaper article, shows Baysinger with his equipment. |
 Click on the image or click here to watch NASA footage and audio of the same material that Baysinger recorded (from NASA's YouTube channel). |
Some years later, the BBC Radio 3 included an interview with Baysinger and Rutherford in a show called “Space Ham”. By that point Baysinger had managed to salvage more of the tape, including a section with President Richard Nixon speaking to the astronauts. You can click below to hear their interview, in which they give a nice discussion of their experience:
Click on the image or click here for Rutherford and Baysinger on the BBC Radio 3. The BBC description says “Sound artist Caroline Devine sends Between the Ears into orbit in this celebration of amateur radio and space exploration. Since the dawn of the Space Age, amateur ‘ham’ radio has eavesdropped on our exploration of the cosmos. From Sputnik to the International Space Station, radio enthusiasts with homemade kit have been able tune into the distant sounds of space and talk to those exploring it.... Radio brought us Neil Armstrong's first transmission from the Moon and afforded ham operator, Larry Baysinger, the chance to intercept the radio transmissions between the astronauts. His recordings include the moment President Nixon transmitted his message of congratulations to them. Interwoven with these are Caroline Devine's artful reworking of other cosmic sounds picked up by ham receivers from across the world to create an ethereal and magical journey, a momentary re-ignition of the childlike wonder of space. Producer: Rose de Larrabeiti. Space Ham is a Whistledown Production for BBC Radio 3.” Click here for NASA footage of Nixon speaking to the astronauts.
One interesting thing you will hear Baysinger and Rutherford discuss in the interview is how they were hoping to hear something that the general public would not hear. And they did not. When I talked to Baysinger back in 2009, I asked him about this, and he said that absolutely everything was transmitted to the public on TV, and that, in fact, “that was kind of disappointing”. Part of the idea of this project was to hear the unedited “real story”, and it turned out there was nothing edited out. Indeed, Rutherford’s story in the Courier-Journal makes no mention of hearing anything unusual. Baysinger did not attempt to eavesdrop on any other Apollo missions. After Apollo 11 he moved on to other projects.
Various Google/EBSCO/JSTOR searches have convinced me that there certainly were not a lot of amateur radio astronomers eavesdropping on Apollo transmissions. An inquiry I made via the HASTRO-L history of astronomy e-mail listserver did turn up the web page of Sven Grahn. Grahn and Dick Flagg apparently received some signals from the Apollo 17 command module in orbit around the moon, although the voice signals they received were limited to two small sentence fragments and they were using a large dish to receive the signals. A German radio observatory also recorded signals from the Moon. I made inquiries with a number of people in the radio community, none of whom knew of anything comparable to Baysinger’s work. These include Zack Lau, Senior Lab Engineer for the ARRL (the national association for amateur radio) and their QST magazine, who responded to an e-mail I sent to QST to say that they have no record of anyone picking up signals from Apollo 11; Rachel Baughn, editor of Monitoring Times magazine, who responded to an e-mail I sent that she had no information on this sort of thing; and Jim Sky of Radio-Sky Journal who responded to an e-mail Henry Sipes sent to him—again, no additional information. Phil Plait featured Baysinger’s work on his Bad Astronomy blog. His readers posted many comments, but no definite information. In general, people seem to be aware that amateur radio enthusiasts and radio astronomers listened in on Apollo missions. But what was heard, whether the signals were received from the Moon or just from the Apollo spacecraft when they were in Earth orbit, and so forth is an open question. What truly makes Baysinger’s work unique is that it was recorded in print at the time, and that he not only received but recorded extensive audio, much of which has survived to this day. If someone else did succeed in eavesdropping on NASA, but no record was ever made, and if that someone is no longer around, we will not know about it.
Besides the obvious “local interest” aspect to this story, there is a great educational aspect as well. Most people are aware that there is a significant (or significantly vocal) “Apollo denier” movement that says that we never went to the moon. The Apollo deniers have received attention through shows on Fox and Mythbusters that address the Apollo deniers’ arguments. I have found that a noticeable minority of my students, or maybe more than just a noticeable minority, are at least open to the idea that we never went to the moon—an issue I have discussed on this blog more than once. In a sense this is not surprising. Today’s traditional-age college students were born many decades after Apollo 11. They have no memory of the moon landings—Apollo is just something in a book. And, it is not obvious that we will be returning to the moon any time soon; humankind today has little in the way of manned space capability beyond low Earth orbit. Thus the voyage to the moon probably seems to today’s students like a mythical voyage such as might have been made by Jason and the Argonauts, to a land which we visited once but to which we cannot go now. And, since all the evidence that we went to the moon comes from one source (NASA), it is relatively easy for conspiracy theorists to make their claims. Had thousands of amateur astronomers been able to see the men on the moon for themselves, there would be no Apollo deniers.
Baysinger’s lunar eavesdropping is an independent verification that men were on the moon, by a local person who is not part of the scientific establishment. Had there been more Larry Baysingers eavesdropping on Apollo, or had there been more Glenn Rutherfords to record the work of the Baysingers who did eavesdrop, there would be no Apollo deniers (this is an illustration of the importance of “reproducibility” in science).
For a more detailed discussion of Baysinger’s work, see Lunar Eavesdropping in Louisville, Kentucky, on the web page of my college’s observatory. These posts were based on that discussion, which includes some additional details, especially on technical matters.
* I note that while the Apollo 11 landing was a great achievement, worth celebrating, the fact that since the Apollo program we have not returned to the moon, or even left Earth orbit, is hugely disappointing. When I was a kid I thought average people might be able to travel the solar system in the early 21st century!
Kentucky Science Conversations – Teaching Our Faith (and Science)
The Archdiocese of Louisville (Kentucky) has been talking science. During the month of May, five articles on faith and science appeared in our diocesan newspaper, The Record. They were part of the “Teaching Our Faith” series that the paper runs periodically. I do not think such things are common in the pages of diocesan papers. I do think more science in diocesan papers would be a great thing.
The “Teaching Our Faith” articles were the idea of Louisville’s Archbishop, Joseph Kurtz. Archbishop Kurtz contributed a guest post to The Catholic Astronomer (now Sacred Space Astronomy) last November. At that time I told the story about how in September 2017, with astronomy “in the air” thanks to the August 2017 eclipse, Prof. Gerry Williger, an astronomer at the University of Louisville here in Kentucky, sent an invitation to Archbishop Kurtz to attend some of the talks that are part of the Public Astronomy Lecture Series hosted by UofL’s Department of Physics and Astronomy. Archbishop Kurtz got right back to Gerry, commenting on his own interest in astronomy, and suggesting that they get together to discuss their common interest. That led in turn to a number of get-togethers of local scientists with Archbishop Kurtz to talk science.
These gatherings are what led to the “Teaching Our Faith” articles. Archbishop Kurtz wrote the first of the five articles. He writes, “For the last few years, I have engaged with a group of Catholic scientists who serve in various settings in our Archdiocese. I very much enjoy our dialogue, both because of their erudition in science and because of their deep faith.”
So check out the “Teaching Our Faith” articles on faith and science, from The Record. They present a variety of perspectives on the topic, from people in a variety of fields. The articles are:
“Teaching Our Faith – Faith and science” (click here), May 1, 2019—by The Most Reverend Joseph E. Kurtz, D.D., Archbishop of Louisville
“Teaching Our Faith – Faith-full Scientists” (click here), May 8, 2019—by yours truly
“Evolution and Faith: Compatible and Complementary” (click here), May 15, 2019—by Dr. Kate Bulinski, Associate Professor of Geosciences in the School of Environmental Studies at Bellarmine University (and who also contributed a guest post to The Catholic Astronomer/Sacred Space Astronomy)
“Teaching Our Faith – Science, Faith and Mental Health” (click here), May 1, 2019—by Dr. Jim Shields, a clinical psychologist in private practice and a member of the deacon formation class of 2020
“Teaching Our Faith – Faith, Science and Care for Creation” (click here), May 1, 2019—by Tim Darst, the executive director of Kentucky Interfaith Power and Light and the associate director of Earth Literacy at the Passionist Earth & Spirit Center
The Far Sun – Far Beyond Comprehension
Does it seem dim outside? Well, it should—sort of. Because it is dim outside—sort of.
On this past Thursday, July 4, just before the end of the day as seen from London (at 11:10 pm British Standard Time), the Earth was at the aphelion point of its orbit—the point at which it is farthest from the sun. At that time it was 94,513,221 miles from the sun. By contrast, at its perihelion point (closest to the sun), on January 3, Earth was merely 91,403,554 miles from the sun.
The Earth’s orbit around the sun. Can you tell that it is not exactly a circle? Image from University of Nebraska-Lincoln.
Earth is over 3,100,000 miles farther away from the sun now than it was in January. Of course, that is only a 3.4% difference. But if you observed the sun carefully, and measured its apparent diameter, you could see that difference. The fact that the distance between the sun and the Earth changes has been known since antiquity.
The apparent size of the sun as seen from Earth at perihelion (left) and six months later, at “aphelion” (right). Images created with Stellarium.
The sun is a remarkable object, really beyond our comprehension in many ways. First of all, there is its size. The diameter of the sun is over one hundred times the diameter of the Earth. See the circles in the figure below below? The sun is the big yellow one. The Earth is the little black one, indicated by the arrow. Even many of the sunspots are substantially larger than Earth. Fr. Christoph Scheiner, S. J., was the first person to do a really in-depth, long-term study of the sun, which he published in a huge book called Rosa Ursina Sive Sol (click here for a look at it). The drawing of sunspots at upper right in the figure below is the first sunspot drawing Scheiner ever made (this copy is from an article by Fr. Juan Casanovas, also S.J., who was a Vatican Observatory astronomer—the article is available on the V.O.'s Faith and Science pages—click here to check it out). The sunspot photo at lower right is from NASA.
The power output of the sun is 3.8x1026 Watts of power: 380,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 Watts, or 380 septillion Watts. As best science can tell, this power comes from nuclear fusion reactions occurring in the sun’s core. These reactions are converting the sun’s mass into energy via E=mc2. A Watt of power is one Joule of energy per second, so every second the sun generates 3.8x1026 Joules of energy. A Joule is a kilogram times a meter divided by a square second (kgm/s2). The speed of light is 3x108 meters/second, so c2 = 9x1016 (m/s)2. So, using E=mc2, we find that in one second the sun converts
m =E/c2 = {3.8x1026J} / {9x1016 (m/s)2} = 4.22x109 kg
of its mass into energy. 4.22x109 kg is 4,220,000,000 kilograms, or 4.22 billion kilograms, of mass.
How much mass is that? Well, a kilogram is the mass of 1 liter of water. A liter of water weighs 2.2 lbs on Earth. A light truck, like the ever-popular Ford F-150, weighs about 2000 times that much (roughly 4400 lbs, according to Ford). So how many F-150s is 4.22 billion kilograms?
4,220,000,000 / 2000 = 2,110,000
So, that is over two million F-150s. In other words, to generate that 3.8x1026 Watts of power, in each and every second the sun converts into energy a mass equal to two million F-150 pickup trucks. In the time it takes you to read this sentence—whoosh! millions of trucks of mass are gone, turned into E=mc2 energy.
Yet while to us this seems like so much, to the sun it is nothing. The total mass of the sun is 2.0x1030 kg. How long will it take the sun to eat up 1% of that mass? Well, 1% of 2.0x1030 kg is
0.01 x 2.0x1030 kg = 2.0x1028 kg
As we calculated above, every second the sun converts 4.22x109 kg of its mass to energy. So the time to convert 2.0x1028 kg to energy will be
{2.0x1028 kg} / {4.22x109 kg/s} = 4.74x1018 seconds
There are 3.154x107 seconds in a year, so in terms of years, this is
{4.74x1018 s} / {3.154x107 s/yr} = 1.5x1011 years
That is 150,000,000,000 years, or 150 billion years! As best we scientists can tell, the universe itself appears to not even be 15 billion years old. Two million trucks-worth of mass vanishing into energy may seem like a lot to us, but it is truly nothing to the sun.
All of this is taking place 95 million miles above us. But in January, it will only be 91 million miles above us. So enjoy the extra distance while it lasts!
Max Planck on Religion and Science
My post from last week was about a cool entry on the Vatican Observatory—Faith and Science site about Enrico Fermi (click here for that post). I had come across Fermi again as I was doing a periodic review of all 500 entries in the site (which I edit), looking for errors and broken links.
In that same review, I came across some other cool entries regarding Max Planck. Planck was one of the key figures in the development of quantum mechanics. I was thinking about doing a post on these Planck entries when Fr. Kurzynski's “Dispelling the Myth” post appeared (click here for it). Upon reading about yet another instance of the promotion in schools of the idea that there is conflict between religion and science, and about Fr. Kurzynski's effort to present “an image of peace between faith and science”, I decided that a focus on Planck is in order.
Again, in my opinion the best material to address this issue comes from scientists who are men and women of faith, bearing witness to that faith. That is especially true when the scientist is of Planck's caliber. And, as with Fermi last week, my point here is not to put Planck up on a pedestal as a model of faith, or a saint of some sort. But it is worth knowing that a Nobel-Prize-winning key figure in the history of science writes things like this:
To the religious person, God is directly and immediately given. He and His omnipotent Will are the fountainhead of all life and all happenings, both in the mundane world and in the world of the spirit. Even though He cannot be grasped by reason, the religious symbols give a direct view of Him, and He plants His holy message in the souls of those who faithfully entrust themselves to Him. In contrast to this, the natural scientist recognizes as immediately given nothing but the content of his sense experiences and of the measurements based on them. He starts out from this point, on a road of inductive research, to approach as best he can the supreme and eternally unattainable goal of his quest—God and His world order. Therefore, while both religion and natural science require a belief in God for their activities, to the former He is the starting point, to the latter the goal of every thought process. To the former He is the foundation, to the latter the crown of the edifice of every generalized world view....
So check out the following from Vatican Observatory—Faith and Science:
Max Planck on Religion and Science (click here)
Max Planck on Johannes Kepler and Faith in Science (click here)
Religion and Natural Science – Max Planck (click here)
Planck: Driven by Vision, Broken by War (click here)
Enrico Fermi, the Farmer, and the Sky
Look to the top of your screen. There it says Vatican Observatory—The Catholic Astronomer—Sacred Space Astronomy. You are looking at one pretty cool science site. But there is a sister site here, too: Vatican Observatory—Faith and Science. I edit that site, meaning I get to do cool stuff like read interesting books for the purpose of finding good content for the site, and I have to do tedious stuff like periodically plow through all 500 entries in the site, looking for errors and broken links.
Recently that plowing brought me to, and refreshed my memory of, a really great Vatican Observatory—Faith and Science (VOF&S) entry, on Enrico Fermi (1901-1954). Fermi was one of the 20th century’s great physicists. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1938. His contributions to science are too numerous to list here, and the VOF&S entry is not about those contributions; it is about his recollection of the thoughts of an Italian farmer regarding the night sky and God. It is worth a read.
Much has been said on the subject of Faith and Science. But the best material on this subject is not discussions of philosophy, or history, or whatnot. The best material comes from scientists who are men and women of faith, bearing witness to that faith. This is not to put anyone on a pedestal—not to set Fermi up as a model of faith, or a saint of some sort. Fermi’s work, for example, advanced our understanding of physics of very small particles in important ways; it also helped to develop nuclear weapons. Nevertheless, the question of whether faith and science are compatible is never answered so affirmatively* and well as when a scientist, and especially a scientist of Fermi’s caliber, writes on faith. So CLICK RIGHT HERE for a cool VOF&S entry on Enrico Fermi and an Italian farmer and the night sky. I think you’ll love it.
*That the answer is affirmative is important to everyone who is involved in science. There are students in my classes from a wide variety of cultures who see science as incompatible with their faith, and therefore they will not take science seriously. Their faith is far more important to them than some science course that is required for a degree that they want. I need Enrico Fermi (and others) in order to help me engage a diverse student population and convince them that science is for them, too. All of science needs him (click here for more on that).