Sending a sundial to Mars Bill Nye

[Music]

good morning I would like to discuss

with you your place in space now I’m not

going to talk about black holes are

gonna be no multiverses there will not

even be plunk time I’m talking about

fundamental astronomy that lets us know

where we are in the cosmos our story

begins on earth many people you know are

from Earth including my father now my

father was in law school in 1940 I don’t

want to shock anybody over here but he

didn’t really like it so he got a summer

job working for the US Navy on earth on

Wake Island now Wake Island is in the

middle of Pacific Ocean nowhere so my

dad was working for a contractor

building an airstrip which is still

there on Wake Island and they had a

great time says it’s the greatest summer

job he ever had but then in the late

fall of 1941 December 7th Wake Island

was bombed same day as Pearl Harbor many

other Pacific Ocean targets my father

and his comrades fought back for two

weeks and they shot down at least two

Japanese bombers every day for two weeks

but they the Japanese Navy eventually

showed up with foe Atilla many ships and

they captured everybody on Christmas Eve

my dad wrote in his diary saddest day of

my life well they were taken to China

someplace and my dad was in prison camp

for almost four years 44 months longer

than anyone else from the United States

and he had very dark skies at night they

had no electricity and the Japanese

military confiscated all their jewelry

and watches and so on so they had no way

to tell time so the family myth is my

dad would tell time by sticking a shovel

handle in the dirt and watching the

shadow he watched the shadows of sticks

and Pera they would tell the guard what

it was and when it was time to eat lunch

and he was also the family myth able to

infer when you know the time of year

they’re able to figure out their

latitude so this guy who my dad said

wasn’t even this tall was able to crawl

through a vent in this train car and get

back to the east coast of China and make

it all the way to the United States and

tell everybody what happened because

these guys essentially disappeared I

mean I don’t know why they didn’t tweet

where they were just or use Facebook but

eventually the deal is my dad lived

through it and he got back to the states

he married his college sweetheart Here I

am along with my older brother and

sister and through all this my father

became fascinated with sundials so yes

he created the well known sand dial

which you take to the beach so you don’t

have to get sand in your watch Oh

everybody needs one believe me and then

he wrote articles for the Washington DC

area newspapers and he eventually wrote

a book about sundials and that’s when he

was given a lifetime membership in the

North American sundial Society anybody

now ecology does tell you there’s a lot

of CFO’s here chief financial officers a

lot of operating there’s a lot of

accountants and you know how the

accountants can party it’s crazy yeah

well let me tell you it when you’re with

the sundial people it is nuts man I mean

everybody’s

it’s movie look it’s moving so so I of

course was a rebellious teenager and so

on but I did notice that last summer I

brought out one of the old sand aisles

and seemed to still work just fine and

someone I know converted a conventional

pizza box into a polar sundial now this

might be evidence of a Saudi sundial

obsessive disorder but I’m fine now I’m

fine I could quit if I wanted I just

don’t want to that’s all so I got

invited to a meeting many years ago at

Cornell University and they had this

thing this is the test pattern for the

cameras that were going to Mars this is

the photometric calibration target and I

think you can see their color coupons

that you get the colors right and there

are three gray rings of different values

and so they were casting a shadow with

this little metal post so you could look

at the color of the Martian sky now if

you look at the at a shadow on earth

that’s something very white you’ll see

it’s blue just a little bit from the

Earth’s sky so I’m in this meeting and I

go you guys we gotta turn the

photometric calibration target into a

sundial and they’re looking at me no you

guys it’ll be cool

we can reckon time on another world

it’ll be like speaking Klingon except

it’ll be real and so the head guy Steve

Squire said okay so my friends there are

two sundials on Mars while we’re here so

here’s what I want you to do when you go

to Mars next time and you’re standing

there you got to take some food and

water it’s 687 Earth days you will see

the Sun make this pattern through the

sky as the year goes on if you do it on

earth you will see this pattern that’s I

started on the 2nd of March it’ll go

north and this pattern is called the

analemma the analemma zone Latin word

that means the pedestal of

niall so what I want you guys to do is

to build one of these and so what we

have done if you go to our website

Planetary org and we’ll find the

instructions for laying out the lines

and getting the hours right for your

sundial anywhere in the world you can

furnish it anything that’s not on the

dial to tell time is its furniture you

can furnish it with here some sailboats

and anchors and here’s the traditional

latitude and longitude and it’s the

ping-pong ball is the gnomon because

ping-pong balls are available anywhere

in the world so we did this back in 2004

when the Spirit and Opportunity Rovers

landed on Mars and people all over the

world built these but those days webcams

were kind of a hassle

this year we’re hoping it will be really

cool so here’s what I’m telling you

almost everybody has observed the Sun go

up and down as the year goes on in the

sky very few of us have heard the word

analemma yet we all depend on it you go

to office supply stores you get your

calendars with the kittens and the

puppies and the firefighters with no

shirts on and all of that has figured

out we had a leap day this year all of

that is figured out by knowing

intimately our relationship to the Sun

knowing intimately our place in space so

I submit to you my friends if you take

the time you can dare I say it change

the world thank you all very much thank

you

[Applause]