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]