Neil Tyson, do you think if the US military budget had been spent on science, we would have ended up not with a war with Russia, but with the development of the Solar System?
With a small group of family/friends, drink some beers, play some kind of fun word game, go home and go to bed early. Don’t need to stay up until midnight to “ring in the new year”… As Neil says it’s arbitrary, depending on your time zone. The Times Square stuff does not appeal to me
it takes alot of words to define something well enough to give everyone a chance to understand.... even flat earthers, too bad they dont have the patience to listen to all of the explanations.
I respect someone more if they take the time to explain something rather than (seemingly annoyed) explaining in a quick and short response. His passion for knowledge and sharing it is amazing. We are supposed to spread our knowledge and not hold it ransom for money.
I live in the port city of Durban, South Africa, and there is a monument at the site of the original Time ball near the harbour. The time ball still worked until recently, but a storm broke it. I didn't realise it was used to sync time on the ships. I always thought it was just used a clock for everybody who worked near the docks.
Fun arbitrary fact, aluminum foil is shiny on one side and dull on the other. Because in the manufacturing process two sheets at a time have to go through roll press to make it thin otherwise it will tear. So the side that touches the roller is shiny and the other dull. =)
What keeps it shiny, though? Because pure aluminium is highly reactive with oxygen in the air -- even more so than iron. So a fresh, shiny aluminium surface exposed to the air will rapidly become covered with a thin layer of aluminium oxide. Unlike iron oxides, this is a tough layer that (normally) protects the underlying material against further reaction with oxygen.
There was a man who watches until they replaced him with a mechanical version- is what I was thinking!😄 Thanks and may the New Year be one full of Promise.🙏🙂
I have always loved Neil. I was very happy when I discovered this channel a few years ago. But for the first couple of shows, Chuck just didn't do anything for me. But then something happened around the third or fourth show, and I kept liking him better and better until at this point, he makes the show for me. I love StarTalk, and I love Neil. But I absolutely adore Chuck Nice. 😁❤️💞🤷♀️💞❤️😁
I’m sure there are many that have similar initial experience. It’s has nothing much to do with Chuck himself but our nature to wait until we reach a point of relatability and familiarity. When you watch a new show or when a new character is introduced we take a similar approach. It’s all good.
Mr. Neil, how I wish everyone would be as smart as you. I wish I would have taken the time to study as much as you might have...but since I didn't I'm fascinated with the amount of knowledge and understanding you share with the world for as long as these videos will be available to the world wide public. Thank you again. Joe
In Spain we also use a ball to mark the New Year. I would have never guessed this tradition comes from sea travel. The clock used for New Year celebrations is in Madrid, nowhere near the sea.
Omg what a genius. Amazing. No one has ever told me and I’m glad we all have you guys 🎉🎉 Happy New Year & you are our watchmen helping us navigate through Space in time using knowledge as a light.
We have the 1 o'clock gun here in Edinburgh. It was used in the same way. The gun is fired every day at 1 from the castle (still done to this day but more for the tourists) and on Carlton Hill (just over a mile from the gun) there was a ball that dropped at the same time to allow boats in the Forth determine there time in the same way as Neil describes
You 2 are sooo much fun to watch together and apart. Science class is always a delightful event. Thanks so much for the JOY and Wonder, BRILLIANT!!! HAPPY Holy New Year🤸♀️💥🥳💗🌲🌴🥰
I have a tremendous amount of fun learning from you guys! My you g daughter loves watching as well. Everytime a new video comes out I get told before I know like, "daddy a new tartalk is here!" Thank you for your continued sharing of wisdom Dr Tyson and Mr nice.
This gives inspiration to get my ship clocks from storage and get them running again. Thanks Neil and StarTalk, hopefully your knowledge will be able to stay in Public Classrooms in 2023🤠🇺🇸
Thank you for being honest and all about science. I enjoy your content, and appreciate the entropy.....your biggest fan❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️
Gratitude brought back memories of going to watch the Ball drop with H.S. friends from Bklyn Tech! Originally from Brooklyn, NYC watching this from West Africa.
I always thought that waiting for the ball to drop in Times Square in the freezing cold was a bit of insanity but now I understand where it all came from, thanks guys.
A correction to the video: One minute difference in your clock is not a little more than 1 mile of inaccuracy in your position 9:40. It's about 17 miles, or if you prefer every second is almost 0.3 miles. That's why the accuracy is so important. Calculations: If earth circumference is 40,075 km, then if we devide it to hours we get 40,075/24 = 1,670 km of movement is an hour difference in the position of the sun. And we can devide the circumference to seconds: 40,075/24/60/60 = 0.463 km or 463 meter. So a person standing 463 meter (0.29 miles) will see the sun positioned at the same place you see it a second later then you (or before you if he is to the east of you). I might have made a mistake, if you think I'm wrong please let me know.
Man this was the coolest thing ive heard from neil i didnt know that about the ball drip and the watchman this was the best time well spent thanks keep it up
What a fascinating story. How they saw this ball at the Royal Observatory in Greenwich all the way from the Port of London at Tilbury, which was usually structurally busy on the vertical axis, I don't know.
I started saying happy Holidays as an all-encompassing acknowledgement of the entire “holiday season” starting in late November and ending January 1st.
Picking up on the idea of bells, there used to be a sound signal at Greenwich (there may still be). A cannon rather than bells and, as the observatory is about half a mile from the river, it would be fired from the deck of the Cutty Sark which is in dry dock right next to the river. Those firing the cannon would take their cue from the timeball. I saw it being fired once. A tiny little thing about 30 cm (1 foot) long, but it still make quite a bang.
These days my New Year’s Eves tend to be boring. I might not even be awake at Midnight. Once, decades ago, I was in Times Square and watched the ball drop. I’m glad I did that at least once. Thanks for the complete explanation.
Nice mission to find a point in the Earth's translation and define it as a worldwide moment to celebrate, so that each time zone celebrates it at the same time in different sun positions, so you can choose between a dark celebration or a night celebration .
A story that I love about the transit telescope used to define the prime meridian is that it is accurately aligned to vertical to within current experimental error. Unfortunately 'local vertical' at Greenwich does not pass through the center of the Earth. Modern navigation systems use the _angle_ defined by the Greenwich meridian, but through the center of the Earth. So when you visit the observatory at Greenwich your GPS will indicate that the prime meridian is about 100 m off. -Jon
Greenwich used to be 0° longitude, but that has changed with the adoption of WGS 84. This recognizes that the Earth is not a perfect sphere, but it ends up shifting things around a little bit to get them to fit. So 0° longitude is now in the middle of a road running to the east of the Observatory, about 100m off as you say. WGS 84 is also what GPS coordinates are based on.
@@lawrencedoliveiro9104 This is not my field of study, but what you describe agrees with my understanding. WGS84 _could_ have been designed for 0° to go though the transit telescope at Greenwich; picking 0° is arbitrary, after all. But as I understand the story, if 0° was forced to go right through its old defining point on the surface of the earth, then the 'angle' of the meridianal plane would have changed, which would mean a time keeping discontinuity. Picture a plane defined by the axis of rotation of the earth and some other factor. That other factor could be a point in space, or it could be a vector defining a direction. This (half) plane is 0° longitude. If the Earth were a homogenous sphere, then the location of the transit telescope at Greenwich would define the same plane as the local vertical vector passing through that point. But since the Earth is not a homogenous sphere then the two definitions of the 0° plane are not equivalent. Which one got picked was in some sense political, since either choice would be correct. Since time is tied to the rotation of the prime meridian, my guess is that the political clout was on the side of keeping the 'local vertical vector' basis of the 0° longitude plane, rather than the 'local position' basis. But as I said, not my field of study. Jon
@@whyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy That sounds absolutely awesome. It would be even cooler if we dropped it from space such that it hits the atmosphere 1 minute prior to impact. The atmosphere is about 6,000 miles thick, so it would need to be going about 10 miles per second. That should be fast enough to get a fireball. Edit: oops. I left out a zero. That's 100 miles per second. That's even better.
There was a book I read earlier this year, I can't remember the title, that talked about the history of timekeeping. I read the part about the ball dropping, but I never related it to New Year's Eve because I'm not much of a holiday person. It was fun to see Neil describe that history and tie it in.
It is great living in California because you can watch the ball drop in NY and put the kids to bed after celebrating the new year coming in and they aren't super cranky the next day from being up too late 😃
Great video! I think some people who complain that "Happy Holidays" removes religion, really mean it doesn't emphasize or glorify their specific religion.
Chuck: “why the ball drop on New Years” Neil: “ …that’s my people” Me: “ 🙌🏿 yeaaa!” Neil: “astrophysicist, astronomers those are my people” Me: “aww 🙇🏾♂️”
There is a fantastic book by Dava Sobel, 'Longitude' that talks about John Harrison's obsession with building the chronometer. It briefly touches on this, if I recall correctly.
Happy New Year, everyone, whatever time you celebrate it🎉. I was a navigator in a C-130 in the 80’s, before GPS and we didn’t have an inertial navigation system (INS) either. INS had gyroscopes that detected movement and were remarkably accurate. So, we used a sextant. The navigation history Neil gave is fascinating. I’d like to know how and when the air almanacs started, and the books we used which had, I believe, seven stars with the lat/long of where the star was directly overhead at particular times. When we took a sextant measure, we did calculations of how high that star should be at a point we anticipated we’d be. If the star was higher than anticipated, we we closer to the star’s overhead point by a nautical mile for every minute of declination (height) above, or farther if lower. By doing three of these celestial ‘shots’ at roughly 120 degrees, we would get a point (more often a small triangle) of where we actually were. One other note, like Neil mentioned the problem with rocking boats, our autopilot had a two minute cycle, so we took an average reading of two minutes to negate that factor. Finally, I would wager the reason the northern hemisphere is more populated is that the North Star giving you latitude only works if you are far enough north that Polaris is above the horizon enough to get a reading. I don’t think there is a comparable star in the south. Thanks for the memories!
Except that the North Star has only existed as such for only the last couple of thousand years or so, and human civilization goes back much further than that. For example, back when the great Egyptian pyramids were being built, there was no star at the north celestial pole, only this star that circled around close to it.
@@lawrencedoliveiro9104 I would think if the earth’s rotation axis currently has less than 1 degree of wobble back and forth in relation to Polaris, as you go back in time it might go further away from that, but it was in the process of resolving to today’s night sky. In other words, at some point the change would be small enough to resolve for latitude navigation. Each degree error in declination results in a 60 nautical mile error north or south. Our ancestors may not have had the tools we have, but their brains worked very well. Thanks for bringing up the fact that the night sky changes over time. I didn’t realize the changes were as fast as a couple of thousand years.
@@skeller61 The precession of the equinoxes makes a full circle in about 26,000 years. By my rough calculations, the circumference of that circle in the sky, at a radius of 23½° from the pole, is about 144 of the units that would correspond to a full degree at the celestial equator. So it would only take about 90 years for the orientation of the celestial poles to shift by half a degree, or the apparent diameter of the Sun or Moon. Doesn’t sound like much time, does it? Assuming I got the calculation right, of course ...
It would be interesting to know how ships in the modern age kept track of longitude before GPS. I suppose this would include commercial aircraft, spacecraft etc. Great video, Happy New year..
We used LORAN (long range aide to navigation), SINS (Ships Inertial Navigation System) and a cesium beam clock (atomic clock), there was also NavSat which was satellite but not with geo-synchronous sats, so you could only catch them as they flew over you.
![Neil deGrasse Tyson on Aliens, Mars & Why an Asteroid Might Flatten Earth [Full Interview]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/PTqqiDQP02I/mqdefault.jpg)
How are you ringing in the new year?
Pretty accurate, I hope 😉
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signal_Hill_(Cape_Town)
Neil Tyson, do you think if the US military budget had been spent on science, we would have ended up not with a war with Russia, but with the development of the Solar System?
In bed with the flu.. happy new year Startalk!
With a small group of family/friends, drink some beers, play some kind of fun word game, go home and go to bed early. Don’t need to stay up until midnight to “ring in the new year”… As Neil says it’s arbitrary, depending on your time zone. The Times Square stuff does not appeal to me
Best TH-cam channel ever.
Neil's explanations are always long-winded. That's why I love him.
it takes alot of words to define something well enough to give everyone a chance to understand.... even flat earthers, too bad they dont have the patience to listen to all of the explanations.
It's like he has a huge forest of knowledge, and he likes to take us on walks through it.
@@michaelkhoo5846 thats exactly what knowledge is, its a forest of information
I respect someone more if they take the time to explain something rather than (seemingly annoyed) explaining in a quick and short response. His passion for knowledge and sharing it is amazing. We are supposed to spread our knowledge and not hold it ransom for money.
@@michaelkhoo5846 I like that. Well said.
"you missed the mustache in the sky". This had me LOL for real. Love this channel!
We are so lucky for this!!! Thanks guys!!!
You left out the British Longitude Act that offered a prize for whoever developed an reliable accurate chronometer. Love the video!
I live in the port city of Durban, South Africa, and there is a monument at the site of the original Time ball near the harbour. The time ball still worked until recently, but a storm broke it. I didn't realise it was used to sync time on the ships. I always thought it was just used a clock for everybody who worked near the docks.
That is a cool story. Thanks
I love this channel, keep teaching me things I did not know I needed to know. Happy New Year!
Happy new year!
Fun arbitrary fact, aluminum foil is shiny on one side and dull on the other. Because in the manufacturing process two sheets at a time have to go through roll press to make it thin otherwise it will tear. So the side that touches the roller is shiny and the other dull. =)
What keeps it shiny, though? Because pure aluminium is highly reactive with oxygen in the air -- even more so than iron. So a fresh, shiny aluminium surface exposed to the air will rapidly become covered with a thin layer of aluminium oxide. Unlike iron oxides, this is a tough layer that (normally) protects the underlying material against further reaction with oxygen.
And if you get dollar store tin foil it just tears right through even by looking at it let alone touching it because of how thin it is
This is brilliant! Happy New Year to you and all of the "watchmen" out there!
There was a man who watches until they replaced him with a mechanical version- is what I was thinking!😄
Thanks and may the New Year be one full of Promise.🙏🙂
I have always loved Neil. I was very happy when I discovered this channel a few years ago. But for the first couple of shows, Chuck just didn't do anything for me.
But then something happened around the third or fourth show, and I kept liking him better and better until at this point, he makes the show for me. I love StarTalk, and I love Neil. But I absolutely adore Chuck Nice.
😁❤️💞🤷♀️💞❤️😁
I am 100% with you on this. Sometimes I get what Neil is talking about, sometimes Chuck makes Neil slow down and explain.
The same happened to me.
I’m sure there are many that have similar initial experience. It’s has nothing much to do with Chuck himself but our nature to wait until we reach a point of relatability and familiarity. When you watch a new show or when a new character is introduced we take a similar approach. It’s all good.
It's the same with friends and family members, you like them only because you've known them for quite a long time and they look familiar 🤣🤣
I think I'm slowly falling for Gerald too.
I sometimes refer to myself as a walking encyclopedia of useless things!
Thanks Neil for adding a new "page" to that!
And a happy new year!
I have absolutely enjoyed learning again this evening!☺️Thanks guys!
Fun facts every human should know for sure!😉
Thank you, StarTalk, for all the wonderful breaks from this year's lunacy. For the record, in the years to come, You Are Needed!
"Most specific, arbitrary
fact I have ever heard in my life!" 😂😂😂
New episode making my day better
Happy new year Neil. Thanks for the knowledge you share.
Another excellent explainer video Neil & Chuck! Happy New Year to you and your families! 💥💥👍👍
absolutly luv the "chemistry" between these two
It's great to learn about this because I had no idea. At least I'm a little bit smarter this year before it ends.
My two favorite people! Brings happiness to my day!
This is so awesome! I've always wondered what the ball drop was all about. Thanks guys!
Mr. Neil, how I wish everyone would be as smart as you. I wish I would have taken the time to study as much as you might have...but since I didn't I'm fascinated with the amount of knowledge and understanding you share with the world for as long as these videos will be available to the world wide public. Thank you again. Joe
In Spain we also use a ball to mark the New Year. I would have never guessed this tradition comes from sea travel. The clock used for New Year celebrations is in Madrid, nowhere near the sea.
Thank you for this video. This is the best explanation I ever had of Long/Lat navigation.
I like the addition of visuals to explain the concepts he is referring too
Also, I love StarTalk. Thanks!!!
I love you guys so much!!!! I got to geek out today...YYYEEESSSSS!!!!🥰🥰🥰
I so needed this!!!😁😁😁
HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!!🎆🍾🥂🎆💋
I am glad, that Neil started editing the videos. Really missed that at some moments
Omg what a genius. Amazing. No one has ever told me and I’m glad we all have you guys 🎉🎉 Happy New Year & you are our watchmen helping us navigate through Space in time using knowledge as a light.
We have the 1 o'clock gun here in Edinburgh. It was used in the same way. The gun is fired every day at 1 from the castle (still done to this day but more for the tourists) and on Carlton Hill (just over a mile from the gun) there was a ball that dropped at the same time to allow boats in the Forth determine there time in the same way as Neil describes
You 2 are sooo much fun to watch together and apart. Science class is always a delightful event. Thanks so much for the JOY and Wonder, BRILLIANT!!! HAPPY Holy New Year🤸♀️💥🥳💗🌲🌴🥰
I LOVE IT! A geeked out explanation of why they drop the ball in Times Square as an annual New Year’s tradition.
Amazing
Wow…. Thanks guys and happy new year🎉🎉
I have a tremendous amount of fun learning from you guys! My you g daughter loves watching as well. Everytime a new video comes out I get told before I know like, "daddy a new tartalk is here!" Thank you for your continued sharing of wisdom Dr Tyson and Mr nice.
Isn't it amazing that kids instinctually are fascinated by Dinosaurs and Space/Stars? So great of you to facilitate the curiosity! 💫🌌
Happy New Year, Neil & STAR ⭐✨ Talkers 🥳🎊🎉🧡🎁⛄❣️ Thanks for all you contribute to others! It's so useful these days to learn & smile!!
This gives inspiration to get my ship clocks from storage and get them running again. Thanks Neil and StarTalk, hopefully your knowledge will be able to stay in Public Classrooms in 2023🤠🇺🇸
Awesome!!!!! Happy New Year everyone!!
I had no clue. That was a perfect bit of history and science, amazing.
Thank you for being honest and all about science. I enjoy your content, and appreciate the entropy.....your biggest fan❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️
Gratitude brought back memories of going to watch the Ball drop with H.S. friends from Bklyn Tech! Originally from Brooklyn, NYC watching this from West Africa.
Love this channel
Fascinating stuff.....and Chuck was in superb form!!! Thanks guys
Love this one! Thanks!!
I always thought that waiting for the ball to drop in Times Square in the freezing cold was a bit of insanity but now I understand where it all came from, thanks guys.
A correction to the video:
One minute difference in your clock is not a little more than 1 mile of inaccuracy in your position 9:40. It's about 17 miles, or if you prefer every second is almost 0.3 miles.
That's why the accuracy is so important.
Calculations:
If earth circumference is 40,075 km, then if we devide it to hours we get 40,075/24 = 1,670 km of movement is an hour difference in the position of the sun.
And we can devide the circumference to seconds: 40,075/24/60/60 = 0.463 km or 463 meter. So a person standing 463 meter (0.29 miles) will see the sun positioned at the same place you see it a second later then you (or before you if he is to the east of you).
I might have made a mistake, if you think I'm wrong please let me know.
Chuck, thanks for asking the question! Neil, thanks for answering the question in so much detail!
You guys are fantastic teachers. And, entertaining with my kind of humor.
Happy New Year to Neil and Chuck.
Neil and Chuck Happy New 2024 Year and good luck to All Star Talk and Friends, USA
New Year's Time should definitely be a holiday! What a brilliant concept!
Happy New Years everyone!
Absolutely Fascinating!!! Everything comes back to the stars and science. Thank you so much for this explanation.
Man this was the coolest thing ive heard from neil i didnt know that about the ball drip and the watchman this was the best time well spent thanks keep it up
You guys are so good together. It's nice to see such a smart dedicated scientist laugh. Thanks Chuck.
I look forward to every show. Love you guys.
Happy New year Neil and Chuck ♥️♥️♥️
What a fascinating story. How they saw this ball at the Royal Observatory in Greenwich all the way from the Port of London at Tilbury, which was usually structurally busy on the vertical axis, I don't know.
I started saying happy Holidays as an all-encompassing acknowledgement of the entire “holiday season” starting in late November and ending January 1st.
Picking up on the idea of bells, there used to be a sound signal at Greenwich (there may still be). A cannon rather than bells and, as the observatory is about half a mile from the river, it would be fired from the deck of the Cutty Sark which is in dry dock right next to the river. Those firing the cannon would take their cue from the timeball.
I saw it being fired once. A tiny little thing about 30 cm (1 foot) long, but it still make quite a bang.
Ex sailor here and I had no idea that the ball drop and watchman were linked...mind blown....ty.
16:22 literally me every time I learn something new from StarTalk lol
These days my New Year’s Eves tend to be boring. I might not even be awake at Midnight.
Once, decades ago, I was in Times Square and watched the ball drop. I’m glad I did that at least once.
Thanks for the complete explanation.
I learned something today , and on the 1st day of the year ! Thank you Blackipedia!
Nice mission to find a point in the Earth's translation and define it as a worldwide moment to celebrate, so that each time zone celebrates it at the same time in different sun positions, so you can choose between a dark celebration or a night celebration .
A story that I love about the transit telescope used to define the prime meridian is that it is accurately aligned to vertical to within current experimental error. Unfortunately 'local vertical' at Greenwich does not pass through the center of the Earth.
Modern navigation systems use the _angle_ defined by the Greenwich meridian, but through the center of the Earth. So when you visit the observatory at Greenwich your GPS will indicate that the prime meridian is about 100 m off.
-Jon
Greenwich used to be 0° longitude, but that has changed with the adoption of WGS 84. This recognizes that the Earth is not a perfect sphere, but it ends up shifting things around a little bit to get them to fit. So 0° longitude is now in the middle of a road running to the east of the Observatory, about 100m off as you say.
WGS 84 is also what GPS coordinates are based on.
@@lawrencedoliveiro9104 This is not my field of study, but what you describe agrees with my understanding.
WGS84 _could_ have been designed for 0° to go though the transit telescope at Greenwich; picking 0° is arbitrary, after all.
But as I understand the story, if 0° was forced to go right through its old defining point on the surface of the earth, then the 'angle' of the meridianal plane would have changed, which would mean a time keeping discontinuity.
Picture a plane defined by the axis of rotation of the earth and some other factor. That other factor could be a point in space, or it could be a vector defining a direction. This (half) plane is 0° longitude.
If the Earth were a homogenous sphere, then the location of the transit telescope at Greenwich would define the same plane as the local vertical vector passing through that point.
But since the Earth is not a homogenous sphere then the two definitions of the 0° plane are not equivalent. Which one got picked was in some sense political, since either choice would be correct.
Since time is tied to the rotation of the prime meridian, my guess is that the political clout was on the side of keeping the 'local vertical vector' basis of the 0° longitude plane, rather than the 'local position' basis.
But as I said, not my field of study.
Jon
Personally, I think the ball should do a 1 minute free fall. It’s the new year when it impacts at 500 mph.
Id love to see that lol. It would probably need to be inside a vacuum to eliminate the wind resistance as a variable.
@@thanos879 Wind resistance should be a constant more than a variable.
It'd be 32*60 ft/s ~ 1300 mph without wind resistance
@@whyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy That sounds absolutely awesome. It would be even cooler if we dropped it from space such that it hits the atmosphere 1 minute prior to impact. The atmosphere is about 6,000 miles thick, so it would need to be going about 10 miles per second. That should be fast enough to get a fireball. Edit: oops. I left out a zero. That's 100 miles per second. That's even better.
This idea has legs
Glad you guys did this explanation. My wife was asking me this question last night, now I can try to explain it to her in under 16 minutes. lol
Chuck's face when he says "moonth" - priceless
Awesome episode.
There was a book I read earlier this year, I can't remember the title, that talked about the history of timekeeping. I read the part about the ball dropping, but I never related it to New Year's Eve because I'm not much of a holiday person. It was fun to see Neil describe that history and tie it in.
The history is the only thing that explains it. It is better than Times Square on TV.
Happy New Year! Love the videos! I always learn something new. Thank you for that!
It is great living in California because you can watch the ball drop in NY and put the kids to bed after celebrating the new year coming in and they aren't super cranky the next day from being up too late 😃
A bit of history. Thank You Neil!
Those two men together are an amazing duo.
That was wonderful!
Thank you so much!!
Great video! I think some people who complain that "Happy Holidays" removes religion, really mean it doesn't emphasize or glorify their specific religion.
Neil really is this generations Carl Sagan. Love this dude
He is a protégé of Sagan, and has paid homage to the latter more than once.
@@stefhanal-bayaty2672 I don’t know what you mean “plagiarist”. The facts both were citing are the same, after all.
I don’t know if you’ll even read this comment but I absolutely LOVE you guys, it’s great, it hits home, I love you and it’s informative and hilarious
Chuck: “why the ball drop on New Years”
Neil: “ …that’s my people”
Me: “ 🙌🏿 yeaaa!”
Neil: “astrophysicist, astronomers those are my people”
Me: “aww 🙇🏾♂️”
This was amazing, thank you 💙
Beautiful story about the ingenuity of man.
Thank you for taking the time to explain.
Happy New Year, Gerald! ⌚😜
Neil is the G.O.A.T!!! I just love his knowledge of things!!
There is a fantastic book by Dava Sobel, 'Longitude' that talks about John Harrison's obsession with building the chronometer. It briefly touches on this, if I recall correctly.
Happy New Year!!
WOW this was so informative!
Mind blowing once again!
Should we all celebrate New Years at 00:00 UTC or Grenwich Mean Time? That is 04:00 UTC where I live in the US Mountain Time Zone, I'm all for that!!!
Better check that
Very Christmas! to both of you
Beautiful storytelling ❤😂🎉
Great story. I learned something! One correction: @11:20 Not 100 ft/sec for sound. It's closer to 1100 ft/sec :D
I ❤️ Neil happy new year everyone ❤❤❤
This is why Captain Hook had a clock for the alligator to eat in first place.
Thank you so much for this fun fact video!! Love watching. you guys.
Thank you for the knowledge. I didn't know the details of this tradition.
Happy New Year, everyone, whatever time you celebrate it🎉.
I was a navigator in a C-130 in the 80’s, before GPS and we didn’t have an inertial navigation system (INS) either. INS had gyroscopes that detected movement and were remarkably accurate. So, we used a sextant. The navigation history Neil gave is fascinating. I’d like to know how and when the air almanacs started, and the books we used which had, I believe, seven stars with the lat/long of where the star was directly overhead at particular times. When we took a sextant measure, we did calculations of how high that star should be at a point we anticipated we’d be. If the star was higher than anticipated, we we closer to the star’s overhead point by a nautical mile for every minute of declination (height) above, or farther if lower. By doing three of these celestial ‘shots’ at roughly 120 degrees, we would get a point (more often a small triangle) of where we actually were.
One other note, like Neil mentioned the problem with rocking boats, our autopilot had a two minute cycle, so we took an average reading of two minutes to negate that factor.
Finally, I would wager the reason the northern hemisphere is more populated is that the North Star giving you latitude only works if you are far enough north that Polaris is above the horizon enough to get a reading. I don’t think there is a comparable star in the south.
Thanks for the memories!
Except that the North Star has only existed as such for only the last couple of thousand years or so, and human civilization goes back much further than that. For example, back when the great Egyptian pyramids were being built, there was no star at the north celestial pole, only this star that circled around close to it.
@@lawrencedoliveiro9104 I would think if the earth’s rotation axis currently has less than 1 degree of wobble back and forth in relation to Polaris, as you go back in time it might go further away from that, but it was in the process of resolving to today’s night sky. In other words, at some point the change would be small enough to resolve for latitude navigation. Each degree error in declination results in a 60 nautical mile error north or south.
Our ancestors may not have had the tools we have, but their brains worked very well.
Thanks for bringing up the fact that the night sky changes over time. I didn’t realize the changes were as fast as a couple of thousand years.
@@skeller61 The precession of the equinoxes makes a full circle in about 26,000 years. By my rough calculations, the circumference of that circle in the sky, at a radius of 23½° from the pole, is about 144 of the units that would correspond to a full degree at the celestial equator. So it would only take about 90 years for the orientation of the celestial poles to shift by half a degree, or the apparent diameter of the Sun or Moon.
Doesn’t sound like much time, does it? Assuming I got the calculation right, of course ...
Further checking my calculations, I think a change in orientation of the poles of ½° might take more like 140 years. Still a remarkably brief time.
Always quirky & fun! Thanks for sharing!
It would be interesting to know how ships in the modern age kept track of longitude before GPS. I suppose this would include commercial aircraft, spacecraft etc. Great video, Happy New year..
They had tools...
We used LORAN (long range aide to navigation), SINS (Ships Inertial Navigation System) and a cesium beam clock (atomic clock), there was also NavSat which was satellite but not with geo-synchronous sats, so you could only catch them as they flew over you.
We had--and have--chronometers, thanks to a chap named John Harrison back in the 18th century, who came up with a workable design for the first one.
❤ love to listen to Neil , I’m fascinated by the way he explain It!!! Thank you for this videos !!!