Hey Space Timers! As you'll hear in the episode Matt says "today" when referring to the Solar Eclipse. For clarity, the solar eclipse in North America will be on Monday, April 8th, 2024. We were originally going to publish this episode on eclipse day, but decided to push the release so more of our community could see it and enjoy it before Monday. We hope you enjoy the episode and that it can give you some more perspective on how important eclipses have been to the collective understanding of our place in the solar system!
Please do an episode on Brane Cosmology and M-Theory.. its stunning and not disproven, accelerators need to advance to prove or disprove LED. Either way M is a stunning theory and Witten is a legend. Would be a stunning landmark episode if you get the graphics right!!
What I love about this is it shows ancient people weren't dumb and we are as a species are not so much smarter. We just have better tools, built up from a foundation of those before us. If you would have dropped these ancient thinkers in modern day, with modern measuring tools, they would have gotten the same answers we get. I very much dislike when people don't understand evolution wouldn't make us smarter in 3000 years, it's too small of a timeline.
Even within the human species, there's so much variation in the ability to solve certain types of problems. I've seen people with no background in a problem, solve an issue in minutes that stumped a group of experts for weeks. They were just curious about something the knew nothing about.
Great comment, so true. I on the other hand, especially when experiencing certain people, realize that we are not much more intelligent than apes. Our great strength is that we are a social species and by working together we can make the most of the individuals with the brains and those with the brawn.
Being able to deduce so much about the universe just with some shadows and math is absolutely incredible. The history of astronomy is fascinating. One of my favorite stories is Rømer's determination of the speed of light using nothing but the orbit of Jupiter's moon Io
Soacetime videos often make me feel stupid, but seeing what the ancient grreeks could figure out with basic geomtry from some simple observations is anazing
makes me wonder if having an eclipse or some such astronomical phenomenon of similar obviousness, is a key to the development of space-faring species 🤔🤔🤔
@@JamesTWood One of the interesting things about our place in the universe is that the distance between the Earth and the Moon, the size of each, and the angle of the orbits, and the position of the land masses allows these eclipses to be observable at all. How many other worlds simply have transits of moons or other planets that dont block out the star? How many worlds dont have the parade of shadows across their moons like our lunar cycles?
5:46 If anyone IS asking why, the "first quarter" and "third quarter" are the 2 phases that occur when the moon is 1/4 and 3/4 of the way through its new moon -> new moon cycle.
Correct! It also helps to remember that the word "moon" can refer to a lunar month. At (roughly) the end of the first and third quarters of a given lunar month (or "moon" in that sense), the moon as seen in the sky appears half-illuminated, i.e., a "half moon" in that other sense. I've sometimes heard people suggest that this is incorrect, but it isn't; it's accurate and descriptive but refers to a different meaning of the word.
0:00 _"A little later today..."_ Even though I *KNOW* what day the eclipse is, and have been planning for it, you still sent me into a panic. I'm much too easily swayed.🤣
I’m so excited to live directly in the path of totality!!!! I’m so lucky to be alive to witness this from my own backyard. I hope everyone who witnesses the eclipse is safe and has a wonderful experience!!!
I have a bunch of trees in my backyard that would have made for a blocked view, but there’s an open grassy park right in front of my house with benches, and folks from the neighborhood all came to it to watch in the open field. It was perfect!
“But if we laugh with derision, we will never understand. Human intellectual capacity has not altered for thousands of years so far as we can tell. If intelligent people invested intense energy in issues that now seem foolish to us, then the failure lies in our understanding of their world, not in their distorted perceptions.” -SJ Gould
I actually used Eratosthenes' method of calculations with a pen pal in gradeschool to perform the same measurment of the earth's radius for science fair. Really, really smart and ingenious method and it really shows that no matter the tools, humanity will get to the answers.
I watched the total solar eclipse from a bavarian mountain in 1999. as the moon started to completely cover the sun the vast fields in front of me turned pitch black as the light slowly dimmed and as the wall of shade hit me it became dark as night. it was insanely impressive. really gives you a sense of scale.
I saw that one too although in the garden 😂 What I’ll never forget is how nature slowed down to the point where birds stopped chirping and it was an eerie silence, as the eclipse approached. Apart from that, birds starting to chirp again on that sunny day shortly after the eclipse made it all the more amazing. It had a soundtrack lol
Ooooh that's something to keep in mind. Me and my family are intending to watch the 2026 eclipse in Spain, as it occurs in August, at a good time to go on holiday (we're planning on the Pyrenees, so it'd only be a few hours traveling). A good view might make it even more impressive!
I can't lie, this subject matter is so accessible that I've found this episode one of the most thought-provoking. All despite finding your recent holographic explanations fascinating.
In addition, it was relatively common knowledge among classical Greek scholars that the Sun, the Moon, the Earth and even the other planets were (almost) spherical in shape due to what we would call “gravity,” a phenomenon that they perceived as the propensity of more dense/“heavy” objects to go to the “bottom,” that is, toward the centre of such spheres (see Aristotle’s “De Coelo”/“On the Heavens”).
Carl Sagan - Cosmos - Eratosthenes. ''Because Eratosthenes had the presence of mind, to experiment, to actually ask, whether, back here, near Alexandria, a stick cast a shadow near noon, on June, the 21st .. And it turns out - Sticks Do.''
I'm just a little north of Carbondale Illinois waiting for this. I drove 5 and half hours to get here because this is where the weather looks the best from where I was.
I'll be in Sherbrooke, Qcl monday where we will have about 3 min 20 sec of totality. Forecast is full clear sky. It will be my first total solar eclipse. Thanks for this nice piece of science and history!
Saw the total eclipse 7 years ago in Tennessee. It was absolutely amazing. If you plan on seeing this one, try to make sure there are trees nearby... the insects and birds reacting is absolutely wild.
The Venusian transit study is really cool. I didn't know about that effort, but it's these sorts of details that really add depth to the story of science figuring out how the universe works...
Just watched the eclipse. I know the astronomy behind it. But it's still an event that breaks the human brain. This is one of those rare occasions where I lament the impact "awesome" has nowadays because there is no way to describe it. It fills you with awe.
This was something I was able to understand, very inspiring video! It is fascinating to realize how much the ancient Greek already knew. In contrast, high level QFT and Quantumgravity can be very overwhelming and I usually get lost rather quickly.
Good point! Never take truth for granted. Personally, I haven't met anyone in person who believes that, except some folks on TH-cam. Maybe, and I am trying to be charitable here, they simply believe that the earth is flat enough 😅
According to the church, you needed to throw inti jail anyone who realized the truth of the solar system, i.e. everything orbits the sun. Their storybook taught that everything orbits around earth.
@@bigsmall246 It's even funnier, their voodoo book outright says earth is flat ("plane of the world"), has corners, and wind is made by their deity when grandpa sitting on a cloud is bored and needs to vent. No, this is not a joke, this is literally 1:1 passages found in that trash pile of a book. Funny how voodoo 'literalists' always quietly ignore these verses...
@@bigsmall246which church are you talking about, because I can guarantee that's not true across most of them. There are, however, extremists. They are out there. If you are talking about Christianity or Muslim, it's just the extremists. The Bible actually documented different star and planet alignments
@@adammeyer3129 Galileo was imprisoned for life by the roman church. The archbishop of Siena himself sentenced Galileo to house arrest for life. If an extremist can go to such a high rank, isn't the whole religion extremist then?
I remember being a kid and watching a total solar eclipse. A group of nearby chickens immediately went to roost, then returned a few minutes later as if nothing had happened. I'm honored I get to live as a scientist. Much love from Zimbabwe.
When I saw the total solar eclipse in Oregon I absolutely gasped in awe. Even though I knew exactly when and where to look, and exactly what I was looking at, it was still an almost "spiritual" experience. I cannot imagine what I would have felt/thought if I had that same experience without knowing it was coming or much about what caused it. I'm very sad I cannot make it to the path of totality this time.
Excellent episode, thank you Matt and team! I made a point to watch it with my kids so they could understand how scientific discovery builds across time.
Fantastic stuff and a tribute to all of those from ancient times through to today how have broadened our knowledge of the solar system and how it works.
Off topic, but this channel has really inspired me. I graduated with a degree in interdisciplinary studies, which is basically the GED of college. It got me a decent job, but nothing too exciting. However, thanks to you, I've decided to dive into physics, which I've always found intriguing but above my pay grade. But thanks to your videos I've started studying on my on and am starting to get the hang of calculus, a subject I used to avoid like the plague.... I'm even thinking about going back to school. So, thanks for everything. Once I've got a good grip on all this math, I'm going for that physics degree and aiming for astrophysics.
Thank you very much for this video. I have heard how the distances and size of the Earth were calculated in the past, but they never really provided any detailed explanation on the steps and logic that went into it. I finally get it, so thank so much
This was fascinating, as usual. And yet I couldn't help but be mesmerized by the moons on Matt's shirt "floating" above his hands at 6:00 and again at 7:20!
Quarter moons makes perfect sense, they indicate the moon's travel through its full cycle. You have 1st quarter, Full, 3rd quarter, New. Probably a reliable enough measure of time for planning harvests, travel times, coordinating attacks, etc.
Amusingly, the Earth goes the wrong way in the animation around 4:00. Clearly, Matt does not do the animations. I love Matt. Matt is my No. 1 yt physicist. Especially his AMAs blow my mind.
5:49 "Those half-full points are technically called quarter moons. Don't ask me why." That's because "first QUARTER moon" and "third QUARTER moon" are at a 1/4 and 3/4 of the lunar cycle. Other significant points are at half ("new moon") or zero/1 ("full moon"). That's the reason why they are called "Quarter Moons". For the first time ever, I can explain something to Matt - it feels amazing 🤣
People figured out so much of this over 2 thousand years ago... and yet there are people today who insist it's all a conspiracy and the world is actually flat.
@pbsspacetime I'd like to thank you for not making 2 hours of videos every day. If you did, I'd absolutely have to watch all of them because they're so awesome, and it'd totally wreck my schedule. Rocking your t-shirt over here in Yokohama, Japan btw!
This was such a fantastic video, I love hearing the entire story of humanity working to refine a certain piece of knowledge Puts it all in perspective so well! And the beautiful animation makes it really digestible, bravo!
The half-moon phases are called "first quarter" and "third quarter" because they happen 25% and 75% of the way during the moon's period. (Counting from "new moon" as the start point. "Second quarter" would be the full moon, but calling it that doesn't add any precision since there's only one full moon per lunar month anyway.)
00:00: A total solar eclipse will darken the sky across North America today. 02:01: Ancient Greeks significantly advanced our understanding of the cosmos and eclipses. 02:28: Greeks recognized Earth's roundness through observations of ships and lunar eclipses. 03:37: Eclipses revealed Earth's shape and the regularity of celestial movements. 04:39: Aristarchus of Samos used shadows to determine relative sizes in the solar system. 07:11: Aristarchus calculated the Sun's distance using lunar phases and eclipses. 09:44: Eratosthenes accurately measured Earth's radius using shadows and geometry. 11:14: Kepler's laws of planetary motion motivated precise measurements of the solar system. 12:37: Transits of Venus provided the first accurate measurement of the distance to the Sun. 14:16: The collaboration during Venus transits culminated in a significant advancement in astronomy.
Thank you so much for all your amazing work. Your videos have inspired me to learn so much more than I would have otherwise, and they have had a measurably positive impact on my life.
Best just to ignore them. Block them out like you use your hand to block the sun on a bright day. Either through stupidy or purposeful trolling, they are immune to logic and reason. They thrive on wasting your time with their nonsense.
I was lucky enough to live in the path of the 2017 North American eclipse and I was less than a 2 hour drive from this one. It was once again, an amazing experience.
Thank you for this fascinating history episode! I had the pleasure of relating some of the history and math discussed here to my Bible study class this morning while talking about the upcoming eclipse. I'm excited for it! I drove to Missouri in 2017 for the last one, and it was glorious. It's a miracle to witness. God be with you out there, everybody. ✝️ :)
I was lucky enough to be in Quebec to see my first total eclipse. I was surprised how the moment was so deeply emotional. I was expecting to enjoy the moment, the experience but not to be deeply effected by it. As we went dark it went suddenly quiet, an irreverent somberness as the air became cooler, no colour, an opaqueness filtered our view. And for a moment we had a glimpse of life without the sun. Pushing aside the practicality of no sun, it was more the realization how precious this planet is, how life and the sun are so closely connected and is everything to us.
11:30 That portrait is *not* showing Kepler. It's a fake that was uploaded to Wikipedia about 20 years ago, which has since been propagated to many other places. The fake was pointed out in 2021, and this is now properly mentioned in the Wikipedia article, but the image still pops up often when Kepler is mentioned by people who don't know better. I'd expect you, PBS, to do your due diligence, and to not propagate fake information.
I always find it fascinating that me, a regular person with interest in science could go back 1000 years and blow the minds of the smartest people in the world. Imagine what they could have done with today’s knowledge!
Hey Space Timers! As you'll hear in the episode Matt says "today" when referring to the Solar Eclipse. For clarity, the solar eclipse in North America will be on Monday, April 8th, 2024. We were originally going to publish this episode on eclipse day, but decided to push the release so more of our community could see it and enjoy it before Monday. We hope you enjoy the episode and that it can give you some more perspective on how important eclipses have been to the collective understanding of our place in the solar system!
As in, "this day and age", I would imagine.
Understandable
I knew there was going to be a video today. My psychic skills have gone Super Saiyan!
Please do an episode on Brane Cosmology and M-Theory.. its stunning and not disproven, accelerators need to advance to prove or disprove LED. Either way M is a stunning theory and Witten is a legend. Would be a stunning landmark episode if you get the graphics right!!
Had to do a quick Google search to make sure I didn’t hop branches during my sleep. (before seeing this comment 😅)
What I love about this is it shows ancient people weren't dumb and we are as a species are not so much smarter. We just have better tools, built up from a foundation of those before us. If you would have dropped these ancient thinkers in modern day, with modern measuring tools, they would have gotten the same answers we get. I very much dislike when people don't understand evolution wouldn't make us smarter in 3000 years, it's too small of a timeline.
All flerfs shoud be required to watch this and identify the "errors" in reasoning and math ...
"If I have seen further than others, it is by standing upon the shoulders of giants." -- Isaac Newton
Even within the human species, there's so much variation in the ability to solve certain types of problems. I've seen people with no background in a problem, solve an issue in minutes that stumped a group of experts for weeks. They were just curious about something the knew nothing about.
Whenever someone says evolution made us smarter in the last 3000 years, just point at flat earthers, lol.
Great comment, so true. I on the other hand, especially when experiencing certain people, realize that we are not much more intelligent than apes. Our great strength is that we are a social species and by working together we can make the most of the individuals with the brains and those with the brawn.
Being able to deduce so much about the universe just with some shadows and math is absolutely incredible. The history of astronomy is fascinating. One of my favorite stories is Rømer's determination of the speed of light using nothing but the orbit of Jupiter's moon Io
Ok THAT sound incredible. I will have to read about it
Soacetime videos often make me feel stupid, but seeing what the ancient grreeks could figure out with basic geomtry from some simple observations is anazing
Yeah, using mechanical clocks! Really amazing!
makes me wonder if having an eclipse or some such astronomical phenomenon of similar obviousness, is a key to the development of space-faring species 🤔🤔🤔
@@JamesTWood One of the interesting things about our place in the universe is that the distance between the Earth and the Moon, the size of each, and the angle of the orbits, and the position of the land masses allows these eclipses to be observable at all. How many other worlds simply have transits of moons or other planets that dont block out the star? How many worlds dont have the parade of shadows across their moons like our lunar cycles?
Matt is my all-time favourite narrator. His Aussie accent, perfect pronunciations, and fluid delivery are awesome.
Give this man a round of applause!
Usually perfect pronunciation - Newfoundland rhymes with "understand", with emphasis on the first syllable.
9:49 Not so good on Greek names.
...😂 the hands tho. He can NOT speak without waving the hands around. It's visually distracting.
@@besticudcumupwith202 - Maybe part Italian? 🙂
@@PMA65537 - as long as he doesn't call horiatiki salad a 'Greek salad' he's good. 🙂 but it's all Greek to me
5:46 If anyone IS asking why, the "first quarter" and "third quarter" are the 2 phases that occur when the moon is 1/4 and 3/4 of the way through its new moon -> new moon cycle.
Correct! It also helps to remember that the word "moon" can refer to a lunar month. At (roughly) the end of the first and third quarters of a given lunar month (or "moon" in that sense), the moon as seen in the sky appears half-illuminated, i.e., a "half moon" in that other sense. I've sometimes heard people suggest that this is incorrect, but it isn't; it's accurate and descriptive but refers to a different meaning of the word.
0:00 _"A little later today..."_
Even though I *KNOW* what day the eclipse is, and have been planning for it, you still sent me into a panic.
I'm much too easily swayed.🤣
Sorry. We didn't mean to scare you! It's still definitely April 8th!
same!
@@pbsspacetime Great way to evade we are really in a simulation and adjust the comments rather than reality huh? 🤣🤣
I had the same reaction, except a week ago I misread the date of the eclipse and thought it was on the 6th so I thought I was really going crazy lmao
@@anarchyantz1564
Hey, is that a black cat...
Hey, is that a black cat...
I said "wow" out loud at least 3 times during this video. Human curiosity is borderline obsessive!
I’m so excited to live directly in the path of totality!!!! I’m so lucky to be alive to witness this from my own backyard. I hope everyone who witnesses the eclipse is safe and has a wonderful experience!!!
I have a bunch of trees in my backyard that would have made for a blocked view, but there’s an open grassy park right in front of my house with benches, and folks from the neighborhood all came to it to watch in the open field. It was perfect!
I can’t make this one, but in 2017, the full solar eclipse in Oregon was something i’ll never forget
Greetings from Corvallis! At least that's where we were for the Eclipse.
Did you look up?
It was amazing. We came down from Seattle and had a great experience near Salem.
@@derringera 👋 we ( and 30k+ others) were at the Oregon eclipse festival… 😀
@@A3Kr0n that’s why I’ll never forget 😜
“But if we laugh with derision, we will never understand. Human intellectual capacity has not altered for thousands of years so far as we can tell. If intelligent people invested intense energy in issues that now seem foolish to us, then the failure lies in our understanding of their world, not in their distorted perceptions.” -SJ Gould
I actually used Eratosthenes' method of calculations with a pen pal in gradeschool to perform the same measurment of the earth's radius for science fair. Really, really smart and ingenious method and it really shows that no matter the tools, humanity will get to the answers.
I watched the total solar eclipse from a bavarian mountain in 1999. as the moon started to completely cover the sun the vast fields in front of me turned pitch black as the light slowly dimmed and as the wall of shade hit me it became dark as night. it was insanely impressive. really gives you a sense of scale.
I saw that one too although in the garden 😂 What I’ll never forget is how nature slowed down to the point where birds stopped chirping and it was an eerie silence, as the eclipse approached. Apart from that, birds starting to chirp again on that sunny day shortly after the eclipse made it all the more amazing. It had a soundtrack lol
Ooooh that's something to keep in mind. Me and my family are intending to watch the 2026 eclipse in Spain, as it occurs in August, at a good time to go on holiday (we're planning on the Pyrenees, so it'd only be a few hours traveling). A good view might make it even more impressive!
I can't lie, this subject matter is so accessible that I've found this episode one of the most thought-provoking. All despite finding your recent holographic explanations fascinating.
I will never forget seeing a total solar eclipse. It's truly breathtaking.
I was a bit jealous here in Germany. Did you have a clear sky?
@@Enkaptaton Yes, it was a hot, clear day. I travelled just over 800 miles to see it!
Lucky, it's cloudy tomorrow where I am :(
In addition, it was relatively common knowledge among classical Greek scholars that the Sun, the Moon, the Earth and even the other planets were (almost) spherical in shape due to what we would call “gravity,” a phenomenon that they perceived as the propensity of more dense/“heavy” objects to go to the “bottom,” that is, toward the centre of such spheres (see Aristotle’s “De Coelo”/“On the Heavens”).
Carl Sagan - Cosmos - Eratosthenes. ''Because Eratosthenes had the presence of mind, to experiment, to actually ask, whether, back here, near Alexandria, a stick cast a shadow near noon, on June, the 21st .. And it turns out - Sticks Do.''
I watched this whole video without wearing eye protection.
Did you get blinded by science 😂
@@stevesmith2044 🤣
Are you okay?
Giggity
Your retinas will be burnt upon the heat death of the universe
I'm just a little north of Carbondale Illinois waiting for this. I drove 5 and half hours to get here because this is where the weather looks the best from where I was.
@@Stossburg hopefully it clears for you there.
Love this throwback. The breadth of this channel is amazing, and is why I am still a subscriber since almost the beginning.
I'll be in Sherbrooke, Qcl monday where we will have about 3 min 20 sec of totality. Forecast is full clear sky. It will be my first total solar eclipse. Thanks for this nice piece of science and history!
Always blows my mind how smart the Ancient Greeks were.
Shivers and tears! I found myself yelling "Wow!" multiple times. Excellent and timely episode!
Saw the total eclipse 7 years ago in Tennessee. It was absolutely amazing. If you plan on seeing this one, try to make sure there are trees nearby... the insects and birds reacting is absolutely wild.
Thanks for the tip!
The visualisations on this channel are always great but this one just stood out as particularly impressive.
The Venusian transit study is really cool. I didn't know about that effort, but it's these sorts of details that really add depth to the story of science figuring out how the universe works...
Me too. That's a significant moment. Sorta sad I didn't know about it before
Just watched the eclipse. I know the astronomy behind it. But it's still an event that breaks the human brain. This is one of those rare occasions where I lament the impact "awesome" has nowadays because there is no way to describe it. It fills you with awe.
This was something I was able to understand, very inspiring video!
It is fascinating to realize how much the ancient Greek already knew.
In contrast, high level QFT and Quantumgravity can be very overwhelming and I usually get lost rather quickly.
And yet, there are those, that vehemently believe the earth is flat, nearly 2500 years later.
Good point! Never take truth for granted. Personally, I haven't met anyone in person who believes that, except some folks on TH-cam. Maybe, and I am trying to be charitable here, they simply believe that the earth is flat enough 😅
According to the vikings, you should scream your lungs out during an eclipse. So, you know... No one is going to judge.
According to the church, you needed to throw inti jail anyone who realized the truth of the solar system, i.e. everything orbits the sun. Their storybook taught that everything orbits around earth.
@@bigsmall246 It's even funnier, their voodoo book outright says earth is flat ("plane of the world"), has corners, and wind is made by their deity when grandpa sitting on a cloud is bored and needs to vent. No, this is not a joke, this is literally 1:1 passages found in that trash pile of a book. Funny how voodoo 'literalists' always quietly ignore these verses...
@@bigsmall246which church are you talking about, because I can guarantee that's not true across most of them. There are, however, extremists. They are out there. If you are talking about Christianity or Muslim, it's just the extremists. The Bible actually documented different star and planet alignments
@@adammeyer3129 Galileo was imprisoned for life by the roman church. The archbishop of Siena himself sentenced Galileo to house arrest for life. If an extremist can go to such a high rank, isn't the whole religion extremist then?
@@adammeyer3129 where does the Bible document stars and planets
Wow vastly improved speech delivery/ presentation on this one - thanks, very much appreciated!
I remember being a kid and watching a total solar eclipse. A group of nearby chickens immediately went to roost, then returned a few minutes later as if nothing had happened. I'm honored I get to live as a scientist. Much love from Zimbabwe.
When I saw the total solar eclipse in Oregon I absolutely gasped in awe. Even though I knew exactly when and where to look, and exactly what I was looking at, it was still an almost "spiritual" experience. I cannot imagine what I would have felt/thought if I had that same experience without knowing it was coming or much about what caused it. I'm very sad I cannot make it to the path of totality this time.
Excellent episode, thank you Matt and team! I made a point to watch it with my kids so they could understand how scientific discovery builds across time.
I find it jaw dropping to understand how intelligent these guys were.
Amazing visual display with explanation! Many thanks to the editing team!
Fantastic stuff and a tribute to all of those from ancient times through to today how have broadened our knowledge of the solar system and how it works.
Off topic, but this channel has really inspired me. I graduated with a degree in interdisciplinary studies, which is basically the GED of college. It got me a decent job, but nothing too exciting. However, thanks to you, I've decided to dive into physics, which I've always found intriguing but above my pay grade. But thanks to your videos I've started studying on my on and am starting to get the hang of calculus, a subject I used to avoid like the plague.... I'm even thinking about going back to school. So, thanks for everything. Once I've got a good grip on all this math, I'm going for that physics degree and aiming for astrophysics.
Really love the new end credits sequence!
Thank you very much for this video. I have heard how the distances and size of the Earth were calculated in the past, but they never really provided any detailed explanation on the steps and logic that went into it. I finally get it, so thank so much
I would love an entire series that explains how we got to our current understanding across many disciplines!
Hey, most of us don't need to imagine what it would be like to not know what is out there, we just observe our family dinner conversations. 😅
Yeah, it's gotten really bad.
Also can travel north and south and measure angle of pole stars and distance between points for find Earth radius and show round Earth.
This was fascinating, as usual. And yet I couldn't help but be mesmerized by the moons on Matt's shirt "floating" above his hands at 6:00 and again at 7:20!
For anyone who missed the totality, I wanted to let you know it was awesome.
One of your best episodes yet Matt! Well done!
Easily one of the best science channels on TH-cam.
There you go, knowing stuff again. Don’t you know we are in the age of ‘I believe what I feel’?
Isn't there a T-shirt that says "My facts don't care about your feelings"? If not. Someone should make it and cash in...
@@bipolarminddroppings Sadly I expect it'd be bought precisely by those whose facts are determined by feelings.
@@bipolarminddroppings reminds me of: the saying your're entitlrd to your own opinion just not your own facts
Its fascinating that it is happening for billions of years and we still get fascinated by the eclipse 🌚
I can say proudly I understood everything of this pbs video. finally.
Yay , new episode time!
It really is cool being an organism that is technically capable of figuring all of this out on its own. Good job, us.
Loved the merch it totally lit up during totality
keep up the awesome videos
I'm only an hour from 100% totality. Can't wait to see the rest of you all in Evansville for the eclipse.
I'm stunned by Aristarchus 7:24. He had 300 IQ. He calculated the size and distance to the Pac-man we see on the sky 300BC 🐒
Quarter moons makes perfect sense, they indicate the moon's travel through its full cycle. You have 1st quarter, Full, 3rd quarter, New.
Probably a reliable enough measure of time for planning harvests, travel times, coordinating attacks, etc.
this was such a high quality video!
Enjoyed the animations!!
I'm soo extremely lucky that I'm in the path of totality. I'm beyond excited!!
Flat earthers are a literal slap in the face to 2000 years of hard work by scientists across the world.
Pretty weak slap. More like a gentle wave that misses. They have poor aim and no substance.
It happened today! One of the coolest things I've ever witnessed
I did not realize that Australia was the size of the moon...
Amusingly, the Earth goes the wrong way in the animation around 4:00. Clearly, Matt does not do the animations. I love Matt. Matt is my No. 1 yt physicist. Especially his AMAs blow my mind.
5:49 "Those half-full points are technically called quarter moons. Don't ask me why."
That's because "first QUARTER moon" and "third QUARTER moon" are at a 1/4 and 3/4 of the lunar cycle. Other significant points are at half ("new moon") or zero/1 ("full moon"). That's the reason why they are called "Quarter Moons".
For the first time ever, I can explain something to Matt - it feels amazing 🤣
People figured out so much of this over 2 thousand years ago... and yet there are people today who insist it's all a conspiracy and the world is actually flat.
Perfect ending to a great video. Definitely feel proud of this one, though really all of them. Amazing work!
There's always time for PBS Space Time.
YO SATURDAY VID LET'S GOOOOOOOOOOOOO
Ancient people: "earth is demonstrably round"
Morons on TikTok: "NASA is lying! earth is flat!"
I think we're regressing.
Thanks !
(and thanks for the french subtitles)
excellent topic and well done presentation
@pbsspacetime I'd like to thank you for not making 2 hours of videos every day. If you did, I'd absolutely have to watch all of them because they're so awesome, and it'd totally wreck my schedule. Rocking your t-shirt over here in Yokohama, Japan btw!
This was such a fantastic video, I love hearing the entire story of humanity working to refine a certain piece of knowledge Puts it all in perspective so well!
And the beautiful animation makes it really digestible, bravo!
Fantastic video, as always!
Wow, the global collaboration to measure Venus’ transit across the Sun… super impressive! 😲
Praying for clearing skies.
Here - statistically cloudy on April 8. We will have clear skies!!!!
I really enjoy this video, as it is not about a heavy science topic and speaks about curiosities about eclipses
The half-moon phases are called "first quarter" and "third quarter" because they happen 25% and 75% of the way during the moon's period. (Counting from "new moon" as the start point. "Second quarter" would be the full moon, but calling it that doesn't add any precision since there's only one full moon per lunar month anyway.)
Came looking to see if anyone else shared this.
00:00: A total solar eclipse will darken the sky across North America today.
02:01: Ancient Greeks significantly advanced our understanding of the cosmos and eclipses.
02:28: Greeks recognized Earth's roundness through observations of ships and lunar eclipses.
03:37: Eclipses revealed Earth's shape and the regularity of celestial movements.
04:39: Aristarchus of Samos used shadows to determine relative sizes in the solar system.
07:11: Aristarchus calculated the Sun's distance using lunar phases and eclipses.
09:44: Eratosthenes accurately measured Earth's radius using shadows and geometry.
11:14: Kepler's laws of planetary motion motivated precise measurements of the solar system.
12:37: Transits of Venus provided the first accurate measurement of the distance to the Sun.
14:16: The collaboration during Venus transits culminated in a significant advancement in astronomy.
Thank you so much for all your amazing work. Your videos have inspired me to learn so much more than I would have otherwise, and they have had a measurably positive impact on my life.
Always interesting, always educational, always . . . fascinating. Can't wait for the next video, Professor O'Dowd.
Thanks for the great episode! Always interesting and enjoyable to watch these. I should be watching you regularly, instead of just here and there.
Send this to flat earthers
They would say he is being paid to lie to us! Best to just laugh at them, really!
It's all a simulation anyways
@timbeaton5045 they still think that the world thought that the Earth was flat until NASA was formed.
Best just to ignore them. Block them out like you use your hand to block the sun on a bright day. Either through stupidy or purposeful trolling, they are immune to logic and reason. They thrive on wasting your time with their nonsense.
You can lead a horse to culture, but you cannot make him think.
I was lucky enough to live in the path of the 2017 North American eclipse and I was less than a 2 hour drive from this one. It was once again, an amazing experience.
it was so incredible I will never forget it! how I felt earths place in the solar system was insane, just mind blowing!
This is one of your best videos
This is a terrific view of our ancient science.
What a beautiful episode !
Thank you for this fascinating history episode! I had the pleasure of relating some of the history and math discussed here to my Bible study class this morning while talking about the upcoming eclipse. I'm excited for it! I drove to Missouri in 2017 for the last one, and it was glorious. It's a miracle to witness.
God be with you out there, everybody. ✝️ :)
Am in Arkansas now... hoping for clear skies 2morrow -- very glad though about this episode! Thanx Dr. Matt!
It's crazy how some dude sitting on a bench figured out the solar system by its shadows.
Great episode, still learning something new.
I was lucky enough to be in Quebec to see my first total eclipse. I was surprised how the moment was so deeply emotional. I was expecting to enjoy the moment, the experience but not to be deeply effected by it. As we went dark it went suddenly quiet, an irreverent somberness as the air became cooler, no colour, an opaqueness filtered our view. And for a moment we had a glimpse of life without the sun. Pushing aside the practicality of no sun, it was more the realization how precious this planet is, how life and the sun are so closely connected and is everything to us.
And your last total eclipse they rarely hit the same spot twice
Everytime I watch these kind of videos. Always blows my mind how smart the ancient greeks were.
PBS spacetime aka Matt's lectures on physics to spooky dungeon music
11:30 That portrait is *not* showing Kepler. It's a fake that was uploaded to Wikipedia about 20 years ago, which has since been propagated to many other places. The fake was pointed out in 2021, and this is now properly mentioned in the Wikipedia article, but the image still pops up often when Kepler is mentioned by people who don't know better.
I'd expect you, PBS, to do your due diligence, and to not propagate fake information.
New PBS Space Time video, hooray
Babe wake up, new PBS Space time video!
Amazing episode, very inspriring information!
I always find it fascinating that me, a regular person with interest in science could go back 1000 years and blow the minds of the smartest people in the world. Imagine what they could have done with today’s knowledge!
Unfortunately, you’d probably get burned as a witch, unless you were very careful
Fascinating episode!