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Strange Universe: Astounding Fundamentals 1/15/23

This week we’ll study seven basic facts about the universe like how Aristarchus, 18 centuries before Copernicus, declared the earth orbits around the sun.

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  • The only two disks in our sky, the moon and sun, both appear the same size. This is true nowhere else. It alone creates total solar eclipses. In just a few tens of millions of years, the slowly spiraling-away moon will look too small to cover up the sun. Total solar eclipses are only happening now, when humans are around.
  • This is the week of Mars. Its opposition – when it’s exactly the opposite the sun in our sky – is this Thursday. Its closest and brightest happened a few days ago. And this Wednesday night, December 7th, it closely meets the Full Moon. We’ll also hear what Mars has been up to.
  • Our current, bright sun makes winters more moderate than they’d otherwise be. In the southern hemisphere, enjoying summer right now, the added boost of having this 7% greater Sun intensity should theoretically make seasons more extreme than ours, with hotter highs and colder lows. It doesn’t happen only because they have far more ocean acreage, and water moderates temperatures so that our planet’s two hemispheres, remarkably, balance out.