Blackout – A History of the Eclipse

Dr. Daniel Kennefick from the University of Arkansas Physics department will discuss a history of the eclipse and how these events are predicted so accurately.

On April 8th of this year, at times which vary locally but which are known precisely in advance, Arkansans will be treated to a unique spectacle, a total solar eclipse. It is truly unique, because only Earth, in our solar system, is fortunate enough to have a Moon which is exactly the same apparent size in our sky as the Sun. But how do we know so precisely when, and from where, the eclipse will be viewable? The story of how scientists have learned to predict eclipses so accurately is a long and fascinating one, which is also in many respects the history of science itself. It is a story which involves many famous names, Thales of Miletus, the “first scientist,” Alexander the Great, Ptolemy, Columbus, Copernicus, Kepler, Newton and Einstein. It is a story of discovery which is still ongoing today as scientists, and the general public, gather to watch darkness at noon (as will be the case near Durango, Mexico).

Daniel Kennefick is a professor of Physics at the University of Arkansas. He received his Ph. D. in Physics from Caltech in 1997. After a postdoc in Cardiff, Wales, he joined the faculty at Caltech where he worked as an editor at the Einstein Papers Project. He has been in Fayetteville since 2003. In 2007 he published a book on the history of gravitational waves called Traveling at the Speed of Thought. He is also the co-author of An Einstein Encyclopedia. Most recently he is the author of No Shadow of a Doubt: The 1919 Eclipse That Confirmed Einstein’s Theory of Relativity. His physics research focuses on supermassive black holes at the centers of galaxies, both as possible generators of gravitational waves (when they are orbited by stellar mass black holes) and for their role in galaxy structure and evolution. He is a member of both the LIGO scientific collaboration and the LISA Consortium.