Mark Anderson's Blog, page 6

What is a transit of Venus? It's when the planet Venus passes...

What is a transit of Venus? It's when the planet Venus passes directly in front of the sun. Here's a video of this rare astronomical event. The next Venus transit will be on June 5, 2012. The next one after that will be in 2117! 

Why does any of this matter? Just four transits ago, on June 3, 1769, the European superpowers had been at war for generations to determine, in part, who would found the first truly global empire. And in those days, navigation at sea was nature's greatest stumbling block to exploring — and, for military commanders, conquering — the world. Here is where astronomy made for a strange bedfellow with the most ambitious geopolitical powerbrokers on the planet. 

For a brief historical moment, the most important astronomical problem — triangulating the distance to the sun via the 1769 transit of Venus — had very earthly consequences. This is, in brief, the story of The Day the World Discovered the Sun.

"Nature has beauties even in her horrors. Nay, it is there perhaps that she is most admirable and..."

"Nature has beauties even in her horrors. Nay, it is there perhaps that she is most admirable and sublime. The calmness of a fine day is in some measure less interesting than the moments of distress, when the waves, lifted up by the winds, seem confounded with the sky."

- Explorer and scientist Jean-Baptiste Chappe d'Auteroche

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