El Escritor Inglés: January 2012

Friday, January 13, 2012

Chasing Shadows

Three years from now, I shall be off to the Faroe Islands. (They lie in the North Atlantic, midway between Iceland, Scotland and Norway.) This is why.

Ask any Englishman the significance of 11th August, 1999, and I doubt he would know. If he were to google it, though, all would be revealed. At 10:02 a.m., God hit the dimmer switch.

To use grown-up terminology, (part of) England experienced a total solar eclipse for the first time since 1927. Most English people over the age of 25 will remember where they were at the time. I was working in the northwest of the country, which was set to experience a partial eclipse of 92% magnitude (Figure 35.1). Without a second thought, I decided to down tools and go outside in order to savour one of the most awesome, and rarest, natural phenomena. Wearing a borrowed pair of arc welding goggles, I stared at the sun (!) and waited for the moon to cross my line of sight.

Figure 35.1: Path of total solar eclipse across Europe in 1999

I was lucky. The morning clouds followed the script and dispersed. I lay on a park bench until, at precisely 11:16 a.m., all but 8% of the sun was eclipsed by the passing moon (Figure 35.2). Never before had I experienced nightfall during daytime. The ‘accelerated dusk’ was wonderfully surreal, as was the equally rapid re-emergence of full sunlight, by 12:34 p.m. Other parts of the UK were not so fortunate. In Cardiff, 150 miles due south, a clear sky had been spoiled by a single passing cloud at the crucial moment.

Figure 35.2: Heavy partial eclipse, almost exactly as I viewed it

Almost as breathtaking as the spectacle was the proof that the science of astronomy had been deadly accurate with its calculations. Mathematicians from many years ago had succeeded where psychics and astrologers had always failed: they had foretold the distant future – to within a fraction of a second. The mathematical basis for predicting eclipses is extremely sophisticated. American astrophysicist Fred Espenak, of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, is a renowned expert and has at his disposal state-of-the-art infrared spectrometers. Only a fool would bet against him.

It is natural that such a magical event attracts fanatics. So-called ‘eclipse chasers’ ascertain geographical co-ordinates of forthcoming eclipses. This allows them, by means of supersonic aircraft, to follow the precise path of the shadow, thus prolonging the experience. In 1973, Concorde 001 took off from the Canary Islands and ‘chased’ an eclipse across North Africa for a record-breaking 74 minutes. Much scientific knowledge was gained.

Given that both the Earth and moon rotate in an anticlockwise direction, the speed of the shadow’s movement can be calculated by subtracting the earth’s rotational speed from the orbital speed of the moon. It must be remembered, though, that the earth’s rotational speed varies across its surface. The shadow moves relatively slowly at the equator (where rotational speed is greatest) and faster at the poles (rotational speed is zero). The moon travels at approximately 1.03 km/s, whereas the earth’s surface rotates at an average of 0.46 km/s. This means that the shadow travels at around 2,000 km/h. Concorde had a top speed of 2,100 km/h, and so was ideal for ‘chasing’.

On average, there is a total solar eclipse, somewhere on Earth, about once every eighteen months. Of course, 70% of the Earth’s surface is covered by water, so most places are not easily accessible. As England is a relatively small country, the probability of the moon casting over it a shadow of only a few hundred square kilometres is remote – hence my plan to visit the Faroes in 2015, where, on Friday, 20th March, at 9:40 a.m., a total eclipse will last almost three minutes (Figure 35.3).

Figure 35.3: Graphic showing path of totality (black) for the 2015 solar eclipse

The next time a part of England experiences a full solar eclipse will not be until 23rd September, 2090. I shall be 124 years old. I just hope my eyesight holds out.

Saturday, January 07, 2012

Catholic Sins

The merest mention of the Roman (Catholic) Church tends to nauseate me. From its brainless refutation of biological evolution to a reckless commitment to overpopulation, not to mention institutionalized child abuse, it shows the human race at its very worst. After the Spanish Civil War (1936-9), the Church formed an unholy alliance with the despotic General Francisco Franco. Consequently, families of defeated Republicans, many of them vehemently anti-Catholic, were forced to convert to Roman Catholicism. Assuming that my opinion could not sink any lower, I read recently an online report by the BBC’s Spain correspondent Katya Adler (Figure 34.1) and was compelled to revise it – further downward.

Figure 34.1: BBC reporter Katya Adler broadcast a shocking chapter in the Roman Church’s recent history.

The words ‘kidnapping, child-trafficking and illegal adoption’ are acutely unpalatable, particularly to those of us who have children of our own. After the war had ended, such crimes became state-sanctioned and highly organized throughout Spain, continuing until the 1990s. It has now come to light that perhaps as many as 300,000 babies were stolen from their parents and sold – yes, sold – by the Church to pro-Franco, Catholic families. Perhaps we should not be too surprised. As the scientific humanist E.O. Wilson wrote, no religion ever flourished by tolerating its rivals. Still, this is unprecedented.

Spain has been rocked by the revelations. Lest we forget, also, that a further 100,000 families are still searching forlornly for relatives who went missing during the three-year conflict, more than 70 years ago. In a land of hearts already broken, this latest tragedy is beyond all decent contemplation.

So how did it happen? Very simply: babies were seized shortly after birth, and parents informed that they had died. No questions were asked and no further explanations given. In my experience, Spaniards, although distrusting of authority, are not naturally militant. While living under a brutal dictatorship, they would have thought twice before protesting. Also worth acknowledging is the fact that there is no statutory requirement under Spanish law for a child’s natural mother to be named on the birth certificate. How convenient for the traffickers.

Reading the name Moreno in Katya Adler’s article opened my eyes still further, it being the name of my grandmother’s forebears. Juan Luis Moreno and Antonio Barroso (Figure 34.2), lifelong friends from Catalonia, discovered that their respective parents had never told them the truth. Both had, as infants, been bought from priests. Today, neither knows his own ancestry, which is self-evidently traumatic.

Figure 34.2: ‘Mi vida es una mentira,’ admits Antonio Barroso (right), pictured with Juan Luis Moreno. (My life is a lie.)

The two friends are now vice-president and president, respectively, of the Asociación Nacional de Afectados por Adopciones Irregulares (National Association of People Affected by Illegal Adoptions) (Figure 34.3). Throughout the country, its branches are co-ordinating painstaking DNA analyses for those who come forward. Progress might well be difficult, and not just owing to the sheer numbers affected. After Franco’s death in 1975, amnesty laws were introduced, effectively to ‘let bygones be bygones’ in an attempt to heal the nation’s civil war wounds. Ever since, there has been substantial resistance, by both politicians and the judiciary, to revisiting the past. The public might now demand they do just that.

Figure 34.3: The association’s web pages can be viewed (in Spanish) at:
http://anadir.es

An English translation is available at:
http://translate.google.co.uk/translate?hl=en&sl=es&u=http://anadir.es/&ei=rBkGT5TlGoWVOtK-kbsB&sa=X&oi=translate&ct=result&resnum=1&sqi=2&ved=0CC0Q7gEwAA&prev=/search%3Fq%3Danadir%26hl%3Den%26safe%3Doff%26biw%3D1280%26bih%3D717%26prmd%3Dimvnsfd

I hope 2012 delivers justice to the stolen children – los niños rabados – and to those responsible for the latest in a vast catalogue of Catholic sins.

One final thought: I wonder whether the Pope was in on it.