San Luis Obispo with news from n.p.r. Throughout the day it's 8 o'clock it's to the best of our knowledge from p r. On Monday August 21st a total solar eclipse will cross the United States for the 1st time in 100 years and for millions of people in its path it'll be like opening a window directly under the broader universe it's so brief and it's so spectacular most total eclipses lasts less than 3 minutes so you are suddenly transported to the it's what seems to be this other universe and then all of a sudden it's over and you're back where you started and you just want to experience it again you're in Eclipse junkie I am upset that I'm in strange chance and besides chasing eclipses How else can we see what's beyond our skies. This hour striving to see fast and invisible universe. First this. Live from n.p.r. News in Washington I'm Jim hock the u.s. Navy says 10 sailors are missing and 5 have been injured after one of its warships collided with an oil tanker off the coast of Singapore the b.b.c. Steve Jackson reports the u.s.s. John s. McCain was damaged in the collision with a Liberian flagged vessel the u.s.s. John McCain was heading for a routine port visits in Singapore when the collision happened east of the Malacca Straits the other vessel involved was a Liberian flagged oil tanker substantially bigger than the warship boats and helicopters from Singapore searching for the missing sailors 5 others have been injured on Thursday the u.s. Navy announced disciplinary action against the commanders of another warship the u.s.s. Fitzgerald which collided with a merchant ship in June killing 7 sailors the B.B.C.'s Steve Jackson reporting President Trump is scheduled to address the nation Monday night about what the White House is calling a path forward for America's engagement in Afghanistan and South Asia as N.P.R.'s Jeff Bennett reports the president said in a tweet that he arrived and a decision after meeting with military leaders at Camp David President Trump speech Monday night follows a lengthy strategy review in which White House and Pentagon officials have been weighing a more aggressive role for the u.s. Military in Afghanistan Afghanistan is America's longest war Us forces invaded after the September 11th attacks and overthrew a Taliban government there are now roughly more than 8000 u.s. Troops supporting Afghanistan's security forces the president's decision on a new strategy for the war follows the ouster of Steve Bannon the president's former chief strategist who is said to have advised against committing more u.s. Troops to the region and the timing of the announcement comes after a week of intense criticism of Trump following his comments about racial violence in Charlottesville Jeff Bennett n.p.r. News Washington negotiators from Mexico Canada and the u.s. Have sent an ambitious timetable for further talks on revamp. The North American Free Trade Agreement and as N.P.R.'s Carrie Kahn reports the 1st round of trade trucks wrapped up on Sunday trade representatives from the 3 countries issued a short statement praising what they said was a commitment to an Excel aerated and comprehensive negotiation process the next round of talks moved to Mexico on September 1st to the 5th then to Canada and back to Washington d.c. By October negotiators have said they would like to finish talks by the end of the year or the beginning of 2018 at the latest well before Mexico's presidential contest and the u.s. Mid-term election the Trump administration has said it wants substantial changes to any new deal including an increase in North American content for cars imported tariff free into the u.s. And the elimination of trade dispute panels Mexican officials have called for an update but have said they want the bulk of the trade pact to remain as it is Carrie Kahn n.p.r. News Mexico City this is n.p.r. News. Millions of people are gearing up for Monday's solar eclipse N.P.R.'s Winsor Johnson reports there are several indirect ways to get a glimpse of the phenomenon without the need for special viewing glasses the dwindling supply of solar eclipse glasses are forcing some sky gazers to consider alternative viewing options Derrick Pitts chief astronomer at Philadelphia's Franklin Institute says there are several Interac methods to get a glimpse of the rare occurrence these are the pinhole projection devices that one can make using a shoe box or a cereal box or some other sort of box and you let the inside of the box become a projection screen a hole that's punched through a piece of aluminum foil taped over a hole on the back of the box it says if you are really stuck they get a colander from your kitchen will suffice but he stresses that none of these methods should be used to wreck lead to view the eclipse Windsor Johnston n.p.r. News Jerry Lewis the comedian whose fund raising telethons became as famous as his movies has died at the age of $91.00 his partnership with Dean Martin made them the comedy team of the 1950 s. You need a range close to be a not then a lot of them don't I think you need to build a team is our thing and that we've got to get it we've got it who has died of natural causes Sunday in Las Vegas as many Labor Day telephones raised over $2000000000.00 for the Muscular Dystrophy Association at the weekend box office the action flick the hitman's bodyguard opened in 1st place the horror film Annabelle creation was 2nd followed by Logan lucky I'm Jim Hark and News and Washington support for n.p.r. Comes from n.p.r. Stations other contributors include the Jack Kent Cooke Foundation providing scholarships throughout the nation to exceptionally high performing students with financial need from middle school to college more information about Cook scholarships is available at j k c f dot org. It's to the best of our knowledge from p r x. I-Man strain champs What is it like to stand in the path of a total eclipse. So here I am on this tropical beach and then all of a sudden weird things started to happen. David Baron He's the author of American eclipse the I noticed the daylight looks off and a cool wind kicks up in the me and colors were strange shadows had become incredibly Sharman like someone had turned up the contrast knob on t.v. Over to the movies and then all of a sudden. The lights went out. And I looked up in the sky. And I felt like I had suddenly been transported to another planet. There was this object I had never seen before it looked like like a wreath woven from tinsel it just shimmer down there in space. And the planets because I could see Mercury and Venus and Jupiter all lined up around the sun. And it made me feel both. Like an insignificant spec. But it also made me feel incredibly empowering like I as an individual and nothing. But I'm part of something in Mormons and ran. It placed me in the universe in a permanent way. That's that's most unbelievable thing I've heard and if you talk to other eclipse chasers they will tell you similar stories. In May I know I sound like an outlier in a crazy person but that's what a total solar eclipse is like you think about it every day really so the way I describe it I am I am not a religious person but what I witnessed with that Total Eclipse gives me I think the kind of comfort that religion provides people you realize that you're in the face of something so much larger than yourself and so much more powerful than yourself that you just surrender and that's the language I hear from people who are born again and. This sense of I don't describe it in that religious sense in terms of what I believe happened to me but I believe it tapped into that exact same part of the brain you said and I've heard other people say that there is something addictive about this experience being in the path of totality and seeing a total eclipse what's addictive about it I mean do you really feel like I just have to do this again and again Oh absolutely yeah it's so brief and it's so spectacular I mean it let in most total eclipses lasts less than 3 minutes so you are suddenly transported to the it's what seems to be this other universe and then all of a sudden it's over and you're back where you started and you just you want to experience it again you're in Eclipse junkie I am. And. So you wrote and tell the story in your book of one of the last eclipses total eclipses to where the path of totality crossed America and this was 87840 years ago and this particular eclipse was a galvanizing experience for scientists in particular how come and what happened so 878 we were a young country obviously we had just turned 100 years old 2 years before that we were becoming a real industrial power I mean Europe had to take us seriously but frankly Europe looked down their noses at us when it came to literature and art and music and science in fact one of the reasons the Europeans didn't think we would compete in science was that we were this egalitarian democracy and there was a belief that a country run by the average person just would never really care about something so intellectual as as basic science but there was a small group of American scientists who were determined to turn our country into a global scientific. Power and the clips of 878 helped to bring that about expeditions were sent out to Wyoming and Colorado and Texas to study the solar eclipse you had newspaper articles really cheering on the home team of American astronomers and wanting them to succeed and to show Europe what we could do it's like the eclipse Olympics so who was competing for Team America well there were dozens of astronomers who came out to Colorado and Wyoming one was Thomas Edison who in 1988 was just 31 years old but had just become a global celebrity because of his recent invention of the phonograph. And that summer he decided to come out to Wyoming with a group of scientists to actually do some astronomy and he invented a device called the tos emitter which was an extremely sensitive heat detector basically an infrared detector that he was going to use to study the that strange aura that was seen around the sun during a total eclipse which today we know is the Sun's outer atmosphere of the solar corona but back then was a great mystery and Edison who was being called The Wizard of Menlo Park he had is his laboratory in Menlo Park New Jersey it was believed that Edison if he was going to be out of the eclipse he was going to do something marvelous but well when I think of Edison today I think of the light bulb is there any chance that the light bulb was sort of inspired by his seeing an eclipse Well funny you should say that because in fact the very day after he returned from his eclipse expedition to Wyoming he started work on the light bulb I mean so the eclipse expedition came right between his 2 most important inventions the phonograph and the light bulb and there is a story told in Wyoming that it is and was inspired to invent the light bulb when he was in the West for the eclipse it was when he went fishing after the eclipse and had a bamboo fishing pole that he broke and threw in the campfire and when he saw the fibers of bamboo glowing in the campfire that gave him the idea to use bamboo fiber in his in Kent s. And lamp which in fact he did use a bamboo but that story is not true. Darren sorry so besides Edison who else was there one that I focused on went west for very different reasons and that was Mariah Mitchell She was a professor of astronomy at Vassar College which of course was a new all women's college in the $870.00 s. And she went west to try to convince the American public that women could be scientists. At a time when there were very few female scientists and it was very hard for women to get educated in science and then go on to get a job so she in 878 put together an all female expedition from Vassar and her eclipse expedition got a lot of attention in the press people were fascinated by these female scientists who on their own headed out to the Wild West to to study the eclipse there have been other times when the goals of American science and democracy kind of alive and in in a similar exhilarating kind of way when I grew up you maybe did 2 watching launches on t.v. And you know feeling like the whole rest of the country we were all tuned in at the same time today there's something about that that seems almost innocent and idealistic It just seems like we're in a very different place now in terms of how we think about science Yeah but you know I'm really interested to see what's going to happen on August 21st because I think that the eclipse this year could have a similar effect to the one in 1998 and and in some ways the moon landing I guess I don't want to push this too far but in terms of a shared experience that goes beyond partisan politics that is about science is just about the wonder of the universe I think we will have that experience on August 21st and in fact I've been on a book tour for much to the last 2 months and at a talk I gave in Philadelphia in June young man in his twenty's came up to me he was wearing a t. Shirt from the European particle accelerator Cern and he said he had to tell me that he as a boy growing up in Venezuela saw that same total eclipse that I saw in 1908 the path of totality went over Venezuela before it got to a ruble and he said we're. Missing that total solar eclipse as a boy inspired him to become a physicist and I tell you we're going to see the same thing again on August 21st of this year there will be children of all across the United States particularly in the path from Oregon to South Carolina who will lives will be changed and some of them will go decide that they want to study science because of what will happen to them in less than 3 minutes on a Monday in August. David Baron he's an eclipse chaser a science journalist and the author of the American eclipse. That story sums up a fundamental challenge we face as earthlings we are completely awestruck by the universe beyond our planet but we almost never get a chance to really see it to take it all in. Just so much in the universe that we can't see we can't here we can't even find even when we know it has to be there like dark matter that's the invisible stuff that according to the laws of physics makes up a lot of the universe. Is looking for a. Pulse and finds the whole subject. So so do we know what the dark matter is and what it's made of No not quite because it's not made of any of the atoms we know it's right I mean that the atoms that we know from the periodic table that's not in the dark matter no not at all and 5 the atoms in the periodic table constitute like apology 4 percent of the energy density of the universe and the bulk of the matter in the universe is actually dark matter I thought everything the universe was made of atoms No not at all. Very well. What else is there this is dark but we don't know what it is what we think you know we have inside so we are possible particles which likely formed in the very early universe so the leading candidate till recently was the neutral Lino it's a weakly interacting massive particle and these neutral ino as we believe formed very early in the universe and they actually struck sure the universe as we see it all the light all the galaxies right but our searches to look for them so far these neutral Linos have been futile so we've not found them quite so it's a theory there's not evidence that they actually exist that these particular particles but it's like you know it's like looking at Sandia ones looking the shapes of send humans and being able to map the shapes of sentience but not know what a grain of sand is made of so that's the situation we are at which is kind of troubling but you know you look at the discovery of gravitational waves from the collision of 2 black holes it took 40 years before we really had both the technology and the theoretical understanding and the computational resources to really look for them and find them so I am very very optimistic so you know we've been sort of chipping away at parts of the diagram sort of like a drunk looking for their keys under the lamppost this is a huge parameter space but you know we've ruled out quite a lot of it so why are you personally so interested in and the stuff that's invisible frankly I mean sort of these mysterious forces or matter that's kind of everywhere around us and yet we don't really understand what is it that that sort of drives you to understand all of this chill but you know I think the mysterious and the invisible have always had a hold on all of us and for me you know intellectually I think that it's so hugely challenging that you know you see the effect. It's almost like I feel like a detective in a detective story right really trying to find put the pieces together and then on a more sort of mundine level I have to say that you know the things that are so visible to us on the planet human beings all the messy injustices unfair things War I don't like any of that and I find that you know so much of what is visible is so interesting in a very deep way maybe maybe not just an interesting maybe sort of disturbing Yes very problematic as well right and to me what is really surprising is that you know in the last 100 years we've learned so much about our universe and it is so clear that we are significant and insignificant simultaneously right we are we are significant because you know we have this little kind of you know cantaloupe sized jelly in our heads that's allowed us we have the cognitive capacity to have figured all of this out but on the other hand the end result of all this figuring out is that we are like one speck one little pale blue dot you know around a one star amongst what we now think there are trillions of galaxies so to come back to sort of what personally motivates here you're saying that you know you don't like a lot of what you see on on this planet so it's cosmologists and escape for you yes the For me it is definitely an s.k. And I think I have to say though but I was also obsessed with mapping I think there's a way in which with mapping as a you know when I was a kid I used to spend hours and hours with atlases and I think there is something you you feel like an explorer and you know as my brothers point out to me that you know and explorer let's get this right I mean Mike says I am I writing on this spaceship Well I'm not I mean just not fit enough to qualify for that but you know I think there is there is a way in. Which you feel that when you can map something you actually know it when knowing doesn't mean comprehending necessarily we've been talking about the stuff that's invisible in the cosmos I have to ask you about black holes because I know that's also something that you study and you said that black holes are very very dense. A lot of mass in a very small space it puts it in perspective just like example if the entire earth all the matter in the earth if we wanted to convert to the earth into a black hole we'd have to squeeze everything that's in our it into one centimeter diameter that's how dense it has you mean in terms of the the weight of the earth where weight of the entire weight of the Earth would have to be squeezed into one centimeter and now of course you know black holes are kind of one of the most exciting things out there and cosmology but that's actually fairly recent I mean really only in the last few decades right where that scientists actually believe that black holes exist yes absolutely Now there's an interesting contrast between the idea of dark matter and black holes actually so the old original evidence for dark matter was entirely empirical even from the motions of these stories that they couldn't make sense of Ruben and Kent and it turns out that Michael was entirely opposite they were actually proposed as a mathematical entity there happened to be a solution an exact solution to w