Obliquity of the Ecliptic

Half the planet, revels in summer. For the rest of us, it’s winter. This is caused by the ‘Obliquity of the Ecliptic’ which is constantly on my mind for quite some time now. The obliquity of the ecliptic is about the way the Earth tilts on its axis as it revolves around the sun. This causes different seasons in a year and is also a factor in climate change. The obliquity brings about each hemisphere to alternate between being tilted towards and away from the sun. At present I hang my hat in the southwest corner of India. At this time of the year, it is delightfully cool here with puffs of cool wind coming from the Arabian Sea in myriad configurations. 

In obvious or subtle ways our lives revolve around cycles. There are environmental cycles, life cycles, migration cycles, sleep-wake cycles, musical rhythms, business cycles, and so on. I find the Earth’s orbital cycle rather interesting because minor changes in the cycle impact our weather conditions. It is fortunate that in our current orbital cycle, the Earth is farthest from the sun during summer tilt thereby moderating surface temperatures. Earth’s obliquity or tilt slowly changes as well. When the tilt gets lower, there could be much loss of heat from the sun, and over time we reach the Ice Age. Positively we could feel the effect only on the scale of thousands of years and not by the day. Until the next Ice Age, we ought to cotton up to the warm break the Earth experiences now. It’s getting even warmer due to both natural and man-made global warming. While in this celestial chaos, we are always in the linear cycle of hope. Chaos leads to endurance, and endurance fabricates our disposition which in turn brings out hope. We try to hold onto hope until it all feels too much again, and we toss to the top of the cycle. But we can either stay there or move forward through the cycle.

Now it might seem offbeat to bring Sherlock Holmes into this astronomical conversation but I’m just going to go right ahead and do it. Apparently, the topic of obliquity was a talking point over tea on a summer evening between Sherlock and Watson in the story ‘The Adventure of the Greek Interpreter - The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes’ by Arthur Conan Doyle. According to Watson, Sherlock had a keen understanding of obliquity. And in a recent adapation of this story, it develops into a narrative centred on a criminal act. Somebody writes a paper for the Royal Astronomical Society on the obliquity of the ecliptic. And somebody else writes a better paper about the same. This made the first guy jealous as to do away with the guy who outshined him.

I always liked Sherlock’s puzzles and I dig into them during leisure. Since then I’ve had all sorts of epiphanies about obliquity. In the 19th century, while the planet Neptune was still undiscovered, British and French astronomers John Couch Adams and Le Verrier roughly calculated and predicted the location of the planet Neptune. This ended up in a bit of conflict, as Le Verrier was accredited with the discovery and thus snubbing Adam. It could be surmised that Sir Arthur Conan Doyle adapted this real incident for his story and cast around his characters based on real people.

At first instance, I was befuddled about obliquity. What’s so important about it? Well, to put it simply, obliquity is the reason for the season. We’re now in the Christmas season celebrating the Love Incarnate. Love can be befuddling too just about the same as obliquity. We ought to pluck up the courage to love ourselves, or the person we like the most, or the person we like the least. So, we could also say Love is the reason for the Season.

Sherlock makes me think. A lot!

Hope you have a pleasant end to the year. Au revoir.