The hills of Southern California are covered with houses.
(And the streets are lined with billboards for cannabis dispensaries, but that’s a rant for another day.)
As the sun sets in the west, the hillsides to the east often find that ONE house that’s lined up perfectly, its windows acting like mirrors to reflect the fading rays of the sun right into my office window.
Like a one-day beacon, this particular house shines. Tomorrow, perhaps a different one.
A week later, that first house is just another semi-illuminated dot on the hillside.
But another house has stepped in, while the first house is no doubt shining bright in another office to my left or right a few windows or a few blocks away.
It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to realize that this change from day to day is proof that the Earth and Sun are moving in relation to each other. No doubt a careful measurement of the changes from day to day across a tall office building would allow you to calculate that movement and predict the Sun’s position.
If you don’t have a handy twelve-story, steel and glass edifice handy, you could always just use large stone monuments. What’s that sort of thing called again? A “henge”?
And so the darkness comes again. But as has been noted, “We love the stars too dearly to be fearful of the dark.”
