Summer Solstice 2020
So socially distanced that there’s hundreds of miles between the teams. Good thing, as it turned out.
Welcome back to Concept Bazooka, the quiz show that stared into the void and sent it home in floods of tears. You join me here at Stonehenge for the live, socially-distanced Summer Solstice Special. In fact we are so socially-distanced that I am at Stonehenge, our Stoic team are at the Rollright Stones in Oxfordshire and our Sceptic team are at Callanish on the Isle of Lewis.
Today is the day before the shortest night of the year and we’re fast approaching the start line of Solar Noon for our teams to begin taking measurements and observations to answer the big question - how many suns will rise tomorrow morning? We know it’s always been one so far, but given that we have all the astrological energy of a coinciding solar eclipse, and quite frankly this year has already been stranger than anyone could have predicted, it’s all up for grabs.
Stay tuned for live updates as the Stoics face off against the Sceptics, cosmological certainty and their own emotions, but in the meantime, here’s the mournful sound of a cello falling off a cliff.
And they’re off! The Stoics getting straight down to measuring the stones and building the telescope mounts to take star transits once the sky is dark enough. Bet they’re hoping for a cloudless night! Meanwhile the Sceptics are taking a much more laid-back approach and have kicked the proceedings off by questioning whether or not the sun actually exists in the first place.
Well, the sun is beginning to sink below the skyline, but will it rise again in the morning? The Sceptics have decided that the sun does in fact exist, and have been busy debating the evidence for whether or not the Earth exists. They don’t seem to be getting on with that problem particularly quickly so there is a significant danger that they won’t actually come up with an answer to the question in time for the deadline of Solar Midnight. For anyone who’s just joined us, that big question is how many suns will rise in the morning, and there are a lot of points riding on it.
Meanwhile, the Stoics have been getting on with assembling several large telescopes and have dealt with a number of issues by accepting things they are unable to change, such as the location of their assigned stone circle and the flavour of crisps that were available from the catering van. But will their star transits assist in producing an answer related to an entirely different astronomical body?
I was due to be joined by the Regius Professor of Interconnectedness from St. Cedd’s College, Cambridge, but he is stuck in traffic having become embroiled in a bout of holistic navigation. More from him later, we hope.
It’s the middle of the night here - quite literally, it’s just been Solar Midnight, and the teams have submitted their predictions for how many suns will rise in the morning to greet the longest day of the year. The Stoics have gone for the entirely believable suggestion of “one, but it will be a different one in the shape of a giant dolphin”, and the Sceptics are saying it doesn’t matter because the horizon is a societal construct.
So the only thing left now is to get a bit of shuteye before sunrise, when we find out the results of the round and how many points will be awarded by our panel of judges.
Finally, to the viewer who keeps phoning in to insist that by observing the result of the round we are changing it, the quantum mechanical observer effect doesn’t apply to the Newtonian universe at a macro level. Goodnight.
Well, it’s been one of the more eventful Concept Bazooka Summer Solstice Specials. We’ve finished cleaning up after the fight between the judges, and so now here are the results. As you know, the question was how many suns would rise this morning? The Sceptics said it doesn’t matter, the horizon is a societal construct, but that was ruled out of order since the horizon is manifestly a geographical certainty.
The Stoics said one, but a different one in the shape of a dolphin, and we’ve been torn about how many points to award because indeed a new sun in the shape of a great glowing dolphin did rise, it’s just that it was accompanied by a dolphin black hole in a sort of yin-yang arrangement. On the basis that black holes weren’t part of the question, the Stoics have been given the full 10 points and are thus the winners against the Sceptics’ 0.
Thank you to our teams, our surviving judges and all of you for joining us, and we’ll be back for another series in the autumn. In the meantime, I leave you with this morning’s incredible first sighting of our new dolphin sky gods peeking over the horizon in their unfathomable cosmic ballet.