As a Stanford physics major, I’d lucked into the job of resident astronomer at Wilcox Solar Observatory. My roommates and I lived in an apartment adjacent to its white pyramid, calling ourselves High Priestesses of the Temple of the Sun and occasionally giving tours to Dish runners.
Now, decades later, I still study the sun. I was visiting colleagues in Poland when solar activity drove auroral light shows around the globe. For the first time, I felt like I truly understood the color pink.
I’d booked a taxi for far too early in the morning. It had been a good trip, but I wasn’t about to miss my transatlantic flight home.
A taxi pulled up to the curb. “Airport?”
“You’re here for . . .?”
He glanced at a piece of paper on the seat beside him. “Sarah.”
My relief was absurd. What were the odds a fake cab driver was prowling the streets at 4 a.m., looking for airport-bound passengers to attack?
“How do you like Wrocław?” he asked.
“It’s beautiful.” Something made me continue. “I was here for a scientific visit. I’m an astronomer. I study the sun.”
“I don’t believe the earth is round,” he said. “And there are two suns. I’ve seen them.”
“You have?”
“On a beach in Italy. I saw the sun set. I turned around. Another sun was rising.”
I considered arguing—could it have been the full moon?—but didn’t. It was the middle of the night, I was alone with a man who was becoming more and more animated with every word, and I wanted to know where he was going with this.
“I read a lot of books,” he said.
“Oh?”
“Old books.” He waved his hands, as if to illustrate their age. “Do you know the Anunnaki?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Do you know the Sumerians?”
“Yes,” I said, on firmer ground.
“But not the Anunnaki?” He pulled out his phone and started thumbing through the internet, and the car went over a curb.
‘I don’t believe the earth is round,’ he said. ‘And there are two suns. I’ve seen them.&rsquo
I already had my phone out. “Sumerian gods.”
“They had blue skin,” he said. “There was a book. The library of Alexandria—”
“It burned down.”
“Yes!”
He nodded, as though I’d confirmed something, and for the remainder of my ride held forth on ancient architecture (“People lived in caves. How could they build pyramids?”) and religion (“Jesus met the Anunnaki. Krishna had blue skin!”) in a jumble of conspiracy theories and pseudoscience.
I was used to it. When I reveal my profession to a stranger, especially a male stranger, I’m often treated to a lecture peripherally related to my work. On the bright side, it means I don’t have to say much myself.
“Tell me,” he said, reading my mind. “What is the sun?”
“A star.”
He looked at me in the rearview mirror, and I knew I had to do better.
“An enormous collection of particles that fuse together so densely they radiate. That’s why the sun shines.”
His gaze in the mirror softened. He was listening.
“Stars like the sun have magnetic fields that get all twisted and tangled—then bang! A solar storm travels across space and hits the earth. That’s what happened last week, what caused the auroras.”
I was struck by how fantastic it sounded. I had repeatable, testable observations to back up everything I’d said—and yet. The magic of it.
He stopped the car in front of departures. “Have you seen Interstellar?”
“Good movie.”
“It made me wonder.”
“Me too,” I said.
And suddenly, briefly, we understood each other.
Sarah Gibson, ’89, lives in Louisville, Colo. Email her at stanford.magazine@stanford.edu.
