It just so happens
We’re not going to get any eclipse fun here in Seattle, because it’s all clouds up there. Nothing will change. It won’t even get darker.
But while we’re on the subject – this is a puzzle that doesn’t get discussed enough – how utterly bizarre is it that from here on this planet, the moon, which is practically next door, and the sun, which is way the fuck out there, ARE THE SAME SIZE???
I mean what are the odds? Eh? You wouldn’t place a bet on them. And yet there it is: from here, the moon can neatly block the sun such that only the corona is visible.
It’s downright creepy, is what it is.
It’s strange how people just take natural phenomena in stride and don’t notice how weird everything truly is. Like, I understand the water cycle and everything but aren’t clouds and rain just insane? There’s floating water that turns into white fluffy stuff thousands of feet above and then it just falls from the sky! I’m not even kidding, I find it mind blowing even when I’m not eating gummies.
Why do humans feel special and superior again?
Adam Lee wrote a very nice piece about that — how at this point in geologic history, the moon, 400 times smaller than the sun, just happens to be 400 times closer, and some of us can enjoy the spectacle when its shadow passes overhead. Misfortunately, with the demise of his blogging network OnlySky, he has been posting at Freethought Blogs, so hold your noses, go over there, and have a read.
I used to live in the Pacific Northwest and it almost goes without saying that it was pouring rain during the total eclipse that was visible there in 1979. It was still impressive — a great shadow swept across the land. It was worth getting wet.
There was that eclipse just a few years ago (I forget when) – that was a clear day so we totally got to see the whole thing. Oh it must be the one where Trump carefully looked at the sun without eye protection.
I’ve talked about this before. The Moon is slowly getting further away too. Human civilization happens to exist at just the right time when it’s possible to see both total AND annular solar eclipses. In the past, it was total (and partial) only. In the future, it will be annular (and partial) only. I’m not sure how big that time window for both is exactly, I’m sure it’s pretty big. But in the context of time scales of the entire history of the planet, it is a limited window.
I’m surprised I’ve never seen intelligent design proponents pick up on this, because it genuinely is a coincidence that makes a spectacular natural phenomenon.
Only a partial eclipse here in northern Virginia, but it’s a sunny day and our daughter dropped off some eclipse glasses last night, so at least we’ll see something.
Then again, if we want to talk about astronomical phenomenon in the context of intelligent design, I feel like the fact that there isn’t an even number of days in a year is such a glaring argument against intelligent design. No one intelligent would set it up that way, it’s completely unreasonable.
I’ve long toyed with the idea that the universe was created by an idiotic designer. Of course it was done on a Tuesday, because nothing good ever happens on a Tuesday.
Exactly. Why don’t they rant and rave about that all the time? It’s so very odd.
I mean, as coincidences go, it’s pretty spectacular.
This reminds of the late Mark Fisher’s remark (discussing H. P. Lovecraft): that “in many ways, a natural phenomenon like a black hole is more weird than a vampire”.
Surely the universe was made on a Friday afternoon, isn’t that when all the lemons get made?
The nice Designers skipped out early that day and Lovecraft’s Old Ones seized their chance.
Isn’t it? Weird and often awe-inspiringly beautiful. Rainbows! The moon! Sunsets! I’ll be walking down the street and there’ll be a rainbow, and everybody else is just ignoring it. I always want to shout, “RAINBOW! LOOK! UP THERE!” I don’t, though.
#musubk et al:
God done it!
I went outside with a colander when the partial eclipse was at maximum here. I used the colander to project dozens of images of the sun with a bite out of it on the ground.
We had clouds, but got as dark as midnight. A waitress at the cafe where we stopped for a late lunch got the most marvelous video, with the best corona I’ve seen. I encouraged her to post it on YouTube.
I sometimes do shout RAINBOW! Or, more often, EAGLE! Eagles are practically like pigeons around here now, but still, they’re never not exciting to watch. They’re just so dang big.
The Moon and Sun’s sizes are the eeriest of the just-so coincidences which might, were I not already a resolute atheist, seduce me over to the theory that the universe was designed with us in mind. The other “coincidences” on offer can all be explained away with statistics and logic — specifically, the surivor bias: if they had been any other way, we simply wouldn’t be here now to observe them. Of course the cosmological constant just happens to have the goldilocks value that enables the universe to develop heavy elements such as carbon (or whatever; I don’t remember the physics-y details; you get the idea) — if it didn’t, we wouldn’t be here to notice.
Not so with the Earth-Moon-Sun perspective coincidence. There’s no reason to believe the Sun and Moon’s identical apparent size when seen from Earth right around the time intelligent life emerges on it, as unlikely such a thing would be in a random universe, is a prerequisite for intelligent life to develop, so there’s no way to cancel out its extraordinary statistical anomalousness with logic.
It’s just… there. Suspiciously perfect, and tantalizingly inexplicable.
A coincidence that astonishing flies in the face of a rational thinker’s instinct to assume we’re average in every way, given that, when we’re pondering the origins of our existence, the sample size we have to compare ourselves against is zero.
It’s a beautiful thing that we are alive at this time to bear witness to it.
Eclipses are wonderful moments to stop and ponder our place in the universe. The clash of mundanity and spectacle — from any other perspective in the universe it’s just an ordinary moment, the clockwork of physics, eternally ticking away… and yet here we are — is just the ticket to elicit sensations of awe and transcendence and at the same time hold them back from tipping over into spirituality and woo.
(It can’t stop me tipping over into purple prose, though. I can’t help it; I’m in a poetic mood after this afteroon’s sight.)
I get that way when the cumulus clouds pile up in a deep blue sky, which happens quite often. I still wish today had been clear though!!!
And yet the reaction of animals and other living things provides some (small) support for evolution over intelligent design. Surely a designer would’ve foreseen that animals would be confused and think that night is falling when the sun disappears, and built in a mechanism for them to tell the difference*. But from an evolutionary standpoint it’s predictable–such a rare event cannot exert any meaningful evolutionary pressure.
*For that matter, an intelligent designer would’ve built in protection for the eyes when looking at the sun. Just further evidence that the designer was an idiot.
Drove from the Chicago area down to southern Indiana (two-leg trip, stopping at a motel about an hour outside the totality zone last night) to get my last-in-my-lifetime shot in. It was wild listening to the birds as the eclipse got rolling; they were just making a complete uproar, as if demanding to know what the hell was going on.
That is interesting.
Arty, I didn’t find your prose purple at all, but indicative of totally appropriate awe and wonder. Science, broadly speaking, reveals our deep and intimate connection to the Universe in a way missed entirely by most religions. At its best, it is more meaningful, rewarding, and dare I say, “spiritual” than any theistic religion. Since first reading it (and hearing it) I’ve considered Carl Sagan’s “Pale Blue Dot” to be one of the finest and most moving passages in the English language:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wupToqz1e2g
Believe me flat-earthers and space-deniers of the creationist ilk love the Sun-Moon coincidence argument. I suspect the more mainstream creationists feel it’s just a little bit beneath them. Their God doesn’t do silly tricks with heavenly bodies but provides for people. So we have the “bananas are the perfect food therefore God” argument. Yes God so loved the world he gave us bananas. As I say mainstream creationist are very serious people.