There seems to be a lot of excitement about the solar eclipse that will pass over the US on Monday and many people are making plans to go to places where they can get the best view. You can see those locations here. The path of the total eclipse goes quite close to me, just south of where I live but I will not bother to make even that small effort.
To be quite honest, I am not at all excited by it. I may look out the window during the eclipse but that’s about it. I just do not see what the excitement is about something that is a purely natural event that has been predicted down to the second. The fact that it will go dark during the day is nothing unusual. It does that during cloudy days and when there are thunderstorms.
I feel the same lack of excitement with comets and meteor showers and the like. I just cannot be bothered to make any effort see them. But because I am a scientist, I feel a little guilty that my feelings are so blasé when so many non-scientists are eagerly awaiting it.
Now if the eclipse were, for some reason, to not take place as predicted or if during it the sky turned rainbow colors, then I would be excited. But that is not going to happen. All that will happen is that for a few minutes on Monday the sky will go dark for reasons that are well known.
Sorry to be such a downer.
I don’t care if you’re a _bad scientist_. I do pity you! Not interested in seeing a corona with your own effing eyes? Not interested to experience nature going to sleep in the middle of the day? What kind of creature are you?
Really, PZ, you should be totally ashamed of yourself. The trill of seeing an eclipse cannot be denied. Yawn.
I heard an interview on CBC radio yesterday or the day before with a real eclipse fan. IIRC this will be his 16th eclipse. He said that getting to Antarctica was the most difficult one he had pursued. The mind boggles.
I did get up about 03:00 or so once to see some Soviet or maybe Russian satellite zip past. I had to walk a good 5 or 6 metres from the bed to the living room windows. I think that was enough.
Argh, forgot. Eclipses in the USA apparently have been popular for a long time https://thonyc.wordpress.com/2017/08/10/american-eclipse-tourism-in-the-nineteenth-century/
@ 2: Do you think all the FTB blogs are PZ’s?
I’m with you, Mano. I’m not the least bit excited.
@jkrideau
#2
Why are you replying to PZ?
# 5 colinday
Because I got lost?
I had been reading something in PZ’s blog and thought I was still there. Plus I thought the eclipse was further west. I had not realized it was easily seen from Cleveland so I did not clue in at all.
In 1999 I last witnessed a partial solar eclipse. Since I was at work we got ready with X-ray film. It was impressive to see the partially hidden sun, as well as the pin-hole effect created by foliage. We are hoping to top that by experiencing totality, if we manage to anticipate the traffic.
Well, this time around, Cleveland just gets a partial eclipse, so I can kinda understand your lack of enthusiasm. Just a bite taken out of the sun. But in April 2024, we get another eclipse and this time Cleveland will be right in the path of totality. So you get the best view right in your backyard. I hope you manage to look up then
@Mano:
Not only am I a scientist by training, I’m an astronomer! A lot of people I know are heading to Oregon from California to view the eclipse.
Me? If I remember on Monday, I’ll probably make a pinhole in a sheet of card and verify that, yes indeed, a partial eclipse is under way.
I’m with Mano and Caine. Yawn.
Anat, where were you for that eclipse in 1999? I was not terribly far from Lake Constance and the day was cloudy. IIRC, pretty much all of Europe from the Isle of Man to Athens was socked in. It got dark.
Mano, it’s not because you are a “bad scientist”:
https://xkcd.com/1877/
I’m not too close to the 100% path, but I’m probably going to try to look at the weird shadows . . . but maybe not because there’s a good chance of it being overcast where I live.
@11 I was in the Netherlands. In northern France it was very crowdy, I remember -- not only Americans get worked up by eclipses. In the Netherlands daylight got dimmed for a couple of minutes. It was funny (for half a second) that for once I could look straight at the sun (for half a second).Otherwise: meh.
And I don’t even feel guilty about it, though I’m a teacher physics.
https://xkcd.com/1877
XKCD feels the same.
@Timberwoof #11:
There was cloud over a lot of the UK during the 1999 eclipse. Where I was, the day was grey and the cloud was pretty low and even. I could see the disc of the sun but no detail, and I didn’t need eye protection. I couldn’t see the corona under those conditions but the diamond ring effect was briefly discernible before the cloud thickened too much.
Pretty much everyone at my university left their offices and went outside to watch for an hour or more, or into the SU hall where a big projection screen had been set up to show the BBC broadcast from Cornwall, where the skies were clearer. It probably helped the popularity of the event that the bar was open for the occasion…
Timberwoof, I was in Rehovot, Israel. It was a very clear day as summer tends to be in Israel, and the drop in brightness was very noticeable.
No, it doesn’t. Totality, especially totality that lasts more than a couple of minutes, really is like nothing else you’ve ever experienced. It goes dark. Not darker, like when it’s cloudy or thundery. Dark, like night. And the suddenness of it is shocking, nothing like the fall of night even near the equator. The effect on bird life particularly is uncanny. I was in Cornwall in 1999, as I had been planning to be since I first found out about eclipses in primary school. It was worth the trip (an eight hour drive from my home), even despite the cloud. Watching gulls fly noisily out to sea because they thought it was suddenly night time, then equally noisily fly confusedly back inland two minutes later is not something you’ll get on a cloudy day.
I get the yawn if you’ve seen one. I wouldn’t bother making a trip for a second. I’m glad I didn’t miss my first.
Consider: a total eclipse requires a moon and sun that appear exactly the same size in the sky from the surface of the planet. For instance, a sun 400 times the size of the moon, coincidentally 400 times further away. Even a slight difference in these factors and you either get more than totality or a mere annular eclipse. The odds against having this setup are staggering, to the point that there’s likely only one planet in this entire galaxy where it has ever happened.
Consider: even if it does happen, it’s a temporary state of affairs. Gravitational tidal braking means that the moon is moving away from the earth. Eventually, there will be no more total eclipses, only partial or annular ones.
We are alive and conscious on what is almost certainly the only planet in the Milky Way that gets total eclipses, and we’re here in the relatively narrow window of time while they’re happening. If you can contemplate that and go “meh”, you baffle me.
(This is a plot point in Iain (no M.) Banks’s novel “Transition”. A character observes that if you want to find aliens on earth, look in the path of total eclipses, on the following logic: if they can get here at all, they are so powerful there is nothing they could conceivably want from us in terms of resources or information. What the earth does have to offer them is an experience accessible nowhere else.)
I compare a total eclipse to orgasm. Viewing a partial eclipse is like premature withdrawal. Not nearly as satisfying. And the foreplay and afterglow are just as important in sex as witnessing the progression into and out of totality. Someone told me you can ride in a chartered airplane in the the shadow of the moon during this eclipse. That is like sex with a thick condom. The peculiar changes in the light, shadows, bird behavior, wind, temperature, and even the observer’s mood can’t be duplicated indoors or in an airplane or even in your imagination.
It’s pretty simple: people are interested in different things.
I watched my first eclipse through the window of my wife’s hospital room.
My second eclipse was observed as profound decrease in the amount of light filtering through the clouds, viewed from home.
I’m not going to bother helping fill up the state of Idaho for this one. Ho hum.
Some of the other physicists at work are traveling quite a ways to see the total eclipse. Myself, I will muster up enough excitement to find my needle to poke a hole in a piece of paper, but that’s about it.
Also,
It’s nowhere near that rare; it is pretty much a certainty that there are many other planets experiencing this coincidence. Not common by any stretch, but the galaxy is large.
Well, I drove (from Central Ohio) to southern Illinois to view the total eclipse there.
Why? Because it is rare and pretty. (“Rare” is a relative term; it is certainly rare to have one nearby within one’s lifetime.) And the difference between a partial eclipse and a total eclipse is, to steal from Mark Twain (and to exaggerate), the difference between a lightning bug and lightning.
And why southern Illinois specifically? Because there is a bald cypress swamp there that I canoed around in. Why? Because it is rare and pretty.
It’s not a scientist thing; it’s a human thing.