CONSIDER THIS: To Understand the Meaning of a Solar Eclipse
By Jay Richards
The Sun and the Moon are not just the same shape, but the same apparent size in the sky. It’s this happy arrangement that produces total solar eclipses as seen from the earth’s surface.
Americans got a chance to view such an eclipse on April 8 — an event we won’t see again from coast to coast until 2045. The moon’s 115-mile wide central shadow entered Texas from Mexico around 12:29 p.m. over Eagle Pass before grazing the edge of San Antonio, and then passing over Dallas-Ft. Worth. It continued on a northeasterly pass over 11 other states until it reached Maine. (You can find the precise path at NationalEclipse.com.)
In a total solar eclipse, just before “totality,” the last bright bit of the Sun’s photosphere looks like a pink diamond in an engagement ring. When the Moon covers the sun’s disk, the sky goes dark; the temperature drops; the stars appear.
What if the universe is designed to encourage humans to seek to understand it through scientific discovery?
Bugs and animals get confused and go quiet or start squawking. And the dim outer atmosphere of the Sun, the corona, reaches out from the black lunar disk like the gray iris of an eye with a black pupil in the middle. At that point you can take off your protective glasses and see it with your naked eyes.
Astronomer Guillermo Gonzalez (my co-author on The Privileged Planet) and I provided live commentary for an eclipse viewing in Waxahachie, Texas, south of Dallas — where totality lasted four minutes and 19 seconds. (You can find highlights at X on the @DiscoveryCSC feed.)
In order for a total solar eclipse to occur, the Moon, Sun, and Earth have to line up in a straight line. When the Moon passes in front of the Sun, you can see an eclipse if you’re in the path of the Moon’s shadow.
Those fully in the shadow — the umbra — see the Moon cover the Sun. If you’re just outside that path, you see a partial eclipse — the penumbra. The difference between a partial and total eclipse is like the difference between day and night. It’s impossible to capture with mere words the experience of seeing a total eclipse. But words can help us ponder its meaning …
Go here for the rest of Jay Richards’ analysis of the meaning of a solar eclipse. Above reprinted by HillFaith with permission from Evolution News & Science Today.
PREVIOUSLY ON HILLFAITH:
How a Young British Astronomer Proved Einsteins Theory of Relativity
You Gotta See This First If You Plan to Watch Today’s Solar Eclipse
SCIENCE AND FAITH: Of Fingerprints and Galaxies