(2024-04-08) How To Really See An Eclipse

Brandon Hendrickson: How to really SEE an eclipse. Seven years ago, right before the last total solar eclipse to pass through North America, the web comic xkcd got something terribly, terribly wrong about solar eclipses — and about science, too

Two of the most important scientific discoveries EVER are baked into every solar eclipse, and hardly anyone realizes it, and they miss the MOST AMAZING THING ABOUT AN ECLIPSE.

Discovery #1: the Sun is BIG

Human language deals with size by splitting the world in two. Things that are smaller than us get labeled “small”; things that are bigger than us get labeled “big”.

To say the Moon and Sun are both “big” — the same word we apply to an aircraft carrier and the Golden Gate Bridge — is to fundamentally misunderstand their size.

The half of the Moon that we always see is more than seven million square miles — about the area of the U.S. and Canada combined

*By themselves, big numbers tend to numb the mind.

To really get a sense of the immensity of the Moon and Sun, we need something stronger — Egan would call it your “imagination”.*

you’re so big that, to you, the Earth is just the size of a tennis ball…

and the Moon is just the size of a green pea.

*Quick question: how big would you guess the Sun would seem to you, if you were that large?

Answer: as big as a green, two-story house.*

Discovery #2: the Sun is FAR

It’s like 8 light minutes away.

It’s another way to say “it’s 100 million miles away”, but we these distances aren’t something we can feel

There is a way to feel it, though, and it comes every solar eclipse

an eclipse is like when a tall guy at the back row of the theater stands up and blocks the movie. He’s “eclipsing” the projector.

Now imagine the Moon doing that to the Sun.

Do you see what’s odd about that? They look like they’re nearly exactly the same size. A pea is blocking out a house

An F-22 raptor can go over twice the speed of sound — Mach 2.2. The Apollo 11 astronauts coasted toward the Moon at Mach 32… and it took them three full days to get there.

at that speed, it would have taken them six months to get to the Sun.

if you swelled up again so large that the Earth was just the size of a tennis ball and the Moon a pea, you could hold the Earth against your right ear, and reach out and touch the Moon with your index finger. During an eclipse, you’d see the Moon block the Sun, and the Sun… would be up higher than the towers of the Golden Gate Bridge

too many of us science teachers misunderstand our work: we assume people’s minds are empty, when in fact they’re worse than empty. We assume that our job is to fill them, when in fact our job is to explode them.

Cognitive scientists talk about “folk science” (sometimes called “folk physics” or “naive physics”) — the fact that we naturally make sense of what we experience with categories that aren’t true. For example:
the Earth is stationary
the heavier something is, the faster it falls

To be fair, these beliefs are rather useful, here on the planet we’ve evolved to live in

people used to think these things were true, full stop — and science has exploded them.

And yet they live. Folk science continues to be the operating system of even most curious, thoughtful, scientifically-trained people

Because of this, it’s actually difficult to state frankly the findings of modern science without sounding like a lunatic. Smells are tiny pieces of the object they come from, fractioning off into the air! Colors are really jiggles in space-goo! White light is a hallucination! Sweaters aren’t any warmer than you are, plants are just as alive as animals, and you’re never ever alone!

The real scientific revolution — the transformation of people’s experience of the world — is still in its opening phase. But we can move closer to it. (Enlightenment)

As you watch even a smidgen of the Moon pass between you and the Sun, try to hold it all in your head.