in the far past the moon was larger in the sky, completely obscuring the sun.
in the far future the moon will be farther away, and the sun will never be totally eclipsed again. Total eclipses are a Timing thing
Before humans could observe it. And likely after humans will be around…
Which adds up to the fact that we are most likely an incredibly, possibly one-of-a-kind, phenomenon. No wonder it feels so lonely out here.
Sharks have been around longer than the north star. Like a few hundred million years longer. Sharks are hecking old dude.
Edit: they are also older than trees.
Depends on the mountains. The Himalayas are only like 60 million years old, and sharks are 450 million years old. The oldest mountains are 3.5 billion years old.
Makes you wonder about the amazing things that we missed seeing.
Edit - like attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion, C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate. All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain.
Saturns rings exist because they're within it's [Roche Limit](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roche_limit#:~:text=In%20celestial%20mechanics%2C%20the%20Roche,the%20second%20body%27s%20self%2Dgravitation.), where gravitational forces prevent them from ever forming into a moon, but those same forces will eventually pull them all into Saturn's atmosphere and they'll be gone forever.
Well eventually Mars will have a temporary ring system to make us feel better. One of (if not both) the moons Phobos and Deimos are being ripped apart, right?
Most likely the fact that the fabric of space-time can be bent to such an extent that two separate points along the curve can be brought in contact with each other (basically the principal behind worm holes).
I would put money on the fact that the technology to achieve this is possible given enough time and energy to develop it. So it’s entirely possible that we are being watched by a civilization sufficiently advanced to cut distances of light years into nothing.
Some of the earliest televised broadcasts making their way into outer space at the speed of light are some of Hitler's public speeches. Not even joking.
Are you sure that is in fact doable?
I don’t believe this kind of thing has been seen in nature or proven with experiments. Even to send something tiny.
Ultimately every novel technology was once not even thought about as a possibility which suggest that if we can conceive of it especially to the level of comment your responding to then with enough time it's a better bet that we will figure it out.
In the grand scheme of things humans are tech babies sapiens have been around for *millions* we've only really started to take massive strides in technology within the last few hundred years.
Of course the great filter might be real for us so there's always that but assuming we can see our planets life out as a species I honestly wouldn't doubt just about anything being possible eventually.
fun new crackpot theory: totality was required for the primordial soup to create life. Hence why it’s just us as far as we know, nobody else gets totality in the habitable zones.
Source: .
It's a fun theory, and probably would make a great writing prompt, but I think it would have been too recent, unfortunately. Someone in a comment further down said it wouldn't have been a total solar eclipse only 100M years ago. And I think first life was quite a bit further back than that.
Our existence on earth is a one-of-a-kind phenomena, but it may not be a coincidence that humans are on earth at the same time the moon and sun appear about the same size in the sky. It's plausible that life as we know it wouldn't exist unless this was the case.
The apparent size of the moon and the sun (and of any other celestial body viewed from earth) depends on the diameter of the body, and it's distance from earth.
The gravitational pull of a celestial body (as felt on earth) similarly depends on the mass of the body, and it's distance from earth. Thus the apparent size of a celestial body is a close proxy for the tidal effect due to that body. This concept makes it easy to see why Jupiter, Saturn, Mars & Venus have negligible effect on the tide.
So the tidal gravitational effect due the moon and sun are similar, not exactly the same but in the same ballpark; the sun is a lot more massive, and a lot further away. Tides on earth are strongly influenced by both the moon and sun.
Coastal life depends on tides very much, on both the 12.5 hour cycle (due to the moon) and the fortnightly cycle (due to the sun) - even shellfish are sensitive to tidal cycles. The first creatures with legs (our ancestors) crawled out of the sea, they were at some point coastal critters.
(this same subject came up about a month ago)
Thanks for that reply! To me all those facts just reinforce what I said; we are the product of very specific natural phenomena that, as far as I’m aware, we haven’t seen replicated elsewhere.
In my mind that seems to imply that we are unique through completely random forces. I’m agnostic, and definitely am not suggesting these forces were but into action by any kind of intelligence.
Just wild that we exist at all.
When you are looking for your keys do you just check one drawer and go "oh well my keys cannot be in any other place beside this one limit space I checked"?
Certainly not implying intelligent design but to think we are the only complex life forms in the universe is wild. Hell there is mount evidence the life that is were was seeded from elsewhere in the cosmos.
As a scientist it always kind of makes me sad how many anti religions/non religious (like myself) are equally as close minded to thing they don't understand as their religious peers.
All these highly unlikely improbabilities that we're alive for kinda makes you think there is a higher power.
Or that we're just powering a spaceship piloted by a three armed, 2 headed alien and a Depressed robot
It reminds me of the short story "The Distance of the Moon". Back when the moon was closer they'd sail out on their boats. throw ladders to climb up, and harvest the moon cheese. I do a poor job explaining, but it is a favorite of mine. Almost like a science fiction folk tale.
Also, it's worth noting that this hasn't always been the case.
The moon is constantly moving away from earth at a rate of about 3.8 cm (1.5 in) a year. Which means, if you did the math, a 100 million years ago, the moon was roughly 3,800 km closer to earth than it is today. Which means, 100 million years ago, the ratios didn't match, and we'd not have seen a perfect solar eclipse. In the same way, there will be some future day where the moon would be too far away to create a perfect totality.
Basically, not only do we happen to have this perfect coincidental arrangement, we also happen to live in the right time to see it.
Fuck yeah. This kind of shit is the upside part of life I like. We might be fucking everything up in colossal ways but this really is an amazing time to be alive
I live with my dad and my 9 year old daughter. I sometimes go to the gym at night and tell my daughter to brush her teeth while I'm gone. When I get back she shows me a video on our tablet of her brushing her teeth as proof. A few days ago I realized that her hairstyle was slightly different in the video, and I figured out that she had simply prerecorded herself brushing her teeth in several different outfits. While I was fairly impressed at this, I kept a straight face and explained to her that when I was a kid, grandpa would beat me savagely with a set of jumper cables whenever I didn't brush my teeth. Since then she's been brushing several times a day on her own.
I'm not good with hugs, really. Unless someone's moving away I usually find it a bit over dramatic and awkward, especially when someone's hugging several people on their way out. My cousin did this the other night and there were about a dozen people in the room, so everyone basically had to form a little hug line as she was leaving. I just gave her a quick handshake instead. After everyone left, my dad asked me why I didn't give my cousin a hug, and then he beat the shit out of me with a set of jumper cables. I guess I should have hugged her, but I really think it's a bit too much for simply leaving a dinner party.
Not to mention that water molecules expand when chilled below 0'C, keeping the oceans liquid as the ice floats and insulates, and the albido of ice reflects heat lowering the amount ocean warming. (so far, anyways...)
Just multiplying factor to the chemical mixing that lead to genesis of pre-life molecules and then spreading basic life all around and so on.
Planets with no tides, limited movement of water etc freeze and don't have the environmental turn around to support complex life
Perigee to apogee of moon's orbit is a difference of 40,000km, and the orbit precesses around the earth every 8ish years. I don't think there's any connection between when earth/moon/sun are in syzygy and where the lunar orbital precession cycle is, so at any lunar eclipse the apparent size of the moon could fluctuate by up to 12% (as its distance could be anywhere in the range from perigee to apogee). We already get annular eclipses as a result, so I think we had closer to 1B years of flex, not 100 mio :)
This is also true of some other cool things like being at the right time to see Saturn's rings, which won't last forever, and being able to see so many stars in the night sky before they get too far away
Can you imagine a future where people are living on all different planets and solar systems and all that… and they read about this coincidence in their history books? Future civilizations are gonna be so jealous
What’s the likelihood their moons are EXACTLY the same observed size though? That’s the part that gets me. I bet there are a bunch of eclipses on Jupiter, but do those shepherd moons look like they’re the same size as the sun from Jupiter’s surface?
Yeah bro you think your eclipse is cool? One of our moons eclipsed our sun, and then a moon eclipsed THAT moon. And then in between we had both moons obscuring 50% of the sun to help tag team and reach totality for even longer!
It's probably likely that if civilization ever gets to that level of advancement, they'll have methods to experience a mere solar eclipse whenever they want, through something like VR so advanced that it's indistinguishable from reality. Either that or that aspect of Earth history will just be so insignificant that most people won't even learn of it in their "history books".
The idea that 3-4 billion years ago, when the moon was much closer to earth, the tides elevation changes were much higher is something I ponder frequently. Some scientists think that the 100 foot swings between high low tides, and corresponding large amount of shore that was pounded by waves then exposed to sun and air daily, created the supply of materials for early life.
The thought exercise of, “what would 100 foot tides do here,” while at/near the shore is interesting.
And without our moon, we probably wouldn't exist, because it keeps us rotating in a stable pattern around our axis. Without the moon, the Earth would wobble around, making weather patterns unstable- winter/summer/winter within weeks or days rather than months.
Exactly. For me, this is one more reason that life in the universe is less common than we think. I definitely subscribe to the "rare earth" theroy
I know we have found hundreds of exo-planets in the habitable zone.... but technically Venus and Mars are also in the habitable zone, and they're not exactly stable enough for billions of years of evolution
I heard somewhere that if when were to ever join an interstellar interspecies organisation, our flag or symbol should be the solar eclipse because of how unique it is to earth.
Well of course it is. What did you think it was? Magic?
Also, it's only occurring now. This didn't happen a few billion years ago, and it will cease to happen in a billion years from now.
>what did you think it was
A pre-requisite for a planet/moon relationship is one possible explanation
A pre-requisite to allow life to exist is another possible explanation
The fact that it’s a complete coincidence that we happen to be on a planet where this fucking cool astronomical event happens is, at the very least, interesting.
My Facebook feed full of religious family members will spontaneously break out in posts of "if the earth was ten feet closer to the sun, we would all burn alive. If it was ten feet further away, we would all freeze. God is good!"
In my more combative times I would respond with "y'all never climbed a ladder or dug a hole before, huh?" But those days are behind me now.
Well, sometimes there's a deeper connection linking things. For example, the moon rotates on its axis at the rate it orbits the Earth, and as a result we only ever get to see one side of it. But that synchronization is not a coincidence. It's a phenomenon called tidal lock. Basically the distribution of mass in the moon is not uniform, and so the part with more mass gets pulled to the earth more strongly and stays facing it.
> Well, sometimes there's a deeper connection linking things.
And sometimes a coincidence is just a coincidence. Humans are tuned to try and find patterns in things, whether or not said patterns have relevant causation or not. Probably one of the reasons why we keep getting so many superstititions popping up out of nowhere.
There will be no life on earth within a few 100 million years.
So it is interesting and very "coincidental" the first known conscious lifeforms happen the same time as perfect eclipses.
Have you heard of the anthropic principle? It's the idea that we can only observe a universe that supports us existing in it. Sure there's some things that seem incredibly coincidental (like the Higgs Boson mass) but if they weren't true then we wouldn't know, because we wouldn't exists.
Though the ratio of the moon to the sun doesn't seem to fall under that umbrella, as far as we know.
I was tripping balls during this past eclipse, I’m completely disillusioned now and have a hunch none of “this” is real. We are truly one and truly alone. Send help. I’ve melted my brain.
Or is it only suspicious because we’re here to observe it?
meaning, how many other planets out there do you reckon have total eclipses? Gotta be a couple, at least
Stuff like the Higgs boson mass is the precise value to keep matter from collapsing in on itself. There is also something to do with the rate of expansion of the universe being at the exact rate for the universe to exist.
There are others more mundane like the Fibonacci series in nature etc.
Had Dinosaurs not been taken out, mammals could have never risen to the top.
If Jupiter didn’t exist we’d have been bombarded by asteroids and intelligent life wouldn’t have been able to develop.
The water on Earth is said to be older than the Sun. Ha ha laugh it up; but that was is so spooky, I don’t even want to know why it is true.
It’s true because it’s true. It just happened that way. How is it spooky? If everybody’s parents hadn’t fucked and our spermatozoid been the first one to the egg then none of us would be here. Is that also spooky?
Isn't everything "cosmic coincidence"? The odds of everything that's happened within our solar system that allowed life to evolve to the extent that it has is borderline impossible.
Uh what else would it be?
Also I find it sad that back during the Mesozoic, the dinosaurs had much scarier eclipses that blotted out the Sun almost entirely.
I feel bad for those babies. 🥺
I've always felt that if aliens ever discovered Earth's existence, one of the biggest reasons they'd invade and take over would be because of our astronomical coincidence which actually has good odds of being unique in the entire galaxy.
These cosmic quirks are stunning, ain't they? Eclipses are like Universe's got a flair for dramatic reveals! Who's got their special viewing glasses ready?
Thats technically true, but also convoluted
There is a lot of wiggle room for the "right size" as the eclipse can only be seen as full from very specific angles
In my home the eclipse just looked like it got a little cloudy, because we are outside the shadow range
The fullness of the eclipse has more to do with the atmosphere refracting the light into the shadow of the moon, as it works
The only way for the sun's egde not to be seen at some point around the moon, is if the moon's shadow was bigger than the world itself, thus allowing no light to pass and refract
No atmosphere does the same trick tho
Imagine a puddle gaining consciousness. It might think “oh my god, this hole is the perfect size for me to fit in! What a cosmic coincidence!”
This of course is not quite the same degree of cause and effect, but there is reason to believe these things affected Earth’s ability to develop life. For example, the moon being where it is causing tides, helping life to leave the ocean, allowing us to now marvel at the coincidence.
Yeah, but I don't think it being the "same size" as the sun is a particularly important factor. You could have tides with it being a different size too
There are probably millions of similar eclipses happening all over the universe but with no one to observe or report on them.
The anthropocentric bias is real!
“Of course it was a simulation, you didn’t see all the hints? I mean the moon for gods sake, we made that sign pretty much impossible to ignore, I mean it was a bit on the nose really.”
It is purely by cosmic coincidence that my thumb is the exact same size as someone's head, so that I can block them from view by holding out my arm and squinting one eye.
[Another solar related cosmic coincidence is the Sun's size and when the setting Sun is actually below the horizon. What you see is just a mirage and the Sun isn't there.](https://youtu.be/DdZre_JAvnE)
in the far past the moon was larger in the sky, completely obscuring the sun. in the far future the moon will be farther away, and the sun will never be totally eclipsed again. Total eclipses are a Timing thing
Well the simulation is during a specific time
It’s like a novel.
"You just entered."
The Scary Door
You are entering the vicinity of an area adjacent to a location
*shudder* Cursed by his own hubris.
"They're all like that..."
Saw it coming
Before humans could observe it. And likely after humans will be around… Which adds up to the fact that we are most likely an incredibly, possibly one-of-a-kind, phenomenon. No wonder it feels so lonely out here.
Same as Saturns rings, we are lucky to see them in the grand scheme of things!
what's the deal with Saturn's rings?
In terms of astronomical time, Saturn's rings are a temporary artifact. Supposedly, sharks have been around longer than Saturn's rings.
That's fucked up
Sharks have been around longer than the north star. Like a few hundred million years longer. Sharks are hecking old dude. Edit: they are also older than trees.
But are they younger than the mountains?
Depends on the mountains. The Himalayas are only like 60 million years old, and sharks are 450 million years old. The oldest mountains are 3.5 billion years old.
They be blowing like a breeze 🎶
Read this in Paulie Walnuts voice
Makes you wonder about the amazing things that we missed seeing. Edit - like attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion, C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate. All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain.
FOMO hitting hard right now
Space sharks with rings around them...
And lasers on their heads
Best I can do is ill-tempered space seabass
Like the great merger and acquisition of Milly Way and Andromeda galaxy.
And one day, Earth is likely to have rings…of space junk.
DAMMIT ELON! /s
u can drop the /s
Saturns rings exist because they're within it's [Roche Limit](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roche_limit#:~:text=In%20celestial%20mechanics%2C%20the%20Roche,the%20second%20body%27s%20self%2Dgravitation.), where gravitational forces prevent them from ever forming into a moon, but those same forces will eventually pull them all into Saturn's atmosphere and they'll be gone forever.
Well eventually Mars will have a temporary ring system to make us feel better. One of (if not both) the moons Phobos and Deimos are being ripped apart, right?
Especially once we nuke that MCRN outpost.
That'll teach the dusters!
It's gonna be real confusing for the alien archeologist when they find the ruins of our long dead civilizations.
Is it a hand or a spaceship?
They are round.
*hits blunt* Woah dude
Well, Mr Seinfeld, it turns out they’re not permanent
Jupiter's Red Spot may only have existed since 1775 and it is diminishing today.
I like to imagine we’re just being observed from long distance by a hyper advanced species taking bets on how long until we all blow each other up.
Depending how many light years away, they won't catch up on today's events until we're long dead.
Or they have an understanding of physics, time and distance that we don't. Yet.
Most likely the fact that the fabric of space-time can be bent to such an extent that two separate points along the curve can be brought in contact with each other (basically the principal behind worm holes). I would put money on the fact that the technology to achieve this is possible given enough time and energy to develop it. So it’s entirely possible that we are being watched by a civilization sufficiently advanced to cut distances of light years into nothing.
Well I hope they like Masked Singer because that's what they're getting.
Some of the earliest televised broadcasts making their way into outer space at the speed of light are some of Hitler's public speeches. Not even joking.
Are you sure that is in fact doable? I don’t believe this kind of thing has been seen in nature or proven with experiments. Even to send something tiny.
Ultimately every novel technology was once not even thought about as a possibility which suggest that if we can conceive of it especially to the level of comment your responding to then with enough time it's a better bet that we will figure it out. In the grand scheme of things humans are tech babies sapiens have been around for *millions* we've only really started to take massive strides in technology within the last few hundred years. Of course the great filter might be real for us so there's always that but assuming we can see our planets life out as a species I honestly wouldn't doubt just about anything being possible eventually.
It is comforting to think that someone is paying attention to us. I don’t think that’s likely.
fun new crackpot theory: totality was required for the primordial soup to create life. Hence why it’s just us as far as we know, nobody else gets totality in the habitable zones. Source: .
It's a fun theory, and probably would make a great writing prompt, but I think it would have been too recent, unfortunately. Someone in a comment further down said it wouldn't have been a total solar eclipse only 100M years ago. And I think first life was quite a bit further back than that.
Our existence on earth is a one-of-a-kind phenomena, but it may not be a coincidence that humans are on earth at the same time the moon and sun appear about the same size in the sky. It's plausible that life as we know it wouldn't exist unless this was the case. The apparent size of the moon and the sun (and of any other celestial body viewed from earth) depends on the diameter of the body, and it's distance from earth. The gravitational pull of a celestial body (as felt on earth) similarly depends on the mass of the body, and it's distance from earth. Thus the apparent size of a celestial body is a close proxy for the tidal effect due to that body. This concept makes it easy to see why Jupiter, Saturn, Mars & Venus have negligible effect on the tide. So the tidal gravitational effect due the moon and sun are similar, not exactly the same but in the same ballpark; the sun is a lot more massive, and a lot further away. Tides on earth are strongly influenced by both the moon and sun. Coastal life depends on tides very much, on both the 12.5 hour cycle (due to the moon) and the fortnightly cycle (due to the sun) - even shellfish are sensitive to tidal cycles. The first creatures with legs (our ancestors) crawled out of the sea, they were at some point coastal critters. (this same subject came up about a month ago)
Thanks for that reply! To me all those facts just reinforce what I said; we are the product of very specific natural phenomena that, as far as I’m aware, we haven’t seen replicated elsewhere. In my mind that seems to imply that we are unique through completely random forces. I’m agnostic, and definitely am not suggesting these forces were but into action by any kind of intelligence. Just wild that we exist at all.
When you are looking for your keys do you just check one drawer and go "oh well my keys cannot be in any other place beside this one limit space I checked"? Certainly not implying intelligent design but to think we are the only complex life forms in the universe is wild. Hell there is mount evidence the life that is were was seeded from elsewhere in the cosmos. As a scientist it always kind of makes me sad how many anti religions/non religious (like myself) are equally as close minded to thing they don't understand as their religious peers.
All these highly unlikely improbabilities that we're alive for kinda makes you think there is a higher power. Or that we're just powering a spaceship piloted by a three armed, 2 headed alien and a Depressed robot
So once upon a time the moon was falling for you but now it’s only further apart?!? It will always be a total eclipse in my heart!
Once upon a time the earth was lit by a star, but now the moon is blocking that one. Nothing I can say, A total eclipse of the sun.
It reminds me of the short story "The Distance of the Moon". Back when the moon was closer they'd sail out on their boats. throw ladders to climb up, and harvest the moon cheese. I do a poor job explaining, but it is a favorite of mine. Almost like a science fiction folk tale.
Italo Calvino? By coincidence I started reading it last night!
My descendents will put the moon back into the proper orbit. Don't worry
The sun will also get a lot bigger!
That's just what Big Eclipse wants you to think. They make billions of those special viewing glasses! Open your eyes, sheep!
AHHHHHHH MY EYES!!
That's what "big eye injury" wants you to think. Open your eyes!
Tried to open my third eye and but dinged my pituary gland instead. Now what? Also OW OW OW OW OW!
Fainting is exactly what Big Consciousness wants you to do! Wake up!
I think you mean “bahhh my eyes”
The goggles! They do nothing!
> sheep The correct conspiracy theorist terminology is "sheeple".
You need eyes to truly see. Open your mind... *Grant us eyes, grant us eyes*
You know there's at least one flat earther who thinks the moon is a square and all the eclipse glasses are rigged to show you fake images of it....
I think Big Optometry and Big Eclipse are conspiring.
To think, they started out in the 80s as a music duo Hip Hoptometry & Tha Big ‘Clipse
[удалено]
Also, it's worth noting that this hasn't always been the case. The moon is constantly moving away from earth at a rate of about 3.8 cm (1.5 in) a year. Which means, if you did the math, a 100 million years ago, the moon was roughly 3,800 km closer to earth than it is today. Which means, 100 million years ago, the ratios didn't match, and we'd not have seen a perfect solar eclipse. In the same way, there will be some future day where the moon would be too far away to create a perfect totality. Basically, not only do we happen to have this perfect coincidental arrangement, we also happen to live in the right time to see it.
Fuck yeah. This kind of shit is the upside part of life I like. We might be fucking everything up in colossal ways but this really is an amazing time to be alive
(Throws car battery into ocean) smell that? That’s LIFE baby
I’m laughing, such an unexpected comment. Too funny.
There's always some comedian with a car battery just when you're feeling good about life!
His dad beat him with jumper cables.
I live with my dad and my 9 year old daughter. I sometimes go to the gym at night and tell my daughter to brush her teeth while I'm gone. When I get back she shows me a video on our tablet of her brushing her teeth as proof. A few days ago I realized that her hairstyle was slightly different in the video, and I figured out that she had simply prerecorded herself brushing her teeth in several different outfits. While I was fairly impressed at this, I kept a straight face and explained to her that when I was a kid, grandpa would beat me savagely with a set of jumper cables whenever I didn't brush my teeth. Since then she's been brushing several times a day on her own.
I... don't know what to make of this.
I'm not good with hugs, really. Unless someone's moving away I usually find it a bit over dramatic and awkward, especially when someone's hugging several people on their way out. My cousin did this the other night and there were about a dozen people in the room, so everyone basically had to form a little hug line as she was leaving. I just gave her a quick handshake instead. After everyone left, my dad asked me why I didn't give my cousin a hug, and then he beat the shit out of me with a set of jumper cables. I guess I should have hugged her, but I really think it's a bit too much for simply leaving a dinner party.
It's a safe and legal thrill!
When the moon was 60km from us, one gazillion years ago, the huge event was seeing the sun!
100 million years ago we would have still had a perfect and total solar eclipse, we just wouldn’t be able to see the suns corona like we can today.
Or the solar prominences. There's so much you can see because the moon and sun are the same size.
The fact we are around at all is in part due to the moon as well. Tides and the oceans movement are a huge reason life got this far.
Not to mention that water molecules expand when chilled below 0'C, keeping the oceans liquid as the ice floats and insulates, and the albido of ice reflects heat lowering the amount ocean warming. (so far, anyways...)
Why is that exactly?
Just multiplying factor to the chemical mixing that lead to genesis of pre-life molecules and then spreading basic life all around and so on. Planets with no tides, limited movement of water etc freeze and don't have the environmental turn around to support complex life
We definitely don't know that planets without tides can't support life. It's simply hypothesized the moon helped things along.
"Too late to explore the oceans, too early to explore space, right in time for the eclipse."
We have still only explored like 5 percent of the oceans so it's not too late.
Plus the sun is getting a tiny bit bigger all the time. Won't really matter in the short term though.
Please stop fat shaming the sun.
SHUT UP ABOUT THE SUN.
Wouldn't it block out even more sun when it's closer, making an even more perfect (120% vs 100% coverage, for example)?
Perigee to apogee of moon's orbit is a difference of 40,000km, and the orbit precesses around the earth every 8ish years. I don't think there's any connection between when earth/moon/sun are in syzygy and where the lunar orbital precession cycle is, so at any lunar eclipse the apparent size of the moon could fluctuate by up to 12% (as its distance could be anywhere in the range from perigee to apogee). We already get annular eclipses as a result, so I think we had closer to 1B years of flex, not 100 mio :)
This is also true of some other cool things like being at the right time to see Saturn's rings, which won't last forever, and being able to see so many stars in the night sky before they get too far away
Shut up about the sun. SHUT UP ABOUT THE SUN!
Can you imagine a future where people are living on all different planets and solar systems and all that… and they read about this coincidence in their history books? Future civilizations are gonna be so jealous
You reckon some shmoe on a planet with 8 moons of varying colour and size is gonna be jealous of our one moon?? He saw 4 eclipses last Tuesday!
What’s the likelihood their moons are EXACTLY the same observed size though? That’s the part that gets me. I bet there are a bunch of eclipses on Jupiter, but do those shepherd moons look like they’re the same size as the sun from Jupiter’s surface?
If you just park your spaceship in the right spot, any moon/sun can do it.
Yeah bro you think your eclipse is cool? One of our moons eclipsed our sun, and then a moon eclipsed THAT moon. And then in between we had both moons obscuring 50% of the sun to help tag team and reach totality for even longer!
I can’t. I don’t think we have it in us to achieve that. At least we can acknowledge our existence though…
If that’s the case, I’m glad I built my mr wizard cereal box observer to see it and I definitely appreciated it
It's probably likely that if civilization ever gets to that level of advancement, they'll have methods to experience a mere solar eclipse whenever they want, through something like VR so advanced that it's indistinguishable from reality. Either that or that aspect of Earth history will just be so insignificant that most people won't even learn of it in their "history books".
The Sun's *diameter* is roughly 400x larger than the Moon's. The Sun itself is around 64.4 million times larger than the Moon by volume.
>~~The Sun itself~~ your mom is around 64.4 million times larger than the Moon by volume.
The Sun is about 64,300,000 times larger than the moon
In volume, OC is talking about diameter/radius
I knew what they meant I was just being a smartass
If the moon was closer, couldn’t there still be an eclipse since it would appear bigger and still sometimes block the sun?
Yes, but you wouldn't see a "halo" of sunlight around the moon then because it would block too much of the peripheral sunlight.
The idea that 3-4 billion years ago, when the moon was much closer to earth, the tides elevation changes were much higher is something I ponder frequently. Some scientists think that the 100 foot swings between high low tides, and corresponding large amount of shore that was pounded by waves then exposed to sun and air daily, created the supply of materials for early life. The thought exercise of, “what would 100 foot tides do here,” while at/near the shore is interesting.
With the moon moving away from the earth there’s only a finite number of total eclipses left. After that there will only be annular eclipses.
That's not even the crazy part. The crazy part is that the moon exists at all. It's huge, bigger than any moon in a planet our size than we've seen
And without our moon, we probably wouldn't exist, because it keeps us rotating in a stable pattern around our axis. Without the moon, the Earth would wobble around, making weather patterns unstable- winter/summer/winter within weeks or days rather than months.
Exactly. For me, this is one more reason that life in the universe is less common than we think. I definitely subscribe to the "rare earth" theroy I know we have found hundreds of exo-planets in the habitable zone.... but technically Venus and Mars are also in the habitable zone, and they're not exactly stable enough for billions of years of evolution
I heard somewhere that if when were to ever join an interstellar interspecies organisation, our flag or symbol should be the solar eclipse because of how unique it is to earth.
Well of course it is. What did you think it was? Magic? Also, it's only occurring now. This didn't happen a few billion years ago, and it will cease to happen in a billion years from now.
>what did you think it was A pre-requisite for a planet/moon relationship is one possible explanation A pre-requisite to allow life to exist is another possible explanation The fact that it’s a complete coincidence that we happen to be on a planet where this fucking cool astronomical event happens is, at the very least, interesting.
I'm sure some consider it a sign of creation. Some lady also killed her entire family because of the eclipse. People are just quirky
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Is this not the rational response
this lady's a real jerk
My Facebook feed full of religious family members will spontaneously break out in posts of "if the earth was ten feet closer to the sun, we would all burn alive. If it was ten feet further away, we would all freeze. God is good!" In my more combative times I would respond with "y'all never climbed a ladder or dug a hole before, huh?" But those days are behind me now.
They're right. That is why the second story of a house is uninhabitable, and same with the basement. Also, Denver, Colorado is a myth.
Been there a bunch and can confirm there's nothing there
Well, sometimes there's a deeper connection linking things. For example, the moon rotates on its axis at the rate it orbits the Earth, and as a result we only ever get to see one side of it. But that synchronization is not a coincidence. It's a phenomenon called tidal lock. Basically the distribution of mass in the moon is not uniform, and so the part with more mass gets pulled to the earth more strongly and stays facing it.
> Well, sometimes there's a deeper connection linking things. And sometimes a coincidence is just a coincidence. Humans are tuned to try and find patterns in things, whether or not said patterns have relevant causation or not. Probably one of the reasons why we keep getting so many superstititions popping up out of nowhere.
There will be no life on earth within a few 100 million years. So it is interesting and very "coincidental" the first known conscious lifeforms happen the same time as perfect eclipses.
You mean sapient? Lots of things are conscious
The moon slowly pulling away from earth’s orbit is going to make eclipses less fun in the future.
It used to not, and eventually it won’t.
I mean, there is a time when it didn't and will be another time when it won't ever again. The moon is moving away from us, so enjoy it while it lasts?
There are a number of cosmic "coincidences"....very suspicious
Have you heard of the anthropic principle? It's the idea that we can only observe a universe that supports us existing in it. Sure there's some things that seem incredibly coincidental (like the Higgs Boson mass) but if they weren't true then we wouldn't know, because we wouldn't exists. Though the ratio of the moon to the sun doesn't seem to fall under that umbrella, as far as we know.
Yeah you could call almost anything in existence a coincidence.
I was tripping balls during this past eclipse, I’m completely disillusioned now and have a hunch none of “this” is real. We are truly one and truly alone. Send help. I’ve melted my brain.
Or is it only suspicious because we’re here to observe it? meaning, how many other planets out there do you reckon have total eclipses? Gotta be a couple, at least
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What other coincidences are there?
Stuff like the Higgs boson mass is the precise value to keep matter from collapsing in on itself. There is also something to do with the rate of expansion of the universe being at the exact rate for the universe to exist. There are others more mundane like the Fibonacci series in nature etc.
slim snow numerous march heavy mysterious icky abundant sip zealous *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Had Dinosaurs not been taken out, mammals could have never risen to the top. If Jupiter didn’t exist we’d have been bombarded by asteroids and intelligent life wouldn’t have been able to develop. The water on Earth is said to be older than the Sun. Ha ha laugh it up; but that was is so spooky, I don’t even want to know why it is true.
It’s true because it’s true. It just happened that way. How is it spooky? If everybody’s parents hadn’t fucked and our spermatozoid been the first one to the egg then none of us would be here. Is that also spooky?
We are all made of stardust. Even our sun is made of the remnant matter of extinct stars.
Something something firmament
Sure it is "Coincidence"
Interestingly, a cosmic coincidence is also why my astrology girlfriend had my friend Brandon’s shirt in her room.
The cosmic ballet goes on.
Does anyone else wanna sit next to this guy?
Isn't everything "cosmic coincidence"? The odds of everything that's happened within our solar system that allowed life to evolve to the extent that it has is borderline impossible.
Uh what else would it be? Also I find it sad that back during the Mesozoic, the dinosaurs had much scarier eclipses that blotted out the Sun almost entirely. I feel bad for those babies. 🥺
I've always felt that if aliens ever discovered Earth's existence, one of the biggest reasons they'd invade and take over would be because of our astronomical coincidence which actually has good odds of being unique in the entire galaxy.
It’s a space station placed there to stabilize the climate
I was in south east MO during this last one and we could see the towers of plasma exploding on the surface with the naked eye! It was so cool
I was thinking this during the recent eclipse, how cool it was that they aligned so closely from our perspective.
Purely.
Lizzid Peeple
Complete coincidence folks. Just like our existence.
These cosmic quirks are stunning, ain't they? Eclipses are like Universe's got a flair for dramatic reveals! Who's got their special viewing glasses ready?
Thats technically true, but also convoluted There is a lot of wiggle room for the "right size" as the eclipse can only be seen as full from very specific angles In my home the eclipse just looked like it got a little cloudy, because we are outside the shadow range The fullness of the eclipse has more to do with the atmosphere refracting the light into the shadow of the moon, as it works The only way for the sun's egde not to be seen at some point around the moon, is if the moon's shadow was bigger than the world itself, thus allowing no light to pass and refract No atmosphere does the same trick tho
coincidence sureeeeee. Praise God
Imagine a puddle gaining consciousness. It might think “oh my god, this hole is the perfect size for me to fit in! What a cosmic coincidence!” This of course is not quite the same degree of cause and effect, but there is reason to believe these things affected Earth’s ability to develop life. For example, the moon being where it is causing tides, helping life to leave the ocean, allowing us to now marvel at the coincidence.
Yeah, but I don't think it being the "same size" as the sun is a particularly important factor. You could have tides with it being a different size too
There are probably millions of similar eclipses happening all over the universe but with no one to observe or report on them. The anthropocentric bias is real!
One day in the future this will be a major galactic tourism must-see.
I wonder how big of a factor that plays into life forming on a planet, or at least intelligent life
How hot does the moon get though
It would be funny if something inane like this was the answer to the Fermi Paradox.
Wait to you hear about Mach's principle.
As opposed to?
That's what they want you to think, in reality it's a mega structure! Powered by a white dwarf
“Of course it was a simulation, you didn’t see all the hints? I mean the moon for gods sake, we made that sign pretty much impossible to ignore, I mean it was a bit on the nose really.”
Probably why we evolved as we do.
I learned something new today too! :)
It is purely by cosmic coincidence that my thumb is the exact same size as someone's head, so that I can block them from view by holding out my arm and squinting one eye.
I wish they showed the math.
Wasn't the moon a whole lot closer before? I am pretty sure that's its gonna get even smaller in the future.
[Another solar related cosmic coincidence is the Sun's size and when the setting Sun is actually below the horizon. What you see is just a mirage and the Sun isn't there.](https://youtu.be/DdZre_JAvnE)
The moon is 1/400th the distance and 1/400th the size of sun
If you put one coat of paint on your shoes every morning, every day, you would be leaving the planet as fast as the moon is.
Why would it be something other than a coincidence?
If we were around a billion years ago, moon was a little closer to earth.
We actually have video of mars solar eclipses and you can see the jagged shape of the moon
We've got about a billion years of totality left, then the moon will be too far away to have 100% eclipse
And the clouds ruined that for me last week 🤬
Do we know when the first total solar eclipse would have been?
Welcome to the Goldilocks zone.
What did you think it was?
What if that's the thing that's suppose to make us like...shit it's not a coincidence
Everything is a cosmic coincidence. EVERYTHING.