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On Monday, August 21, a long but narrow path of the United States will be graced by one of the solar system's most beautiful and eerie phenomena: A total eclipse of the sun. The exact timing and path of this eclipse has been known for many decades, maybe even a century or more. In fact, if you go over to NASA's website, you can see a list of eclipses ranging before the Egyptian pyramids were built to nearly a millennium into the future.
None of these descriptions or predictions would be possible without an intimate knowledge of the mass and shape of the Earth, moon, sun, and the respective orbits of all the major planetary bodies. If, for example, by some bizarre coincidence, the Earth really were flat, or egg-shaped, or whatever the latest CT were, that alone would change the path of the eclipse. Of course, that assumes that the eclipse would even occur in the first place. But none of this really matters because the moon does revolve around the Earth in a tidally-locked orbit, and the Earth is round and it does revolve around the sun. All of these things and many more have to occur to even have a chance to correctly predict eclipses for at least a millennium out.
It's pretty sad that any of these facts have to be mentioned, but even in this day and age of free and open knowledge, a tiny few group of people seem hellbent on not accepting it.
(P.S. The poll options include for deviations far, far greater than the computer models will produce, but I am including them for the sake of very simple standards.)
None of these descriptions or predictions would be possible without an intimate knowledge of the mass and shape of the Earth, moon, sun, and the respective orbits of all the major planetary bodies. If, for example, by some bizarre coincidence, the Earth really were flat, or egg-shaped, or whatever the latest CT were, that alone would change the path of the eclipse. Of course, that assumes that the eclipse would even occur in the first place. But none of this really matters because the moon does revolve around the Earth in a tidally-locked orbit, and the Earth is round and it does revolve around the sun. All of these things and many more have to occur to even have a chance to correctly predict eclipses for at least a millennium out.
It's pretty sad that any of these facts have to be mentioned, but even in this day and age of free and open knowledge, a tiny few group of people seem hellbent on not accepting it.
(P.S. The poll options include for deviations far, far greater than the computer models will produce, but I am including them for the sake of very simple standards.)
