Early humans have always looked into the sky with fear and amazement. You can imagine how afraid they were when suddenly the light began to dim around them and the sky darkened without clouds in the middle of the day!
The article explains that a Solar Eclipse in 1652 may have been the start of the Great Plague of London, and the reason for the great fire of London ten years later!
In 500 B.C. Aristotle took notice of the Sun and wrote about the shape of the shadow around the Sun, that it was round. He concluded that this must be some kind of celestial pattern and the Earth must be round as well.
in 1715 Edmund Halley called for an end to superstitious thoughts about eclipses. He proclaimed that this event was caused by natural forces. It was simply the moon moving in front of the Earth to block the Sun.
Even in our century of cell phones, hover boards, space travel, and super computers. When I look at a Solar Eclipse I still feel a little creepiness crowd into my heart. My feelings tell my brain that this is really weird and shouldn't be happening. I look up at the Sun with my "specially-made-for-solar-eclipse" glasses and look in awe as I see with my bare eyes the Moon inching across the face of the Sun. It's kind of unsettling.
For an instance I kind of realize, I'm not really in control here. I'm just a traveler in space, on a beautiful planet that is traveling across space around a large star!
And after the eclipse is over, I'm all good. I've got a cell phone that will replay the eclipse and I can read a bazillion Twitter feeds from others that had an experience just like mine. No need to feel insecure or superstitious...
I like the two silly pictures.
ReplyDeleteI love the ring of fire!
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