Lessons of Astrophysics

Dear Blog Reader

I hope that this finds you doing well. I am fine. For all of those who readily accepted the media’s tales of doom and gloom, who hovered around loved ones, exhausting themselves in an effort to keep them safe, there was nothing special about the eclipse that will make you blind. The opportunity for retinal burn exists every day. It was just as dangerous on Sunday. It was just as dangerous on Tuesday. It will be just as dangerous all 2416 days until the next solar eclipse in the US.  To which, I am happy to say that the Sharritt Air BnB is now taking reservations. Yes, we are pleased to say that SharrittLand is in the direct path of totality. We, once again, will be left totally in the dark. We will not guarantee that the cloud cover will allow you to see the eclipse. However, we do have good internet connection so you will be able to see it on the HDTV that we will purchase with the funds you so graciously provide.

 It is sad that someone probably did not believe all of the warnings about the brightness of the sun and stared at it and consequently destroyed their eye sight. We are all somewhere on the bell curve. A few people went into the basement and covered their heads and a few said “we don’t need no stinking glasses.” The rest of us to one degree or another took precautions and enjoyed the eclipse and kept our eye sight. I personally, was probably the only person and my large office building carrying a welding mask into work. I could not get it jammed into my back pack. Thankfully, I was able to evade security long enough to get inside. 

I remember an eclipse from my childhood. In school, the  “Weekly Reader” was our town crier. Oh, those were the halcyon days of print media. The scions of the Hearst Media Conglomerate were bringing up another generation of newspaper readers. The Weekly Reader warned us that we could go blind staring at the sun during the eclipse and a few weeks later, a follow up “I told you so” appeared; reporting on a girl whose sight had returned after losing it looking at the eclipse. Bible Belt miracle? The regenerative power of the human body? Hoax? Hysteria? Who knows? It made great Weekly Reader fodder.

Getting back to the over reaction in some circles to the possibility of injury from the solar eclipse. Some schools kept their children inside during the eclipse to protect them. Some even kept them after regular school hours because ironically that pesky sun doesn’t get on board with daylight savings time. If the sun had believed in DST the eclipse would have been over by the end of school and the sun would have lost its super natural ability to make you blind only during an eclipse.

Why do we give the eclipse super natural powers? It is an interesting phenomena. It happens so seldom that to some appears to be random, to others it appears to be super natural; a sign of the end times. But it isn’t random; it isn’t super natural; it isn’t prophetic at all. It is just physics; actually astrophysics. But you get my meaning. When you have the sun doing its thing over and over again without any concern for the earth (we are not the center of the universe), and you have the moon doing its thing over and over again with concern for the earth (we are the center of it’s universe), things from time to time line up. So the eclipse wasn't random. If it were, we wouldn’t be able to sell you space at SharrittLand AirBnB in 2024. We know that it is going to happen.

We also know that the sun’s intensity doesn’t increase retinal burning levels during an eclipse. The sun has been emitting photons at nearly the same intensity for about 4.6 billion years. Those photons go screaming out in all directions and a tiny percentage manage to hit us. They warm our cats in windowsills on cold winter mornings. They trigger complex chemical reactions in plant cells taking carbon dioxide and releasing the carbon emitting oxygen for us to respire and hook a carbon back on to it. That reaction does a lot of other things like making your sweet corn sweet but I don’t have time to teach you all of the things you should have learned along time ago. Those photons react with your skin and manufacture vitamin D, which does something important like help you absorb calcium and phosphorus. Once again kids pay attention in school.

So yes, the sun is a good thing. But beware children, it will still do you great harm. It isn’t out to get you. It is just out there emitting photons. It's intensity allows all of those good things to happen. The intensity for the good things will also blind you if you look at it.

So remember. Kids keep your heads down, and nature isn’t out to kill you. It just seems that way.

Take Care.

Roger