this post was submitted on 07 Apr 2024
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We aren't sure yet, but we are likely the only place in the galaxy that has the perfect total eclipses. If humanity ever manages to unite and take to the stars, there's a strong argument to be made for our flag to just be a black field with a solar corona. We may even have to worry about too much extra-terrestrial eclipse tourism.
Solar eclipses on Mars are underwhelming.
I can see eclipses being an interstellar tourist attraction.
I was talking to some friends about it actually. Probably makes for memorable vacations.
I'm frankly dubious about this - tons of extrasolar planets will have moons, and those moons will occlude their stars. what in any way makes earth special? citation requested.
The extremely unlikely, a d actually entirely coincidental, fact that our moon happens to be precisely the right size and distance from the sun and moon to perfectly obscure it.
If it were further away or smaller, it wouldn't block it out completely and we'd just get annular eclipses, which doesn't let you see the corona, just a ring you shouldn't look at directly without eye protection.
If it were bigger or closer, it would obscure the corona and we'd just see darkness.
Stellar bodies lining up is perfectly normal and commonplace. Them being exactly the right size shape and distance to create a total eclipse is fantastically unlikely.
Doubly so when you consider that the moon is slowly moving away, and so a long time ago the moon was too big in the sky, and in about 50 million years it'll be too small.
Something so unlikely happening during the time there's intelligent life on the planet that can understand and appreciate it is, literally and figuratively, astronomicaly unlikely. 😀
it's extremely unlikely and entirely coincidental that your hand is exactly the size to obscure your vision. this doesn't speak for the odds of it never happening again elsewhere in the universe.
What?
Like, the thing about the hand aside, if something is extremely unlikely, that literally speaks to the odds of it happening. That's what unlikely means.
Your hand covering your face isn't coincidental or unlikely; everyone's hand does and it's written into your genetics that it should.
There's no particular reason why a big rock should end up in the particular place it did for us, and it's surprising that it did.
It's not likely that it happens often because there's no reason for it to happen, unlike other interesting phenomenon we see like the big red spot on Jupiter or the hexagon on Saturn. Those should be common because there's a systemic reason they happened.
they're both conjecture based on a microscopic sample size.
ahem, this is so wrong in so many ways.
Nope.
pshew wow nope nope nope.
Nothing in your genes controls a proportional size relationship of your hands to your head. And not everyone has large hands, look at trump for example.
you really don't understand planetary formation, stability in orbital mechanics and a bunch of subjects. there's tons of good reasons to suspect the other planets had moons as well; they simply weren't as orbitally stable as ours ended up.
The only thing your (and other person I'm responding to here) argument has going for it is the extraordinarily difficulty of resolving exomoons orbiting exoplanets around our neighborhood.
I only specified the Milky Way, not the entire universe. It would be highly unlikely that we'd be the only place in the universe that it happened, but the chances are potentially low enough for it being the only one among a mere 100,000,000,000 stars.
The formation of our moon isn't terribly likely to happen frequently. Also the moon, star, and planet have to be in the correct places. Our moon won't create perfect eclipses in a few hundred million years
https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/earth-has-the-solar-systems-best-eclipses/
sorry, this is hardly definitive. we need more extrasolar surveys before you can posit that we're the only place. anything else is conjecture.
It's speculation, but there are only 100 billion stars in the galaxy. I'm willing to bet that we have a 1 in a 100 billion chance of our solar systems creation being different from the others.
that's pretty silly. you're suggesting that in our galaxy we're the only place this happens - what about our solar system is so exceptional, when we see similar planetary formation all over the galaxy?
and also, there are between 200 billion (2×1011) to 2 trillion galaxies in the observable universe - you gonna write them off too?
you have a sample size of one - one solar system. that's it.
seems fucking moronic to be making billions or trillions of assumptions based on your experience.
Now you're just making shit up I never said. Have fun being ignorant.
In fact, in my original comment, and another reply specifically said that I was only talking about our galaxy, and not even our local group.
oh so there's something exclusively special about our galaxy?
why would our galaxy not be representative of the larger universe?
make your crap make sense bro.
I can't make the shit you're making up in your head make sense. You made it up and have changed the goalposts at least three times because of your made up bullshit.
No planet in our solar system has a moon large enough to completely eclipse the sun from the planet surface POV
do you mean, no OTHER planet? aside from the one we're on?
also: restricting it to the few rocks in our back yard seems specious as there are literally billion so of other stars out there.
So, what was your point?
Source?
It looks like you would get a perfect solar eclipse on Mars if Pandora were spherical.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamiecartereurope/2018/08/10/earth-is-not-the-only-planet-in-the-solar-system-that-gets-total-solar-eclipses/
If there's another planet in our solar system where you can almost get an earth-like "perfect" solar eclipse, I find it highly unlikely that there isn't a single other planet in our entire galaxy where one might also see a "perfect" solar eclipse.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2024/04/08/solar-eclipse-mars-phobos-nasa-photos/73242215007/
~~Forbes messed up their math.~~
Both of Mars' moons are either too small or too far from the planet to completely occlude the sun, but your article is about a moon of Saturn.
I'm not sure I would count a planet that no human or rover has a chance to see the eclipse, and at that distance the sun is TINY, but I'll bet that Pandora completely occludes both the sun and it's corona.
It's highly likely that no other planet in the galaxy has the correct conditions for a perfect solar eclipse.
yup, they think they can speak for literally billions of stars with potentially billions and billions of planets... seems like a tall order lol