If you are ever standing in the very narrow path of the shadow of a total solar eclipse, when the moon passes between the Earth and the sun in a configuration known as syzygy, you will see the stunning effect of the corona of the sun flaring from behind the moon in broad daylight, as the circumference of the moon fits precisely inside the circumference of the sun from our terrestrial perspective. This happens only because the sun’s distance from Earth is roughly 400 times the moon’s distance, and the sun’s diameter is likewise 400 times the diameter of the moon: an almost exact ratio. The odds of this configuration occurring anywhere in the universe, least of all at a place and time in which intelligent, self-aware life is present to observe it, are so minuscule as to be incalculable. Six hundred million years from now, Earth’s tides will have pushed the moon too far away from the planet for total solar eclipses to any longer be possible. If all human life were to disappear from the Earth tomorrow, it would take the planet only 100 million years to completely reclaim the surface, leaving no single trace of proof that intelligent beings ever existed here. All the satellites orbiting the planet will, untended, fall, many coming to rest at the bottom of the sea. taken from https://medium/matter/all-dressed-up-for-mars-and-nowhere-to-go-7e76df527ca0 https://d262ilb51hltx0.cloudfront.net/max/2000/1*zSSsIeo25XUh8BL2gKEkNg.jpeg
Posted on: Wed, 26 Nov 2014 04:36:48 +0000
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