Many Worlds Theory

This past Monday I witnessed, as expected, a total eclipse of the Sun.

I didn’t even have to travel—I watched from a chair on my front lawn.  The town I live in (Sylva, NC) was in the path of the totality.  The weather was perfect, and I was lucky enough to witness a literally once-in-a-lifetime event.

Here’s a picture taken by a friend and fellow physicist, Dr. Louis Keiner of Coastal Carolina University:

So what did I learn?

• The world around me wasn’t as dark as I expected. Turn’s out, there not much difference between normal sunshine and a 50%-covered sunshine.  Both are blindingly bright.  You couldn’t even really tell anything was changing until maybe 15 minutes before totality happened.  Eventually things did get darker, and it happened very fast.  Right at totality it looked like sundown, and sunrise. Simultaneously.  It was glowing purple in the east, and glowing purple in the west.

• It was smaller than you’d think. Most people don’t realize how small the Sun and/or Moon look in the sky.  To get an idea, hold your hand at arm’s length.  Look at the fingernail on your pinky finger.  That’s how big the Sun and Moon are in the sky: they subtend that much angle, and only that much.  Don’t believe me?  Try it next full moon.  Movies and TV shows vastly exaggerate how big the Sun and Moon appear.

• As totality approached, the light got strange.   Normally, at dusk, the light fades away into reds and oranges.  But not this time: the light diminished, getting dimmer and dimmer, but stayed a warm yellow.  If you didn’t know an eclipse was approaching you might think instead some weird weather event was about to happen.

• The totality was weird. It looked like a portal to Mordor had opened up, a gate to Hell, an angry black hole in the sky, a dimensional rift into another plane.  Imagine a perfectly round black hole of nothingness surrounded by tendrils of electric blue-white flames.  It didn’t look real.  It looked like fake CGI in the sky.  It looked exactly like Dr. Keiner’s picture, above.

• I didn’t feel anything but awe. I didn’t feel connected to the universe, or to science, or to humanity, or to history.  The only emotion I felt was holy fucking shit.

• The hype was worth it. It was incredible.  If you ever have a chance to see a total solar eclipse, jump at the opportunity.  You won’t be disappointed.  Unless, of course, it rains, which happened to some people I know.  Oops.  I guess, if it rains, there’s always this: