The eclipse: A moment of collective awe
As the moon slid across the sun and darkened the day, Americans were reminded “of our planet’s place in the cosmos,” said Michael Roston and Ben Shpigel in The New York Times. From Mexico’s Pacific coast to Newfoundland, millions donned protective glasses to witness the first total eclipse visible in North America in seven years. When the sun and moon merged into a single black disc ringed by fire, the temperature dropped and our world was plunged into an eerie, unearthly twilight for roughly four minutes. Over 30 million Americans live in the path of totality, and about 3.7 million more traveled to reach it; hundreds of millions saw a partial eclipse, with a sliver of sun not covered. Cheyenne Davis, who traveled to see the last total eclipse in 2017, was no less overwhelmed by seeing this one in Illinois. “I was not prepared for the awe that came with it,” she said.
Eclipses are the product of “a wondrous coincidence,” said Sabine Stanley in The Washington Post. The sun is a ball of gas 870,000 miles wide, and it’s 93 million miles away from us. The moon is just 2,100 miles wide, and it’s 240,000 miles away—but it’s positioned exactly in the right place to neatly cover the sun when their orbits periodically align. “If the sun were a bit bigger or closer, or if the moon were a bit smaller or farther, totality would not occur.” In the ancient world, said Jason Colavito in CNN.com, eclipses were believed to be “evil portents,” and “sparked fear because they seemed to happen at random.” But in a triumph of science over ignorance, we now know why they occur and how to predict them years and decades in advance. The next total eclipse won’t arrive in the U.S. until 2044.
What a show this one was, said Jason Gay in The Wall Street Journal. “This was a Celestial Super Bowl, outdoors, available to anyone, without commercials”—a collective, authentic, human experience that briefly transcended all our differences. Some viewers wept, but “I was too awestruck to cry.” As “the show” concluded, I heard people clapping and laughing. “It was the sound of joy, no subscription required. What a world it can be, when it still surprises you.”