"The '400 rule'. It just so happens, that our sun is 400 times bigger than our Moon. And - the sun is 400 times further away from Earth than our Moon is. The result? During a total eclipse, the Moon perfectly blocks out the sun."
My grandson recently finished a project for school where he made the decision to explore our Solar System. He did most of the work, but of course, his grandmother was also involved. One of the things which gave me pleasure, was he decided to "dig below the surface" a bit. Like, he was amazed about the number of moons that some of the planets have. He learned some by name. And then there is Earth - with only one moon, but what a moon it is!
Every time there is a total eclipse, this wonderful fact (or a mystery) which comes out. Unlike the other planets, some of whom have odd looking moons and eclipses are probably not that big of a deal, for many of us, an eclipse is a very big deal. Why? The "400 rule". It just so happens, that our sun is 400 times bigger than our Moon. And - the sun is 400 times further away from Earth than our Moon is. The result? During a total eclipse, the Moon perfectly blocks out the sun.
Now we might think that this is an amazing coincidence. Or - we could put this mystery in the same bucket with all the other wonderful things which makes Earth such a perfect home for us. Like what? The tilt of the Earth is 23.44 degrees. That tilt gives us our seasons. What would life be like on this planet without that tilt? Not as good, not at all.
Do all these perfect things which make our planet so wonderful - did they happen by accident? We are the most perfect "Goldilocks Planet" that you could imagine. We have lots of water, we can grow lots of food, many of our landscapes are breathtaking, and so forth. An occasional total eclipse is only frosting on the cake. An accident? A mystery? Or the providence of God.
If you are going outside to look at the eclipse today, be it total or partial, this is a good thing. You are looking at the handywork of God. I saw the one in 2017. It was awesome. To me and many others, this was God.
Interestingly enough--planetary scientists believe the Moon formed much closer to Earth than it is now. This suggests it originally wouldn't have appeared just the right size to cover the Sun, but bigger. As it moved away, it somehow attained the 400 zone in time to dazzle us humans. According to info I've seen, this should be good, more or less, for another 600 million years.
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