Total Solar Eclipse - Window to the Universe
In addition to the dramatic and awe-inspiring novelty of a total solar eclipse, the highly improbable exact size/distance equality between sun and moon as viewed from Earth, provides a unique opportunity for modern and advanced telescopy to observe the heavens as never before. The perfect match of relative sizes in a total eclipse completely blocks out the sun's aura, thus, for brief moments, mankind has lately been able to clearly see the universe without the blocking aura of the sun, and therefore is better able to probe heaven's mysteries.
What has been learned is, not only that Earth and our moon seem to be the best viewing platform in all of space, but also that Earth is quite possibly the only life-sustaining planet in the universe - despite the billions of stars in millions of galaxies. This seems to be so because of many factors:
Earth's encompassing magnetic field from its molten-metal core plus the four giant planets patrolling outer orbits (Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune) provide powerful protective shielding against deadly cosmic radiation - devastating to star systems in the very common spiral galaxies such as our Milky Way. Black hole singularities, one at the core of our Milky Way, are deadly, deeply mysterious structures of "infinite" density. Their gravity fields are so powerful that even rays of light cannot escape. the fragility of our water-based life in an extremely hostile universe. our optimum distance from the sun provides a life-friendly moderate temperature range. varying between tolerable heat and tolerable cold. As evidenced in a recent NASA (Phoenix) soil experiment on Mars, foreign substances in soils or atmospheres may be inhospitable to fragile life systems such as ours - Mars soil, for example is extremely oxidizing and destructive. Despite almost fifty years of effort, and with increased sophistication of radio receivers and telescopes (estimated at 100 trillion times more powerful than the first attempt to contact extra-terrestrial life in 1960), there has been no success whatsoever. The program is called SETI - Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence. Even if other life does exist elsewhere in the Universe, the unimaginable distances plus the (Einstein established) fact that the speed of light cannot be exceeded, preclude any form of communication, much less interaction (as in the popular Television series Star Trek.)
Super Nova
Physicists explain that, in the first moments following the Big Bang, only the light elements, hydrogen and helium, were created. With subsequent compression and super-compression within the cores of stars, this squeezed the hydrogen so tightly that their nuclei combined and recombined to form the heavier elements: carbon, iron, uranium, and the other (natural) 89 elements that comprise the universe. The births of stars and their deaths were all needed to "recook" the hydrogen and helium into the elements needed for life as we know it. These stars then exploded and spewed their newly formed elements into the universe.
On the night of February 23, 1987, an unusual event occurred, light from a Super Nova reached Earth. It had taken 170,000 years for the light of that exploding star (along with mysterious neutrinos) to arrive at our solar system and planet. And by accident, the birth of a Super Nova and its explosion were observed only this year, when a "starburst" brighter than a billion normal stars was noticed.
Beginning at 9:33 a.m. EST, Jan 9, 2008, when by chance, NASA's X-ray satellite was studying a nearby old supernova, a brilliant flash of light was seen. The Super Nova was 90 million light-years away (a light year is almost six trillion miles.) Lasting only 5 minutes, the event was the death throes of a star, occurring when a star burns up its nuclear fuel; then collapses under its own weight; then compresses; then explodes, spewing out the sequence of the element table. These elements, fortunately, are essential for the creation of planets like Earth.
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