Watch a Dragon Eat the Sun!

NOTE: Although this column is written for Oklahomans, the links in the article give information about where else in the United States you can see this total solar eclipse.

Imagine life as a human 10,000 years ago. If you are male, much of your time is spent hunting game by yourself or with other men in your group. Some animals were easy to catch, like rabbits or even deer. But hunting bigger animals, like mastodons, could prove dangerous, even deadly. If you’re female, much of your time is spent gathering nuts, berries, or other edible plants and taking care of infants. One of your most dangerous jobs is childbirth. 

At times, your survival might be severely threatened. Bad weather, wildfires, and animal stampedes, all can make life miserable.

Now, imagine a bountiful summer. Food is plentiful, your cave or hut protects you from wild animals and bad storms. But as you finish your afternoon meal, you notice something odd. The light seems different, muted, like a hazy sky. But, the sky is perfectly clear. Moment by moment, the sun’s light slowly fades. Animals start acting oddly, too. Birds began to roost in the middle of the day. Herd animals form circle groups as they do when they protect their young at night. 

You squint at the sun and gasp. Half of it is missing! The light dims more as the sun disappears. Just as it vanishes, yellow petals seem to sprout from a central dark mass. Your tribe fears a demon or dragon is eating the sun. You start screaming, banging rocks and sticks together, anything to make as much noise as possible, hoping to scare away the beast.

Dragon eating the sun, creating an eclipse.

Your efforts pay off as the beast slowly regurgitates the sun.

That’s how our distant ancestors likely reacted to a total solar eclipse. But we know better today. No dragon eats the sun. Rather, the Moon occasionally slides in front of it, blocking its light for a few minutes.

You have a chance in Oklahoma to witness this scary dragon devour our sun, and you should start planning now.

Total solar eclipse revealing the sun's corona.

A total solar eclipse occurs in Oklahoma on April 8, 2024, beginning at 1:44 pm CDT with the final exit of the Moon’s shadow from the state at 1:51 pm CDT. As it passes through Oklahoma, the Moon’s shadow will accelerate from 1680 miles to 1745 miles per hour. The path of totality cuts through the far southeast corner of Oklahoma after passing through the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex and heading northeast. Prime viewing sites may get crowded, so start planning your eclipse expedition. Visit tinyurl.com/3du4z57e for more specifics about the eclipse including a detailed map of the path in Oklahoma. More information, including weather prospects, can be found at eclipsophile.com/2024tse/.

And, if you miss this eclipse, you have a while to wait for the next one. We won’t get another total solar eclipse visible from the central United States until August 12^th, 2045.

Each month, I write an astronomy-related column piece for the Oklahoman newspaper. After it is published there, I post that same column to my blog page. 

This is reprinted with permission from the Oklahoman and www.Oklahoman.com.

Earth will be destroyed by our Sun

 Like everything else in nature, astronomical objects change and evolve in time. Take our sun, for instance. When it first formed, our sun slowly fused hydrogen into helium, just like a hydrogen bomb. As it aged, it became more compact which increased the rate of hydrogen fusion in its core. It now emits 30% more energy than when it first started starting fusing hydrogen.

As the hydrogen fuel is slowly consumed, the helium “ash” builds up in the core causing the hydrogen fusion area to move closer to the surface. This heats the surface of our star causing it to swell, making the sun expand. Eventually, our sun, as do all stars like it, will evolve into a red giant star, one hundred times larger than it is now.

Our sun as a red giant star, scorching Earth. Credit NASA.

At that point, our star’s surface will extend farther than Earth’s current orbit, swallowing Mercury and Venus, the planets closer to the sun than Earth. It’s not automatic that Earth will be consumed by the growing sun. As the sun grows, it blows off more and more material as solar wind. As the sun’s mass decreases, Earth will slip farther out. But even if Earth survives, and most astronomers think it won’t, our planet will become so hot that the oceans will boil and fires will consume all life on the planet.

Earth being destroyed by Red Giant sun. Credit NASA.

By studying the light spectrum of stars, astronomers can measure their chemical makeup. The chemical abundances of some stars in our galaxy at a more advanced stage of stellar evolution than our sun reveal that planets once orbiting that sun have been engulfed and destroyed in the fiery atmosphere of the star. They find elements in the star that can only have come from orbiting planets. They can see that these suns devour their planets as they age and grow larger, just as our sun will do one day.

Alien astronomers on other planets studying our solar system a few billion years in the future will be able to detect the remnants of Mercury and Venus. Will they also detect the remnants of Earth? We don’t yet know for sure, but we do that we humans will have either perished or moved out into space in search of Earth 2.0.

Each month, I write an astronomy-related column piece for the Oklahoman newspaper. On the following day, I post that same column to my blog page.

       This is reprinted by permission from the Oklahoman and www.Oklahoman.com.