If you have a hankering for something lightly medical, this is your day! You have two options:
1) Check this out. Got to love new media.
2) Or, since this is my last Wednesday POD and something very special is happening next week, here's a Wacky Wellness Wednesday pearl for you all! (small medical connection at the end! links embedded throughout!)
THE GREAT AMERICAN ECLIPSE:
* The Thing Itself:
- Why's this one so special?
= it really isn't. There have been millions. But this one is the first TOTAL solar eclipse to run over the entire US since 1918. We like our astrologyonomy in 'Murika.
- Why do we care?
= They're beautiful
= Soooooo many scientific discoveries:
* 2000ya: calculated the distance from the Earth to the Moon
* 17th century: What, solar flares are THOUSANDS of miles tall?!
* 18th century: a glass prism splits light into a rainbow because different elementsreact differently!
* 19th century: the sun's made of HOT HYDROGEN GAS (not sodium) and we discovered a new element (HELIUM!)
* 20th century: the weather is related to the sun ie. the winds changed direction during an eclipse!
* 20th century: light bending around the sun confirms the theory of general relativity (whaaaaaat?!)
* What's to come next??
* BTWs history:
- This is a busy month for astrological phenomena as well as our exploration of the universe
= 40th anniversary of the Voyager 1 & 2 launches that gave us such wonders as:
* the first man-made object to LEAVE THE SOLAR SYSTEM
* an OCEAN below ice on Europa
* volcanoes x100 the power of earth's erupting on Io
* lightning on Jupiter!
* the discovery of 24 (twenty-four!!) new moons in the solar system
* the rings of Jupiter, Uranus, Neptune
* Eclipse in medicine:
- Eye damage: "magnifying glass on a leaf"
= takes ~1.5mins for permanent damage to be done even if not continuous unprotected observation
= cameras and regular glasses won't protect you
= can try the pinhole technique
- (and if you want more: https://www.nytimes.com/guides/science/how-to-watch-a-solar-eclipse)