My religion consists of a humble admiration of the illimitable superior spirit who reveals himself in the slight details we are able to perceive with our frail and feeble mind.
--Albert Einstein
It’s intriguing that the best place to view total solar eclipses in our Solar System is the one time and place where there are observers to see them. It's intriguing to think of the conditions required to make it possible. It's intriguing to think of what we can learn from them. It's intriguing to think that this is only one of many reasons we can call Earth a privileged planet.
We may have frail and feeble minds (relative to the mind of God), but we seem to be getting all the help we need to use them well. On the other hand, as Einstein once said:
Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former.
--Albert Einstein
It’s intriguing that the best place to view total solar eclipses in our Solar System is the one time and place where there are observers to see them. It's intriguing to think of the conditions required to make it possible. It's intriguing to think of what we can learn from them. It's intriguing to think that this is only one of many reasons we can call Earth a privileged planet.
We may have frail and feeble minds (relative to the mind of God), but we seem to be getting all the help we need to use them well. On the other hand, as Einstein once said:
Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former.
It’s intriguing that the best place to view total solar eclipses in our Solar System is the one time and place where there are observers to see them. It turns out that the precise configuration of Earth, Moon and Sun are also vital to sustaining life on Earth. A moon large enough to cover the Sun stabilizes the tilt of the rotation axis of its host planet, yielding a more stable climate, which is necessary for complex life. The Moon also contributes to Earth’s ocean tides, which increase the vital mixing of nutrients from the land to the oceans. The two moons around Mars are much too small to stabilize its rotation axis.The privileged planet
In addition, it’s only in the so-called Circumstellar Habitable Zone of our Sun--that cozy life friendly ring where water can stay liquid on a planet’s surface--that the Sun appears to be about the same size as the Moon from Earth’s surface. As a result, we enjoy perfect solar eclipses.
That alone seems fishy. But here’s the part that suggests conspiracy rather than quirky coincidence. Our ability to observe perfect solar eclipses has figured prominently in several important scientific discoveries, discoveries that would have been difficult if not impossible on the much more common planets that don’t enjoy such eclipses.
First, these observations helped disclose the nature of stars. Scientists since Isaac Newton (1666) had known that sunlight splits into all the colors of the rainbow when passed through a prism. But only in the 19th century did astronomers observe solar eclipses with spectroscopes, which use prisms. The combination of the man-made spectroscope with the natural experiment provided by eclipses gave astronomers the tools they needed not only to discover how the Sun’s spectrum is produced, but the nature of the Sun itself. This knowledge enabled astronomers to interpret the spectra of the distant stars. So, in a sense, perfect eclipses were a key that unlocked the field of astrophysics.
Second, in 1919, perfect solar eclipses allowed two teams of astronomers, one led by Sir Arthur Eddington, to confirm a prediction of Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity--that gravity bends light. They succeeded in measuring the changes in the positions of starlight passing near the Sun’s edge compared to their positions months later. Such a test was most feasible during a perfect solar eclipse. The tests led to the general acceptance of Einstein’s theory, which is the foundation of modern cosmology.
And finally, perfect eclipses give us unique access to ancient history. By consulting historical records of past solar eclipses, astronomers can calculate the change in Earth’s rotation over the past several thousand years. This, in turn, allows us to put ancient calendars precisely on our modern calendar system.
These are just three ways in which perfect solar eclipses, produced by conditions that help create a habitable planet, have fostered scientific discovery. But this is only one example of the correlation between habitability and measurability.
At the much larger, galactic, scale, we again find that the most habitable place is also the best overall location for making a diverse range of scientific discoveries.