Longest Solar Eclipse

This is likely happening even now or very shortly over in SE Asia. We in North America miss this one. Unfortunately they are typically once in a lifetime in most locales. Oh well!

Longest Solar Eclipse of the 21st Century

http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2009/20jul_longestsolareclipse.htm?list1109684

July 20, 2009: One one-thousand, 2 one-thousand, 3 one-thousand, 4 one-thousand...

Continue counting and don't stop until you reach 399 one-thousand.

Did that feel like a long time? Six minutes and 39 seconds to be exact. That's the duration of this week's total solar eclipse--the longest of the 21st century.

The event begins at the crack of dawn on Wednesday, July 22nd, in the Gulf of Khambhat just east of India. Morning fishermen will experience a sunrise like nothing they've ever seen before. Rising out of the waves in place of the usual sun will be an inky-black hole surrounded by pale streamers splayed across the sky. Sea birds will stop squawking, unsure if the day is beginning or not, as a strange shadow pushes back the dawn and stirs up a breeze of unaccustomed chill.

Most solar eclipses produce this sort of surreal experience for a few minutes at most. The eclipse of July 22, 2009, however, will last as long as 6 minutes and 39 seconds in some places, not far short of the 7 and a half minute theoretical maximum. It won't be surpassed in duration until the eclipse of June 13, 2132.

From the Gulf of Khambhat, the Moon's shadow will race east across India, China, and the Ryukyu Islands of Japan. Click on the image to launch an animated map:

http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2009/images/longestsolareclipse/World.gif

Above: Clicking on this image will launch an animated global map of the July 22nd eclipse. Regional animations of India and China are also available. Credit: Larry Koehn of ShadowAndSubstance.com.

The path of totality cuts across many large cities. The shadow will linger over Shanghai, the largest city in China, for six full minutes, giving 20 million residents a lengthy and stunning view of the sun's ghostly corona. Other large cities in the path of totality include Surat, Vadodara, Bhopal, Varanasi, Chengdu, Chongqing, Wuhan, Hefei, Hangzhou. The population of each numbers in the millions, making this possibly the best-observed solar eclipse in human history.

The eclipse is extra-long because of a lucky coincidence, made possible by the elliptical shape of planetary orbits. On July 22nd, Earth happens to be near its farthest point from the sun. A small sun means the Moon can cover it longer. At the same time, the Moon will be near its closest point to Earth. A large Moon covers the sun longer, lengthening the eclipse even more.

The leisurely pace of the eclipse could have a transformative effect on witnesses. Total eclipses have been known to turn ordinary folk into life-long "eclipse-chasers" willing to spend thousands of dollars and travel tens of thousands of miles to feel the Moon's cool shadow and behold the sun's pale atmosphere just one more time. A few extra minutes of wonder will intensify this effect to an unknown degree.

Live webcasts of the eclipse--not the next best thing to being there, but the only substitute available to many readers--may be found at the website of the San Francisco Exploratorium.

Let the counting begin.

Alternative History of the Holocene.

As my readers know, I am presenting an alternative history of the Holocene that is radically different than that ascribed to by everyone else. It is my expectation that this alternative history will require much of a generation to pass before it is actually accepted into the mainstream.

Fifteen years ago, it was very obvious to me that the Pacific coastal route was a major highway for human migration into the Americas. I live there, after all. It is only now that we are seeing rising acceptance of this idea. Also, the archeologists are now digging deeper than the Clovis record and are actually finding the necessary evidence.

Let us discuss the idea of archeological evidence. One of the poorly understood aspects of such evidence is the input distribution curve. Modest reflection tells us that the input curve is not very likely to match the output curve. What does this mean? It means that a culture can occupy a river valley for 10,000 years and that all evidence of their passing will be recycled by the meandering river bed for the duration leaving only a scattered location or two to interpret. A sampling of this remaining evidence cannot be expected to tell us very much at all about the real history of this occupation and most critically, the fall off in evidence as we retreat in time is naturally precipitous.

We have the example of Monte Verde which is telling us that humanity was in all the Americas for most of 50,000 years. And why not? Our problem is that we have only one or two such sites, while we have many more recent sites. But this is to be expected. What is important is to confirm the antiquity of mankind in the Americas or ignore every piece of cracked stone that may be a human artifact in the Americas while accepting such in the rest of the world.

We now have the important Topper site in North Carolina receiving the same treatment. It is already a very important Clovis site that confirms the meteoric extinction event of 12900 BCE. It also revealed much deeper strata that gave up radiocarbon readings of 50,000 years for charcoal associated with apparent human occupation.

I have had my eyes open for evidence of this nature for many years and it is nice to see it been slowly dug up. And let us not blame the archeologists for a lack of insight. They were far too few and had far too much reputation vested in bad ideas for this to be easily changed. And everyone wants that scant piece of evidence interpreted.

When I reconstructed Bronze Age mathematics, I understood that the measuring stick used by builders of the pyramids needed to have specific marks on the back. When one of these sticks became available for me to inspect, I was electrified to find those marks exactly were they should be.

The same was true when it was revealed that the Paleolithic coastal natives of Eastern Siberia had the best developed upper bodies ever seen for their kayaks.

These alternative historical interpretations continue to accrete new and compelling evidence. They are clearly not bad ideas.

Returning to the Holocene, we have a world utterly changed by the 12900 BCE crustal shift. Prior to this event, the temperate zone was locked in a climate regime that was dominated by the polar ice caps and produced temperature ranges much broader than to day and inimical to any form of stable crop production. It could only support a hunter gatherer society.

The regions of the world that could have evolved an antique civilization were constrained to SE Asia, India, Africa and the Amazon. So far though, our evidence is strictly Paleolithic from typically highland regions. Since modern humanity arose around 70,000 years ago and had sixty thousand years to establish antique civilizations not unlike those of the Maya and Mesopotamia in any convenient river bottom, it is a good surmise that these were all obliterated in 12900 BCE and their littorals flooded out as the sea levels rose from melting ice.

There is no evidence whatsoever to suppose that such a hypothetical population achieved a culture any more sophisticated than that of an advanced stone and wood based society. This is assured by the pervasiveness of surrounding Paleolithic culture.

After the event known as the Pleistocene nonconformity, the temperate zone became hospitable with the removal of the Northern ice Cap with the concomitant 300 foot sea rise and has continued hospitable to this day. The only anomalies of mention are the drop in global heat content caused by mankind’s denuding of the Sahara and the occasional nasty 1159 BCE blip produced by the likes of Hekla.

Such blips are typically volcanic in origin and Hekla’s lasted a full twenty years. The unrecognized consequence of such an event is the establishment of a huge amount of multi year ice in the high Arctic. This sea ice is only removed very slowly in the years that follow. There is good reason to suggest that the consequence of the little ice age was a slow recovery that has lasted two hundred years and only now is showing signs of fully abating.

Thus revegetating the Sahara and the Middle East is a priority to finish the job that nature is trying to complete and protect. The added global heat will allow us to recover far more quickly from the next Hekla style event. And the crust will never move again unless plate tectonics shifts Antarctica fifteen degrees or lifts the Arctic sea bed starting a new ice cap. By then we should have terraformed Venus and not care too much.

I have roughly sketched a history that included ample Bronze Age trading ending abruptly with Hekla and most certainly saw the rise and fall of many organized cultures. Many of those cultures left no stonework to mark their passing. In the Amazon we have a unique man made soil to indicate a population of millions. Without that there is nothing. We will find it necessary to err on the side of the large populations wherever possible.