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There will be a total solar eclipse this year, but before we start getting excited about whipping out our sunglasses again, let’s see how many dollars we have, because April’s celestial phenomenon will only be clearly visible in North America be . We talked to Zoltán Fockter, an astronomer at the Svábhegy Observatory, about UFOs, moving to another planet, the space race and time travel.
A solar eclipse occurs when the sun, moon and earth line up and the moon’s shadow falls on the earth. The orbital planes of the Earth and the Moon do not coincide; they cover an angle of 5 degrees, so that a solar eclipse does not occur with every new moon. However, when the moon is at the intersection of the two planes during a new moon, it can cover the sun’s disk and essentially pass in front of the sun
– says.
As the astronomer explained, the type of solar eclipse depends on the relative positions of the celestial bodies. The moon moves in an elliptical orbit, and when it is further from the Earth, an annular eclipse is visible, and when it is closer to us, it is total.
On April 8, the total solar eclipse will be visible from Earth in a narrow strip less than 250 kilometers wide, and it will not last long.
In general, a total solar eclipse lasts a maximum of 7.5 minutes, while the American spring eclipse lasts about 7.5 minutes on average. It will take 4 minutes. A partial solar eclipse will be visible near the band when the moon only partially covers the sun.
Zoltán Fockter adds that during a lunar eclipse, the moon enters the Earth’s shadow cone. At this point, an observer standing on the Moon would observe a solar eclipse. And when will there be a total solar eclipse at home? on September 3, 2081, but let’s not despair, because we agreed with the astronomer: “Eating a lot of vegetables and fruits and leading a stress-free life is not so unrealistic to achieve this.” At the same time, take the filter glasses for all types of solar eclipses, as the sun is a very intense light source and just one second of observing the sun with the naked eye can cause vision damage.
Where are the aliens?
Unfortunately, we will not be able to see this from here, even from the Svábhegy Observatory, although there we can observe the mysteries of the sky with huge telescopes, but when we talked about the phenomena of the Universe, we asked Fockter if lately one or two extraterrestrials would have stood in front of their telescope and what science currently stands on this topic.
Currently, we only have certain knowledge of life on Earth, but that doesn’t rule out the possibility that it might not exist elsewhere. Planets outside our solar system, the exoplanets, could harbor life. More than 5,500 such planets have been discovered so far, and life may exist on them, but first the great scientific (and perhaps philosophical and theological) question of what life is must be answered.
According to the astronomer, when looking for extraterrestrial life, we also assume terrestrial life, so we may not even think that it is a living creature, and yet it is, just not by our standards and our point of view.
There may be living worlds in the cosmos similar to ours, and one of the conditions for this may be water, because as the great saying of science has long said: Where there is water, there is lifeHowever, it is not certain, the astronomer adds, whether this also applies to space, although it generally applies to Earth.
Even in our solar system there are places where life is conceivable. This is the planet Mars, one of Saturn’s moons, Enceladus, and one of Jupiter’s moons, Europa. On Europa, for example, there is water and organic matter, but life has not yet been discovered. It’s also difficult to find since getting there is a multi-year project.
Beneath Europa’s thick ice armor lies an ocean that would be nice to sample, but breaking through the ice is a problem. Sending something and people there, drilling and examining them are decades-long projects
he noticed.
Despite the difficulties, the conquest of space is underway, the Russians and the Americans are still in competition, but also the Chinese, and new players have arrived, for example private individuals, think of Elon Musk, as well as small and large companies. As Fockter explains, the Americans would send a man to the moon as part of the Artemis program this decade, and the Chinese and Russians are considering a joint lunar program. The space industry is a leading sector, and its achievements can also be useful in other sectors of the economy.
Is there a plan B?
Instead of the destroyed Earth, can we have a chance to start over more intelligently somewhere else? No, according to the astronomer, only if we survive the next 100-200 years: “We don’t explore exoplanets either, because that’s now Plan B, after exploiting the Earth. They are very far away. The nearest star to the Sun, Proxima Centauri, is 4.3 light-years away and approximately. Even one of the fastest instruments, the Voyager spacecraft, would take 60,000 years to get there. Unfortunately, there are no habitable planets nearby.”
But the fact is that the cosmos is huge, there are 200 billion stars in the Milky Way and they have planets. There are also exoplanets in the habitable zone of stars, and there are also extra galaxies 100 billion beyond ours.
There are more stars in the universe than grains of sand on Earth, so it’s logical to assume we’re not alone, but we don’t know how common life is. Does it occur once per galaxy? Or are galaxies teeming with life?
They don’t know, which is why researchers are currently working on developing telescopes that can study the atmospheres of exoplanets to find out if there are substances that could indicate life.
We also asked the astronomer about the multiverse theory – of course he is also a Dr. Strange fan – but he emphasizes that no matter how spectacular the Marvel work is, it is just fiction: “There may be multiple universes out there, but the question is whether they can be studied. “That’s not provable yet, we can’t prove or disprove it.”
And where would the astronomer go if the time travel desired and expected by many were realized? Well, let’s hold on now, because we are not going to the future or to a Martian garden, but to the past, to ancient Egypt or Mesopotamia, because we are afraid that in the future all we will see is a great wasteland. We hope not!
(Cover photo: Zoltán Fockter. Photo: Zsófi Szollár / Index)
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