Anticipating the Eclipse, and other stories
Welcome to Ramin’s Space, the newsletter from science writer Ramin Skibba. You can read more about the newsletter here. If you like it, please consider subscribing and sharing this post.
On April 8, I and millions of other eclipse chasers will be ready to witness a rare cosmic event, the last total solar eclipse to grace North America until 2044. My family and I will soon be en route to Mazatlan, where the moon’s massive shadow first makes landfall. Some people are calling this the “Great American Eclipse,” but the maximum duration of totality (four and a half minutes) will be in the middle of Mexico. That said, the largest number of people viewing the marvel probably will be in Texas. The eclipse should be briefly visible in multiple Canadian provinces too, if skies are clear. (For more info, check out these resources from NASA and the American Astronomical Society.)
If you glimpsed the annular eclipse last fall, keep in mind that this upcoming total eclipse will be a billion times more exciting. Get yourself a pair of eclipse glasses and get inside the 100-mile path of totality, if you can. You’re either in the shadow or you’re not, and being close isn’t enough; if you’re on the wrong side of San Antonio or Quebec, for example, the sky will not darken for you and you won’t see the sun’s glowing corona.
I was nowhere near totality during the 2017 eclipse, and my family and I decided long ago that we wouldn’t miss this one. I can’t wait. I’ve looked up to the sky so many times during my life and career but have never had the chance to experience anything like this before. I’ve never watched our lunar neighbor gracefully pass directly in front of the sun. I’ve heard a lot about it though. This is what I think it will be like.
At the beginning of the celestial display, the moon will take a bite out of the sun. First a nibble, then a morsel. Unless I glance up with my eclipse glasses, initially the sky will appear unchanged. After an hour though, shadows on the ground will start revealing eclipse-like patterns, and the slightly darkening sky will be noticeable to the naked eye.
Then, suddenly, everything will change. At precisely 11:07 MDT, the light will quickly evolve from bright to overcast to twilight, the temperature will drop, and the air pressure will change. There will be an unearthly hole in the sky where the sun once stood, with its wispy corona now visible all around. Animals and humans alike will be aghast and awestruck, unsure about what to do. There’ll be a breeze, and I’ll have goosebumps as I gaze, stupefied, as I watch this unfolding event, with two pairs of glasses resting on my face. People will gasp, they’ll weep, they’ll scream. My kids will surely scream too, but with joy. We’ll all gawk at the spectacle. Maybe I’ll have the presence of mind to snap a photo or two. But mostly we’ll all just stand there, stunned by the majestically cosmic dance above, trying to feast on every feature it with our eyes, so that we don’t miss a single thing, and, I hope, remember it forever.
Maybe, somehow, the eclipse will unite people, albeit briefly, as we look to the skies with awe, and the masterful motions of the moon and sun nudge us, once again, to consider our place in the cosmos. We’re all in it together, on this modest space rock we call Earth.
First Trickles of Climate Migration Presage the Deluge
As global warming continues apace, even if people come together to reduce carbon emissions, we will see at least some worsening of heat waves, droughts, floods, hurricanes, and wildfires, and that means, in the US, as many as tens of millions of people will be driven northward to more temperate climates. I wrote about these issues in my new essay for Undark magazine, reviewing the book On the Move by journalist Abrahm Lustgarten.
I figured I’d also share some comments I wrote that didn’t make it into the final published piece. First, if the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina is a harbinger of what’s to come, we should worry. The hurricane waters had yet to recede before “disaster capitalism” swept in, to use the author Naomi Klein’s term. Many poor and Black residents of New Orleans fled, while mercenaries from the disgraced contractor Blackwater, known for human rights violations in Iraq, guarded millionaires’ homes. Then the conservative Heritage Foundation pushed the expansion of privately-run charter schools to replace public ones. Charity Hospital, a public institution, closed down, and public housing buildings were demolished, to be replaced with so-called mixed-income developments. The result was an economic disaster for poor and working class survivors of the natural disaster.
Second, many of the migrants and refugees arriving at the US-Mexico border these days have been driven from their homelands in Central America and elsewhere partly for climate-related reasons, with dwindling water supplies and farming opportunities. Historically, the US bears responsibility as the leading emitter of greenhouse gasses, and for harmful foreign policies throughout Latin America, too. As we all struggle with the myriad rippling effects of climate change, this book and others point us toward a critical question: What do we owe each other?
In other writing…
Do birds dream?
I love this NYT essay by Maria Popova. It’s partly about scientists’ research on bird brains, and it also muses eloquently about our evolving views and understanding of our own cryptic dreams.
A bullshit genius
There’ve been a few interesting reviews and takes on Walter Isaacson’s biography of Elon Musk, and I think this one might be the best I’ve seen. “Musk is not an anomaly. In method and thesis, it is perfectly in line with a career built on promoting elite interests under the guise of biographical neutrality and insipid humanism.” We need more scrutiny and less techno-optimism, writes Oscar Schwartz in The Drift magazine.
I feel Kara Swisher has done much better than Isaacson in her approach to the tech industry, but as this blog by author Paris Marx argues, despite her descriptions in Burn Book, she’s often been on board with most Silicon Valley CEOs, rarely looking past their hype and holding them to account for labor conditions or harmful impacts on people’s lives.
New media
Glad to share some good media news: four science journalists have come together to found a new worker-owned science magazine called Sequencer. Subscribe!
Mehdi Hasan’s new media company, Zeteo, will launch in full on Substack in April. His team has a subscription-based business model, too. Hakai magazine, which publishes writing about coastal issues and ocean science (including some of my own work), has a new membership program, and they’d benefit from supporters as well.
The moon
Read this beautiful, gutting poem in NYRB by Mosab Abu Toha. I also recommend the Palestinian poet’s recent New Yorker essay.
What I’m reading: The Lights, a book of poetry by Ben Lerner.
Looking back: One year ago, I had the opportunity to write in WIRED about a unique subject: space archeaologists studying how people live on the International Space Station.
More about me: I’m a science writer and journalist based in the Bay Area. I was WIRED magazine’s space writer until December 2023, and before that I worked as a freelance writer and an astrophysicist. You can find me at my website, raminskibba.net, and on Twitter and Bluesky. I’m also former president of the San Diego Science Writers Association (SANDSWA) and on the board of the National Association of Science Writers (NASW), though the opinions I express are mine alone. If someone has forwarded this email to you, you’re welcome to subscribe too.