With months to go before 2017 comes in, a wave of excitement is already being felt. This as the U.S. will likely to experience a total solar eclipse in August next year.
The last time this kind of phenomenon happened over an American state was in Hawaii on July 11, 1991. But the path of totality hasn't touched down over the contiguous "Lower 48" United States since Feb. 26, 1979.
If one has to find an eclipse that exclusively crossed the U.S. from the Pacific to the Atlantic Coast, then an individual must go all the way back to June 8, 1918.
On Aug. 21, 2017, the umbra (the moon's shadow on earth wherein the moon completely covers the sun) of the solar eclipse will move across the U.S., tracing a path from Oregon to South Carolina. This experience will last for around two minutes. The anticipation of such a celestial event has, at some point, been interpreted as a design towards higher understanding.
Astronomer Guillermo Gonzalez and philosopher Jay Richards explained that total eclipses were monumental in science. Perhaps the closest argument that has come close to it is Einstein's Theory of Relativity, which predicted that gravity bends light and would therefore make stars near the sun appear at different locations than they actually were.
Experiencing a total solar eclipse amplifies the making of design which, in a way, can be translated as larger than life.
For Gonzalez and Richards, their observations run close to poetry when they say that not only is the moon receding but the sun is getting bigger.
These two processes should end total solar eclipses in around 250 million years which is a mere 5 percent of the age of the earth. It provides a window of opportunity to coincide with the existence of intelligent life.
There's a reason why such a phenomenon ultimately happen. Earth's habitability is dependent on the sun's size. Distances between the earth and the moon including its size must be finely tuned to make conditions conducive to life.
However, David Dickinson, writing at Phys.org, all planetary engineering do not suggest intelligent design. The preconditions necessary for solar eclipses are happy celestial circumstances. For him, it is simply a miracle.
