When science is ineffable, try art
Failures of communications in the recent eclipse and how art came to the rescue… even in a practical way
Failures of communications in the recent eclipse and how art came to the rescue… even in a practical way
"Ineffable" is such a cheat of a word. Something too great, too intense to be put into words. As someone whose job is words, I tend to believe that I can always convey an experience, always explain a concept. Apart from one, it is one of my favorite things in the universe.
Surprisingly, this is not about pizza. I can describe pizza pretty well. It’s about total solar eclipses.
We live on a world with a surprisingly large moon compared to the size of the planet itself. This is rare but not unheard of. Pluto and its moon Charon have an even more dramatic ratio.
The truly lottery-winning situation is that despite the distance between them, the Sun and the Moon appear to be roughly the same size in the sky, and that on occasion the Moon passes in front of the Sun, blocking it.
We do not know how rare they are in the universe. We are yet to confirm an exomoon. But eclipses like ours are unique in the solar system and likely extremely special in the galaxy.
Look at this gif of an eclipse from Mars. Let’s not kid ourselves; it’s shit. If we were in the Star Trek universe, we would have aliens travelling to Earth to see the total solar eclipses.
And this is where words fail.
They should have sent a really good poet
I travelled to Spain to see the August 12 total solar eclipse a few weeks ago with my husband, my sister, and her best friend. My sister and our friend joined because I’ve been “banging on and on about eclipses” and were curious about what the fuss was about.
I had already booked them in our hotel for next year's one (the longest for the rest of the century), to which, on the day of the eclipse, they replied they were not sure they’d come.
And then they saw the eclipse... and now they are very much coming with us. I think this gives a hint on how incredible it is: people immediately change their mind and become determined to see another as soon as possible.
It is not difficult to describe what we see in the sky. The sky changes colour as if there’s a sunset along all the horizons, not just the west. The sky is dark but not dark like the night, more like a dull Prussian blue, the source of light mostly obscured, still with a shine.
In fact, once the solar disk is blocked, the visible light portion of the solar corona can finally be seen by our eyes, with all its wispy strands.
Yet, the combination of all of this doesn't do it justice. If you have seen a partial eclipse, you are there with glasses, as the Moon covers a bit of the Sun. Maybe it is a high percentage cover, and you can see the weird crescent shadows and feel the day getting cooler.
But seeing a partial eclipse at 99 percent and a total one are two different experiences. It is complicated to convey just what it is like to witness such an event. My sister, with a degree in the history of literary criticism and a thesis on James Joyce's Ulysses, has always been the person with the right words in the family.
When even she was left struggling to find the right words, I knew that my lack of words was not about my skill alone. It is an experience unlike any other.
Art for science communication
What has been absolutely fantastic to bridge this gap has been the images and art that people have done with the eclipse, yours truly included.
More and more pictures and videos continue to appear online, revealing just how beautiful the whole affair was, providing us with some that truly tell us a total solar eclipse is something awesome in the most original meaning of the term.
One video that I adored featured skateboarder Danny León. He had a ramp perfectly aligned with the setting Sun, and he used it to perform a mid-air jump during totality.
How cool is that?? Share in the joy and connection with the wider universe however you want and however you think is cool!
From the first photograph of an eclipse (a daguerrotype back in 1851!!) to even earlier attempts of capturing the effect of it all, like the beautiful painting by Ippolito Caffi, I think through the artistic medium we can provide a way to make the ineffable experience a bit more effable... still, it's a must-be-seen-to-be-believed situation.
Art itself as a scientific instrument
As I was writing this newsletter, I was visiting Manchester. Due to cancellations and coincidences, I ended up going for a meal every day for three days around Cutting Room Square in Ancoats.
This public space features an art installation by Dan Dubowitz. It consists of 5 towering concrete blocks with glass plates showing photos of Ancoats industrial past.
As we were talking of the eclipse over brunch, my friends told me of how they watched the eclipse from that square. They had their eclipse glasses as I had not shut up about it but many didn't (a different failure of communication).
Fortunately, the people on Cutting Room Square avoided damaging their eyes thanks to the Dubowitz sculptures.
What an extraordinary combination of serendipitous science and art that becomes even more artistic.
Unsurprisingly, this has convinced my friends that they need to see a total solar eclipse.
They have been warned: once you see one, you will want to see another one!