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Comment by teamonkey

1 day ago

The relative sizes are approximate, not perfect, but close enough that our monkey brains interpret it as more than a coincidence.

Idk, one could come up with a hypothesis that eclipses provide the first tangible validation of a system of mathematics.

  • If there were greater significance to it, I’d have thought the the visual sizes of the Sun and Moon would have been perfectly matched, rather than to within a few percent, give-or-take.

    Also since the Sun-Earth distance varies and so does the Earth-Moon distance, the coverage of the Sun varies. We sometimes get annular eclipses where the Sun is not totally covered.

    • <distant growling low resonating voice that makes galaxies shake> Damn, those pesky IEEE-754 accumulation errors again.