People visit a NASA information booth to pick up solar eclipse glasses in Russellville, Arkansas. The space agency debunked a number of myths about the total solar eclipse, including ideas that food would go bad or unborn babies would be harmed.
Mario Tama/Getty Images
hide caption
toggle caption
Mario Tama/Getty Images
People visit a NASA information booth to pick up solar eclipse glasses in Russellville, Arkansas. The space agency debunked a number of myths about the total solar eclipse, including ideas that food would go bad or unborn babies would be harmed.
Mario Tama/Getty Images
Will a solar eclipse harm a pregnant woman’s baby if she watches it? Does an eclipse emit special radiation that can blind you instantly?
These are some of the ideas people questioned — and experts dismissed — as North Americans expected to see a total eclipse, from Mazatlán to Montreal.
Monday’s total solar eclipse begins over the Pacific coast of Mexico around 11:07 a.m. PT, moving east through Texas and into Maine, eventually leaving the continent on the Atlantic coast of Newfoundland.
Solar eclipses have long sparked fanciful explanations and warnings, ranging from religious mythology to modern superstition. In recent days, for example, a message has circulated online warning people to turn off their cell phones and other devices before midnight before the eclipse, warning of powerful radiation and cosmic rays.
In reality, a solar eclipse causes a temporary sharp drop in solar radiation – an event that ham radio operators have been eagerly awaiting for months, with competitions and experiments aimed at filling Earth’s suddenly radiation-free ionosphere with radio signals.
Persistent but unfounded beliefs even prompted NASA to dedicate a special page to debunking misconceptions about a solar eclipse.
Total eclipses do not produce blindness-causing rays, NASA says
During totality, electromagnetic radiation from the solar corona will not harm you. In fact, this is the only time when it is safe to look at the sun without eye protection, because the sun’s brightness is completely obscured by the moon and its corona is visible.
But aside from totality, your eyes can be injured during an eclipse. If the sun is only partially obscured, looking at it will damage your retina. You can check to see if you have special sunglasses, but don’t rely on these to protect you if you want to use a telescope or camera lens without a solar filter.
As NASA says, “concentrated solar rays will burn through the filter and cause serious eye injury.”
Another thing to remember: Take breaks if you’re using a special sun-viewing filter before or after totality. As the space agency says, the sun’s infrared radiation can make you uncomfortable, “because it literally warms your eyes.”
You should periodically look away from the sun or use an indirect viewer like a pinhole projector to follow the eclipse.
Other things NASA says are NOT true about a total solar eclipse
MYTH: If you are pregnant, you should not watch an eclipse because it could harm your baby.
Another notion that seems rooted in concern about radiation. To reassure people, NASA uses a sort of “you’re already soaked in it” example, citing the neutrino particles produced by the Sun’s nuclear fusion:
“Every second, your body is bombarded by billions of these neutrinos, whether the sun is above or below the horizon. The only consequence is that every few minutes, a few atoms in your body are transmuted into one different isotope by absorbing a neutrino. This is a completely harmless effect and will not harm you or the developing fetus if you are pregnant.”
MYTH: Eclipses will poison any food prepared during the event.
NASA offers a hypothesis: what if bad potato salad made people sick during an eclipse? Food poisoning is very common and should not be blamed on a rare celestial event, the agency notes.
“The basic idea is that total solar eclipses are terrifying and their ghostly green crowns look scary. So it’s natural to want to make up scary stories about them and look for coincidences between the events around you.”
Other myths concern omens and major events
Here are four that NASA chooses to demystify:
MYTH: Eclipses are a harbinger of something very serious about to happen.
MYTH: Solar eclipses predict major life changes and events about to occur.
MYTH: Solar eclipses are a sign of an exceptional celestial event occurring in time and space.
MYTH: Solar eclipses six months after your birthday, or on your birthday, are a sign of impending ill health.
NASA attributes many of these ideas to astrological predictions supported by confirmation bias.
As the agency says, “We tend to remember all the times when two things happened together, but we forget all the other times they didn’t.”
Other myths, like the idea that the Moon turns black during an eclipse or that Earth’s two poles don’t see eclipses, are simply false, the agency says.
Eclipses have deep spiritual meanings
Ideas about the potentially powerful effects of an eclipse are not new. In fact, solar eclipses also cause unusual events.
For example, people as a whole can expect to feel a sudden drop in temperature. Stars and planets become visible in the middle of the day, and humans can experience a range of strange visual effects, from the sharpness of shadows to the movement of “shadow bands” and a change in the way we perceive the colour.
Then there is the strange effect of the eclipse moving from west to east, reinforcing the perception that time is not moving along its normal path.
Many cultures and religions associate eclipses with energy, viewing them as events of renewal and promise – or in some cases, drained life energy.
For the Ojibwe and other indigenous peoples of the Great Lakes region, the story of a solar eclipse centers on a boy and his sister who trap the sun after it burns them.
In many folk tales, magical animals attempt to eat the sun or the moon. In Hindu mythology, a snake god, Rahu Ketu, wanted to eat the sun, but then his head was cut off. This created two new entities, Rahu and Ketu, according to the Folk life today Library of Congress blog.
“They are the deities of eclipses and comets. Rahu is obsessed with eating the sun and moon and will try to catch and swallow them up,” the blog notes. “Fortunately, he only succeeds from time to time. Since his head was cut off, the sun or the moon falls through the hole where his neck was. It’s an eclipse.”
As Folk life today Note, in many cultures, humans take on the duty of ending an eclipse, often by making noise and banging drums or gongs to dispel the spirit attempting to take in the sun.
NPR News
