BB.lv: Total solar eclipse on April 8: what worries scientists?

Total solar eclipses occur regularly, but not very often: the next one will occur only in 2026, and it will be visible mainly in the Atlantic Ocean.

Therefore, the whole world will be watching this eclipse on the Internet and on television, including the audience of the BBC Russian Service. We will be broadcasting the eclipse video.

For scientists, the four minutes during which the moon’s shadow covers the Sun will be an opportunity for all kinds of scientific experiments.

Researchers will launch rockets along shadow paths, observe animals in zoos, send radio signals around the world, and point cameras and telescopes into the sky to take advantage of the temporary darkness.

However, the result of such research is by no means guaranteed – a solar flare or even modest clouds can ruin the plans of scientists.

Mating turtles and napping gorillas

Professor Adam Hartstone-Rose of North Carolina State University is going to spend Monday at the zoo in Fort Worth, Texas.

He will observe the behavior of animals – from gorillas to giraffes and Galapagos tortoises, which suddenly began mating during the 2017 eclipse.

Many animals seem to react anxiously to sudden darkness.

“The flamingos did something unusual last time,” he says. “When the eclipse was just beginning, the adults gathered the chicks in the center of the flock and began to look into the sky, as if afraid that a predator would appear from there.”

And the gorillas moved to the places where they usually sleep and began to prepare for sleep – their circadian rhythms were disrupted.

One nocturnal bird called the Smoky Frogmouth (Podargus strigoides), which usually camouflages itself as a rotting tree stump during the day, has woken up and started looking for food. Then, when the sun appeared once more, she pretended to be rotten once more.

Trying to see the plasma

At the height of the eclipse, the solar corona will become visible – in fact, the atmosphere of our star, which scientists have been trying to study for centuries.

This mysterious part of the Sun is made of magnetized plasma and has a temperature of more than a million degrees Celsius.

Normally, the Sun’s enormous brightness makes the corona impossible to see, but on Monday, scientists in Dallas will be able to point instruments at it and take pictures.

Scientists from Aberystwyth University in Wales and the US space agency NASA hope to gain insight into the solar wind – the plasma ejected from the surface of the Sun.

Another mystery is why the corona seems so much hotter than the surface of the Sun, despite the fact that it is on the periphery of the star.

They may even be able to detect a so-called coronal mass ejection, when huge clouds of plasma are ejected from the solar atmosphere into space. These emissions can interfere with the operation of artificial Earth satellites.

A lot of money, time and logistics go into that four-minute window, says Hugh Morgan, professor of physics at Aberystwyth University.

“When everything goes right, it’s a real feeling of euphoria, because we’ve been preparing for so long. But if a cloud appears, it is a disaster. And there’s nothing we can do regarding it,” he says.

Radio Listeners Party

Solar activity can affect almost all of our communications, including even long-wave radio.

The sun’s energy charges the upper atmosphere – the ionosphere, which helps radio signals travel around the planet. But during eclipses, the state of the ionosphere changes.

To test how the eclipse affects radio waves, hundreds of radio amateurs around the world will take part in competitions. They will send signals to each other, trying to establish the largest number of stable connections.

Usually Morse code is used for this, but in some cases the quality of communication is sufficient for conversation. Most messages are quite formal – station name and location – but each participant signs off with the code “73”, meaning best wishes.

The results might help scientists better understand radio communications used by rescuers, aircraft and ships, and GPS, said Nathaniel Frissell of the University of Scranton in Pennsylvania, who is leading the competition.

Airplanes chasing shadows

The American space agency NASA will send WB-57 jets along the eclipse path to take pictures from an altitude of more than 15 km.

At this altitude, cloudiness will not bother them. In addition, the cameras will be exposed to radiation that usually does not reach the Earth’s surface.

In addition to the corona, NASA hopes to study the dust ring around the Sun and detect asteroids that may be nearby.

Spectrometers on board aircraft will help them study in more detail the composition of the material ejected by the Sun into space during flares.

In addition, since planes reach speeds of regarding 740 km per hour, they will be able to spend not four minutes in the shadow, but almost six and a half.