How the Ancient Art of Eclipse Prediction Became an Exact Science
The timing of the total eclipse on April 8, 2024, will be known to within a second, thousands of years after fearful humans first started trying to anticipate these cosmic events. The post How the Ancient Art of Eclipse Prediction Became an Exact Science first appeared on Quanta Magazine
Solar eclipses were interpreted throughout much of history as bad news for the sovereign — an ominous sign for their personal health or that of the realm. But those fears helped fuel thousands of years of scholarship. This progress began in Mesopotamia with a hunt for periodic patterns in historical data. It has culminated in an era in which we know the interdependent future motions of solar...
Originally published in Quanta Abstractions.
