Eclipse Not End Of The World? MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - It's only an eclipse of the sun, not the end of the world, Mexico has warned its people.

As Wednesday's solar eclipse nears, some Mexicans have taken it to mean the end is nigh, handing out leaflets warning fellow citizens to prepare for catastrophe.

Similar predictions of doom have come from other corners of the world.

``There is absolutely no scientific evidence that eclipses are related to, or associated with, disasters or catastrophes,'' the Interior Ministry, responsible for internal security, said in a press release issued late Sunday.

Besides, the ministry reasoned, the eclipse won't even be visible in Mexico. Instead the moon will block out the sun over swathes of the North Atlantic, Middle East and the Indian subcontinent.

The government warning came on top of similar appeals for calm from the local Roman Catholic Church, which has told Mexican Catholics there is no need for priests to bless candles and matches, as some people have sought.

In his Sunday homily, Mexican Cardinal Norberto Rivera told the faithful that ``an eclipse is very different from the end of the world.''

Still, the government denial might be taken as a signal that trouble really is brewing, the daily newspaper Reforma said in an editorial Monday. ``Government bulletins rarely are in touch with reality, so if we're not careful the world just might come to an end,'' Reforma said.

-- kevin (innxxs@yahoo.com), August 10, 1999

Answers

You know...we've had thousands of eclipses in the history of civilization and even in this modern age, people still think that an eclipse portends disaster. Each year, some twit predicts apocalypse is just around the corner, and each time, they're proven wrong, and still people fall for it.

*sigh*

-- Tim the Y2K nut (tmiley@yakko.cs.wmich.edu), August 10, 1999.

[ Fair Use: For Educational/Research Purposes Only ]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPcap/1999-08/10/058r-081099-idx. html

A Darkness at Noon Over the Land

A Darkness at Noon Over the Land
Millions Gather to View Final Solar Eclipse of the Millennium

By Charles Trueheart, Washington Post Foreign Service
Tuesday, August 10, 1999; Page A01

PARIS, Aug. 9It may be the impending millennium, or the humid passions of late summer, or the media's doldrum-driven enthusiasms, but Wednesday's total eclipse of the sun is plunging a diagonal swath of Europe, the Middle East and South Asia into the shadows of a gentle madness.

Perhaps never in history have so many people had a chance to see the sun fully obscured for a couple of minutes by the moon and to feel their world turn cool and dark at noon.

Despite unclouded, non-hazardous live coverage of the event on television and online, millions of people are expected to crowd into southwestern England and along the coast of northeastern France for a glimpse of this millennium's last solar eclipse.

The "zone of totality" -- the pitch black of full solar obscurity -- will touch the southwestern tip of England at 11:11 a.m. local time and race at 1,767 mph across major parts of France, Germany, Belgium, Austria, Hungary, Romania, Turkey, Iran, Pakistan and India before petering out over the Indian Ocean.

The eclipse is attracting the attention of followers of ancient religions as well as modern-day New Age travelers and other eclectic bands of sun-worshippers. Muslim preachers in Iran called on the nation to pray, saying the eclipse was a "sign of God" that demands prayer from the faithful.

Hundreds of thousands of Hindus will bathe in sacred rivers and lakes in India in the belief this will purify their souls.

Five million viewers are expected on the French coast alone, even as rumors spread that teeming crowds will be pushed from the fabled cliffs into the sea -- or, wilder still, will cause the cliffs to collapse. "We cannot forbid access to the cliffs," said Richard Brachais, a resigned city official in Fecamp, on the Normandy coast. Fecamp has the distinction of being the spot where the total eclipse will be visible longest in France.

Next to getting there, no question has obsessed the affected populations and governments as that of equipping hundreds of millions of people with special cardboard-and-plastic eyeglasses that protect against retina-ravaging sunburns. France appears to have been most farsighted in distributing ocular prophylactics.

Health officials estimate that 40 million pairs are circulating in France -- 60 percent of Europe's total, they say -- including more than 10 million distributed free in magazine promotions and by two French astronomical societies.

French cabinet ministers were pictured sporting the weird eyewear to build public awareness about the dangers of looking directly at the sun. But 700,000 pairs of Colombian-manufactured glasses had to be recalled in France because their lenses were made of the wrong material. The strong possibility that many people in Britain and France won't be able to see the eclipse because of cloudy or rainy weather appears not to have dampened popular ardor in the two countries. Police leave has been canceled in southwestern England, where officials expect up to 1 million people to clog the region's narrow, winding roads. Hotels have been booked for months in France, from the beaches of Normandy to the old battlefields of the Ardennes. Fecamp, whose population is expected to triple Wednesday to 75,000, will be closed to traffic from 6 a.m. to 4 p.m. Large trucks are banned from all French roads from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m.

Many businesses are giving people in the affected zones the day off, either because the traffic will hamper their work or because the convergence in the skies is too rare and too important for anyone to miss. Charles de Gaulle was president of France when the last total eclipse was visible here in 1961, and another 82 years will pass before it happens again. The last total eclipse visible in the United States occurred in 1979.

In one of the most bizarre pre-eclipse events in a competitive field, French fashion designer Paco Rabanne has closed up shop in anticipation of an apocalyptic event -- loosely predicted by Nostradamus -- that he believes will coincide with the eclipse. An explosion of Russia's Mir space station over Paris, according to this scenario, will reduce the city to rubble. To demonstrate their serenity, a group of Rabanne's fellow Parisians -- named, approximately, Chuck the Apocalypse -- is staging a "survivors' aperitif" in front of the Rabanne boutique on the rue du Cherche Midi at the witching hour.

Many businesses elsewhere in affected parts of the world are giving employees a half-hour off to sky-gaze. Supervisors are being urged, in the unfortunate words of one German trade union official, "to turn a blind eye" to workers who slip out.

Tens of thousands of Indians traveled to Hindu holy places in advance of the eclipse, the United News of India reported. The agency said schools will close for two days beginning Wednesday in the northern city of Kurushetra because of the rush of pilgrims to the nearby sacred lakes of Sannihet and Brahm. In the holy city of Allahabad, thousands of devotees were arriving on the banks of the holy Ganges River.

Italian opera star Luciano Pavarotti is staging a concert Wednesday in Bucharest, Romania, the only European capital in the path of the eclipse. The Romanian town of Ramnicu Valcea will have the honor of hosting the 1999 eclipse for the longest time -- it will be visible 11 seconds longer than in Fecamp.

That was reason enough for NASA administrator Daniel Goldin to lead a team of U.S. astronomers to Ramnicu Valcea to watch the phenomenon.

Researcher Daphne Benoit in Paris contributed to this report.
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-- Ashton & Leska in Cascadia (allaha@earthlink.net), August 10, 1999.

Superstition comes in all flavors.

Before you laugh at others, consider how close we are to superstition in many ways.

Our version has developed as an unthinking reliance on science, technology, and medicine to replace the gods of ancient mythology.

Any time faith is required in the absence of knowledge, we are vulnerable to the common human practice of supersitition.

This observation is, of course, at the level of cliche by now, however true. So I just want to cite my own "superstitious" use of technology.

I have never really learned how electricity or radio -- fundamental elements of nature -- work. I use a PCS phone but have not learned about its modes of transmission. I drive a Camry whose engine I have not learned one thing about. I have programmed computers (Basic, C, PL/M) but have never explored the "higher-level" GUI languages I've been relying on via Win95 & Win98 for many years now.

Most people have NO idea what goes on inside the computers they use. Our reliance upon the code inside embedded systems would have to pass the "ignorant faith" classification, too.

It's not that it's people's fault; in these instances technology may have outrun our ability to learn the details of these systems. But close upon that ignorance rides the emotion of trusting where we ought not trust, and that puts us at least within reach of our non- tech ancestors, and our contemporary neighbors who chase eclipses.

The mirror is always being held up by others for us to better see ourselves.

-- jor-el (jor-el@krypton.uni), August 10, 1999.

Unexpected eclipses must have been devestating to our ancestors, since they had no idea what was going on. But now we know when & where they will be, how long they will last, & exactly what causes them. How can they still be considered an omen of any kind?

-- here (comes@the.sun), August 10, 1999.