Atleast once a day I'm going to post a new fact, explain it, and give you a link to a more in depth explanation.
The odds of total eclipses actually happening are tremendous, and we are probably at the only stage in human history that humans will ever get to experience one. Count yourself very very very lucky.
A total solar eclipse is when the moon completely blocks out the sun. We had one a few years back and there will be another in a few years. Although one day our moon will just completely stop doing this (human terms we are talking AGES away, although it is really just a blip in time that this is happening).
The eclipse happens because due to incredible circumstance, the moon is not only 400x smaller than the sun, but it is also 400x closer to the Earth than the sun is. This is how the moon fits into place so well a total solar eclipse actually does happen. If you consider the size ranges of planets, moons and stars, this is pretty amazing.
To make things even more impossible, the moon is actually moving further away from the Earth every year, at a distance of 3.8cm to be pretty exact. This means that in the past, and in the future, the moon’s size/distance ratio with the sun wont be the same. Meaning no total solar eclipse.
The moon used to be about 10x closer to the Earth as it is now, starting off at about 25,000 miles away, it is now 250,000 miles away. The theory is that it was formed when another planet collided into the Earth, the that orbited the planet eventually turned into the moon.
