Shadow

Shadow

Spinning along through sidereal space as is their custom, an enormous, hot heavenly body and a tiny cold one arrived last week at relative positions such that the tiny one shut off part of the light shed by the enormous one upon a third, a moderate-sized body covered with white, blue and green scum, which spun along hard by the tiny cold body. That is, the moon cast its solar shadow full upon the earth-- a total eclipse. It happened that the shadow--an oval patch 80 miles in longitude, about 180 in latitude, traveling side wise from west to east just north of the equator at some 60 miles a minute--moved across a 7,-000-mile belt of the earth sparsely inhabited by human organisms, and then only by human organisms that have not been out of the primeval ooze long enough to lose their religious adoration of the sun's life-giving light. In darkest Africa, where the shadow made its first appearance; in lower India, where it was next seen; in Sumatra and Java and in the southernmost Philippine Islands, over which it passed in turn --there were wild scenes. Pygmies and giants of the forest humped their ebon forms to shelter. Frenzied Hindus swarmed into the holy River Ganges to propitiate the demon that they could see obliterating the light of day. Borneans smashed their household crockery, gave up business and travel, tore their hair, gnashed their teeth, beat their hairy chests. Mountain-dwelling Filipinos donned armor, pounded gongs and descended toward the sea to combat what they believed was a race of planet-devouring crocodiles. But other humans behaved quite otherwise. From the opposite side of the earth they had thronged to put themselves in the shadow's path --astronomers from Holland, England, Italy, from Swarthmore College, U. S. Naval Observatory, Harvard University, Allegheny College and the U. S. Bureau of Standards. They had been on scrupulously selected, lofty sites for weeks in advance, erecting telescopes, fitting cameras, checking advance calculations and even--in the case of the U. S. Naval expedition --making ready balloons, dirigibles and airplanes for aerial observations. Soon after lunch on Jan. 14 their three important minutes came to these men. Cables began whisking the news back to civilization. The objectives and seeming successes of science had been: Data for determining the structure, shape, temperature, motion (if any) and "coronium" (unknown constituent element) of the flame-fringed corona--good photographs obtained with cameras up to 62 ft. long. Data to check Einstein's theory of "bent light," obtainable by photographing stars near the sun with a twin-lens camera-- doubtful photographs taken. Data on lunar motion, obtainable by noting whether or not the eclipse occurred exactly on schedule (the eclipse seen by the western hemisphere last year [TIME, Feb 21 was 5 sec. later than expected, indicating some uncalculated gravity pull or other irregular influence)--unreported but surely obtained with exactitude. Data on the "shadow bands" that move over the earth just before totality is reached (believed to be caused by the undulation of air waves in the slim crescent of remaining sun light)--unreported. Data on wireless transmission (last year it was noted that the long-length waves travel best in the absence of sunlight) -- unreported.