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"Can't be coincidence, surely....?"

Did you know that the suns diameter is 400 times larger than that of the moon?

Yet the moon is 400 times close to us than the sun is, so they appear the same size - hence we get total eclipses from time to time.

Am I the only one to think that it's a hefty coicidence for this to occur naturally? Surely it proves something? Not sure what it does prove, but it must be something...

But it has to be a coincidence so we can talk about it, so it's kinda irrelevant.

Hm, probably means that they'll collide or something silly..

But thats about 15millions years away or something and by then they'll have flying invisible cars or something.

*Shrugs*

Yup something like a drift effect occurs. Dont know exactly what it is but I think it adds a few feet to the distance from the earth to the moon every 900 years or so. So there will be no co-incidence in 1000000 years or so. Sweet.

*smiles*

I wondered about this at that eclipse age ago

I always imagined Earth being in a Space Holiday book with an eclipse as an added extra or something.

Em

I think in about 20000 to 200000 years the moons orbit will have changed enough so that there will be no more 100% total eclipses of the sun....
just something I heard on tv :)

Ah, but as with everthing in cosmology, you can just "give or take 20%" as my A-Level teacher told me.

Your Honour wrote:
> Well, maybe not exactly, but it's close enough.
>
> The fact the when a complete solar eclipse is occuring, the suns
> corona can be seen means that it's a pretty damn close match.

you could add a few million tonnes of rock to the moon, and it would make no discernable difference. Hardly that close a match.

Yeah, but if the figures were different and the moon totally eclipsed the sun then people would be saying that is a coincidence as well.

Meh.

Well, maybe not exactly, but it's close enough.

The fact the when a complete solar eclipse is occuring, the suns corona can be seen means that it's a pretty damn close match.