The Carbondale Enigma

I just discovered that a rare celestial confluence of events is about to happen at a spot on the earth not too far from me. I've dubbed this event The Carbondale Enigma.

To be technically correct, I guess I should call it The Cedar Lake Enigma, but Cedar Lake isn't a huge landmark. In fact, I had never heard of it until tonight, as I was clicking around on Google Earth.

(Honestly, I'm not even sure this discovery qualifies as an enigma, but if not, the word has an awfully high bar.)

A caveat, I am not sure I discovered this phenomenon, but as of now, I haven't seen it mentioned anywhere else. I often google my ideas and thoughts, to see if anyone else is thinking them, too. On this night, I found nothing.

I'll start my explanation by giving you an interesting fact: If you're sitting at any given spot on the globe - for instance, your house - and a total solar eclipse happens, the average wait time for the next one to cross your house is around 400 years. That's a brief tick of the Great Celestial Clock but it's a fairly long time in human terms. 

In fact, let's map it onto a human lifetime. You'd be born, complete school, get a job, get married, raise 2.1 kids, survive 1.5 divorces, max out the mileage on 12 vehicles, retire, reluctantly take up pottery and bingo (because of course you will), and die at around age 80. Repeat that five times, and that's about how long before the next total solar eclipse would happen at your house.

I'm a data fiend so I love that statistic, but I also love to play the spoiler, so of course I immediately set out to find the exception. That's how I stumbled across The Carbondale Enigma.

If you pan way out, the cosmos and everything in it can seem very well-ordered. Planets form and revolve around stars, those stars interact with other stars in galaxies, those galaxies rotate with surprising regularity, and are bound gravitationally to other galaxies in clusters. It all feels like a well-oiled machine.

But if you zoom in and give things a little scrutiny, you will notice imperfections. For instance, the moon revolves around the earth in an irregular ellipse, not a perfect circle. Its orbit deviates 5 degrees from the solar plane, so it looks a bit crooked. Earth's axis is slanted, not straight, and features something called the Chandler Wobble. Our planet's rotation is gradually slowing. And, with each revolution, the moon is slowly slipping away from the earth at a rate of a little over an inch a year.*

These imperfections, deviations from 'the norm,' don't seem like a big deal, but through the amplification of time and distance, things start looking way less ordered, and far more chaotic.

Due to these imperfections, it's likely there are places on Earth that have never experienced a perfect dead-on total eclipse. Conversely, there are other places that have probably gotten way more than their share. Pondering the second category is what sent me down the rabbit hole.

Just a few miles southwest of Carbondale, Illinois there's an unassuming, wooded spot on the bank of a body of water called Cedar Lake. If you're bold, the spot can be reached via a short hike from S. Poplar Camp Road. The less intrepid among us may prefer to rent a boat at the marina and reach it by water. However you get there, the crosshairs at 37°38'30"N 89°16'16"W are in the exact center of the path of the August 21, 2017 North American solar eclipse.

Not such a big deal - it's a bi-coastal eclipse with literally countless similar spots along its path. But as I was scouring maps of future eclipses, it occurred to me that same lakeside spot is also in the exact center of the path of another eclipse, set to occur on April 8, 2024. Only seven years later.

That may not seem like a big deal to you, but it's the equivalent of an acid trip for geeks like me. Seven years, not four hundred. Coincidence? Of course. It's a random artifact of a non-symmetrical universe. However, I'm the kind of person who appreciates such things. Maybe you are, too.

The majority of all humans who have lived on this planet have never witnessed a solar eclipse in person. I've heard it's a life-changing experience. The winds go calm, the temperature drops, shadows sharpen, and then, suddenly, the sky goes dark and the stars come out. Crickets start singing, and birds roost. In every direction, low along the horizon, a 'sunset' appears. Above, as the moon blocks a raging inferno, the wispy, feathery ring of our local star's corona dances silently.

Everything feels calm and peaceful.

Moments later, the moon continues along its path and a crescent of sunshine appears. The crickets go quiet, birds again take flight, and the world slowly returns to normal, as if nothing ever happened.

Except, as I understand, those who witness it are changed somehow.

On August 21, 2017, my family will travel to Jefferson City, Missouri, which is also in the center of the path of totality. There, we will experience this incredible event together with friends, minus our toddler son, who is too young to appreciate it.

But after discovering the Carbondale Enigma, part of me wants to change our plans and go to that spot along the bank of Cedar Lake. To take it all in from that unique place. Maybe to stack some stones as a sort of makeshift monument to the rarity of the experience and the special perspective.

And then, seven years later, on April 8, 2024, to return to watch it all happen again, and stack a few more stones, hoping that sometime in the distant future, someone will find my monument and understand.

*Fun fact: At some point, the earth will experience her final total eclipse. As the moon slips further away from the earth, it will eventually be too small in the sky to completely cover the sun. Beyond that time, all eclipses will be 'annular,' or 'ring of fire.' You still have time to plan, NASA estimates our final total eclipse to be around 600-million years in the future.