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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 04 August 2010
The sun was setting on the links,
The moon looked down serene,
The caddies all had gone to bed,
But still there could be seen
Two players lingering by the trap
That guards the thirteenth green.
The Einstein and the Eddington
Were counting up their score;
The Einstein's card showed ninety-eight
And Eddington's was more… .
The shortest line, Einstein replied,
Is not the one that's straight;
It curves around upon itself
Much like a figure eight,
And if you go too rapidly
You will arrive too late.
(W. H. Williams, “The Einstein and the Eddington,” 1919, based upon Lewis Carroll's “The Walrus and the Carpenter,” 1872)A total eclipse of the Sun is one of the most thrilling events that Nature has to offer. That one thought is enough motivation to travel the length and breadth of the world to see one. But, in the past, astronomers learned amazing things about our solar neighborhood from watching one. In the second millennium BCE, according to the Shu Ching, the Chinese observed eclipses and became so proficient in predicting them that two of their astronomers, Hsi and Ho, were put to death after they failed to predict one. This story is apocryphal. It is unlikely that astronomers were really able to predict eclipses accurately that long ago. By the sixth century BCE the Chaldeans might have been able to make rough predictions of eclipses.
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