Epic FAILS of Science #5
A new idea for a little mini series- a countdown, so to speak. So over the next week or so we’ll go from the 5th greatest fail in science, today, down to the number one.
Coming in at number 5, the New York Times. It was January, 1920. Robert Goddard was a young scientist who dreamed of spaceflight. He is known for inventing the liquid fueled rocket, an invention, he imagined, would one day fly mankind to the stars. He was mocked and ridiculed by the New York Times, who reported that rockets were a “waste of time” as rockets couldn’t fly in space. In a vacuum, the paper claimed, it was obvious that a rocket could not fly- there was no air for it to push against! But Goddard remained convinced, a rocket’s ability to fly depended solely on its ability to make something (fuel) come out of one end of the vehicle, propelling the vehicle forward with a proportional force.
Clearly. Goddard was vindicated. In 1969, when Apollo 11 launched, the New York Times printed a retraction.
Eclipse
Today featured a somewhat special occasion: a partial solar eclipse. These are so rare that the next one is not expected to occur until 2015. A solar eclipse can only happen on a new moon as they require the moon to move between the earth and the sun. In a partial eclipse, the sun is only partially blocked. This is what we saw today. It was still a more spectacular sight. A full eclipse, where the sun is entirely blocked, is far more rare- the next will occur in 2020. 
Why don’t these events come to pass more often? With only a 5 degree change in the inclination of the moon’s orbit, this would not be the case. Had the moon orbited the earth along the ecliptic, solar eclipses would occur every month! This, however is not the case.
Full solar eclipses are of extreme scientific value as they allow scientists to observe objects behind the sun. Of particular note, is Einstein’s theory. The first confirmation of General Relativity came by observations by an astronomer in 1919. He was able to observe that light was actually bent by the sun’s gravitational field, as predicted by Einstein. when the next arrives in 2020, be sure not to miss it, the next one won’t be for a really long time.
But eben a partial eclipse is a sight to behold. It was beautiful.
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