“Every year the moon steals a little bit of Earth's rotational kinetic energy and drifts about 3.8 centimeters away from us. And so in the future, it won't be able to block out the entire sun anymore. In fact, in only half a billion years, the Earth will have its final total solar eclipse.”
PBS Space Time · Ideas & Essays · November 2026
Context
Right after explaining why the sun and moon happen to look the same size in the sky, O'Dowd notes the match is temporary: as the moon recedes it will eventually be too small to cover the sun.
Transcript
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…and so Sometimes it eclipses the Sun when it's a bit further away from the Earth. It appears smaller to us and so doesn't completely block the Sun. Such eclipses are called annular eclipses because they leave a ring of bright sunlight around the moon's disk. I mean, they're okay, I guess, but August will give us a total solar eclipse and those are incomparable. But enjoy it while you can. Every year the moon steals a little bit of Earth's rotational kinetic energy and drifts about 3.8 centimeters away from us. And so in the future, it won't be able to block out the entire sun anymore. In fact, in only half a billion years, the Earth will have its final total solar eclipse. As partiality deepens, the shade by the trees becomes full of deep crescents. Now there's something definitely off about the light. It's eerie. It's like everything has a high contrast Instagram filter. We're nearing totality. With your glasses on, you see the sun is a mere sliver and it's shrinking. The sky's blue deepens, a breeze stirs and the temperature drops. Thin shadows ripple…
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For probably the first time in your life you see the chromosphere, red from a specific electron transition in the hydrogen of the sun's upper atmosphere. Below it you see Bailey's beads sparkling around the rim of the moon. Really, they're extra sunlight peeking through lunar valleys. They fade…
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