Matthew Krouse Down the tube
The idea of thrill-seeking must be as old as the earth itself. It’s like drugs – the more you take, the more you take.
Armchair thrill-seeking is similar, only it’s intended for the faint-hearted who like to watch others breaking their necks. While nursing a drink. Take Woodstock ’99 for example. One can assume that it was infinitely more thrilling watching the crowd of half-a-million tossing that topless teenage girl in the air, than being the girl herself. Likewise, as the kids rampaged after the show, burning and looting – doing the Nineties version of a peace protest – it was more enjoyable to sit back and watch them live on the net than to be there, ducking flying bottles.
For regular people, thrill-seeking seems to end when the real thrills begin. That’s why we have television, and that’s why we have anchors in the field – to tell us how it feels to have rocks thrown at your head.
August 11 sees the advent of another little thrill, rare, romantic and not life- threatening: a total eclipse of the sun. The best thing about eclipses is that these days when they happen we no longer believe that God is angry. Wednesday’s eclipse is going to be the last one for a very long time. The next will occur on September 23 2090.
News tells us that the bona fide thrill- seekers are, as usual, going all the way. The Concorde will be chasing the eclipse at supersonic speed over the Atlantic ocean, staying within the moon’s shadow at 17 400m for 11 minutes. The shadow will apparently outrun the Concorde in the end, just in time for the passengers to begin reflecting on what they’ve paid for their tickets.
For armchair eclipse enthusiasts, the Europe channel of DStv’s Discovery Network will run the event live. Beginning at 7am, announcers Mary Nightingale and Tim Grundy will present the day’s viewing from the British National Astrologers Convention on the Channel Islands.
>From midday to 3pm – the period in which the eclipse will be visible across parts of the world – the two will venture out in the field, gathering vox pops from people at prime-viewing sites outdoors, and the live broadcast will end at 1am on August 12. The Discovery studio will also play host to a number of eclipse experts throughout the day. These will include filmmaker Joe McEvoy, mathematician Karl Murray, a shaman called Emrys, modern witch Clare Prout and eclipse- chaser Michael Maunder.
On August 10, see four documentaries illustrating different aspects of the natural phenomenon. Look out for both episodes of Solar Empire, Lost Treasures of the Ancient World and the world premiere of Our Secret Sun.
The Discovery package tells us that in a million-and-a-quarter years’ time, the moon will have moved away from the earth by 28 800km. The earth’s shadow will, in other words, no longer be large enough to cover the sun, and eclipses will be a thing of the past.
So catch it while you can!