Staring at the sun
People have been googling "eyes hurt" after the eclipse again.
I’ve been meaning to get back into making little videos, but I can never seem to get it quite right. However, I made a little vertical video for TikTok, Instagram and YouTube Shorts about my eclipse viewing experience and it was easy, fun and not difficult at all. I’ve got some more video ideas (and some footage that needs editing), so expect more of these in the future. Although I probably won’t always share them here. You just have to follow me on your video app of choice.
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I’m not actually much of a space geek at all, but I like eclipses for the same reason I like the Voyager space craft. It’s about humanity more than science. I spent a bigger part of the evening looking at all the people around me in the park.
I really enjoyed seeing people with their home-made eclipse viewers. Lots of boxes and colanders, because many people didn’t know about the eclipse until all the glasses were already sold out. There just wasn’t much hype until the day before. (Of course we only got 90% eclipse here in London. I’m sure there was more hype in Spain.)
My other favourite thing about eclipses is that in 2024 people in the path of the eclipse in the United States googled “my eyes hurt” shortly after.
I had to check the Google Trends data for the UK after Wednesday, because I saw people with various contraptions that did not seem particularly safe, like a piece of glass darkened with soot. And indeed, look what happened for the search term “eyes hurt”, with a peak perfectly aligned with the peak of the eclipse.
However, I also saw something interesting in the “rising queries” search terms. It seems like some people were not actually looking for eye help, but also searching for the Google Trends report on this search term.
So I guess that search is forever tainted by people knowing the correlation.
Science on the internet
Some non-eclipse reading for you.
Marine Biologists Solved a Wildlife Mystery From the Walkway of the Golden Gate Bridge: How the Harbor Porpoise Mates. By Madeline Bodin for Smithsonian Magazine.
Undocumented migration does not raise crime rates, huge study finds. By Miryam Naddaf for Nature
A mouse can’t tell us what works’: UK scientists to grow miniature human organs for drug testing. By Ian Sample for The Guardian
Australian Dolphin Filmed Catching Fish with Shells. By Devin Reese for Nautilus
Romania shuts only nuclear plant as heat causes huge drop in Danube River level. By Jaroslav Lukiv for BBC News