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Rare 'Annular Solar Eclipse' Tonight
New submitter Trubacca writes "The Northern-Pacific "Ring of Fire" has an opportunity tonight to observe an entirely different "ring of fire": an annular solar eclipse where the moon, owing to its distance from the Earth, seems smaller than the apparent diameter of the sun. This results in the fiery ring for which the phenomenon takes its name. Space.com has a decent write-up on the path of the eclipse, times, and tips for safe-viewing."
This is incorrect. Here is a live feed. Kicks off at 6PM Pacific time.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
A one megaton thermonuclear weapon converts 47 grams of matter into energy. The combined nuclear arsenal of the Earth, 13,000 megatons, would convert 611,000 grams or 611 kg. or 0.611 metric tons of matter into energy. The Sun converts 400 million metric tons of matter into energy each second, thus the expression "gnat's fart in a hurricane" comes to mind.
The transit of venus will be visible from most of North America (assuming no weather issues):
Unfortunately, the NASA eclipse website's taking a hammering today, but this should be the map (try the link tomorrow)
http://eclipse.gsfc.nasa.gov/OH/tran/TOV2012-Fig01.pdf
And there's an official gathering near you, too:
http://venustransit.gsfc.nasa.gov/events/viewapprovedevent/id/212
For the transit times & path from your area, see:
http://transitofvenus.nl/wp/where-when/local-transit-times/
Build it, and they will come^Hplain.
The sun might be big but it does not generate that kind of energy - its energy output is about 100 times smaller than your number at 5 million tons of mass per second converted to energy which it gets from the 700 million tons of hydrogen it fuses into helium every second.