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Will there be a total solar eclipse on June 25, 2522?

According to NASA, as of question writing the next total solar eclipse over the U.S. will be August 21, 2017. It will cut right through the center of the country, in a swathe from Oregon to South Carolina.

A little over 500 years later, on June 25, 2522, there is predicted to be a nice long (longest of that century) solar eclipse that will pass over Africa.

In terms of astronomy, the 2522 eclipse prediction is nearly as secure at the 2017 one: the primary uncertainty is the exact timing of the eclipse, and stems from uncertainties in the rate of change of Earth's rotation -- but this uncertainty should be of order minutes only.

However, 500 years is a long time for a technological civilization, and if ours survives on this timescale, it could engineer the solar system in various ways and potentially invalidate the assumptions of this prediction. With that in mind:

Will there be a total solar eclipse on June 25, 2522?

For the question to resolve positively, the calendar system used in evaluating the resolution must match the Gregorian calendar system used in the eclipse predictions; the eclipse must be of Sol by a Moon with at least 95% of its original structure by volume unaltered, and must be observable from Earth's surface, with "Earth" defined by our current Earth with at least 95% of its original structure by volume altered only by natural processes.

Categories: Biological Sciences – Ecological and Environmental Biology, Category – Distant Future, Technological Advances, Physical Sciences – Astrophysics and Cosmology

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