Surya Grahan or solar eclipse, the first cosmic event of 2020, will take place June 21. This will be an annular eclipse, often called the “ring of fire”. It will be quite a spectacle and will be visible from Asia, Africa, Europe, Australia and of course India, Sunday. This eclipse will however not be as bright as the one that occured December 26 last year.
June 21st, Sunday, India will witness the Annular Solar Eclipse. This particular eclipse is said to be the ‘deepest’ annular solar eclipse in nearly a hundred years.
The Annular Solar Eclipse June 2020 is likely to appear for around 30 seconds, similar to a necklace of pearls.
But Indians have only one question in their minds: Will the solar eclipse kill coronavirus?
In fact, this has become a popular query on Google search results, consistently spiking as the date of viewing gets closer.
What is an annular solar eclipse?
Here’s what an annular eclipse is: A solar eclipse takes place when the moon moves between the sun and earth, obstructing the sun’s light. In an annular solar eclipse, the moon entirely or partially covers the sun from when seen from earth.
What does it have to do anyway with the coronavirus?
In a bizarre claim, a scientist based in Chennai has said that there are connections between the coronavirus outbreak and the solar eclipse which took place December 26.
Dr. KL Sundar Krishna, a Nuclear and Earth scientist told ANI that the pandemic may have been a result of mutated particle interaction of the first neutron emitted after the solar eclipse owing to fission energy. He said that there is a “planetary configuration with new alignment in the solar system” which occurred after the solar eclipse. And that is even the coronavirus outbreak happened, according to Krishna.
Krishna has even deduced a possible theory of how the virus originated. He told ANI that the virus has come from the upper atmosphere where “inter-planetary force variation” took place. The said neutrons then began nucleating which further resulted in bio-nuclear interactions in the upper atmosphere. This bio-nuclear interaction, according to him, may be a source of the virus.
Myth or Reality?
However, this may not be actually based in science. In fact, the only connection between coronavirus and the solar eclipse is just, well, the sun.
The current new novel Covid-19 belongs to the group of viruses called coronavirus. ‘Corona,’ means crown.
The scientists who came up with the term ‘coronavirus’ in 1986 found that under a microscope, the virus they were looking at resembled a solar corona: the bright crown-like ring of gasses surrounding the sun that is visible during a solar eclipse.
NASA also describes it similarly: “The Sun’s corona is the outermost part of the Sun’s atmosphere. The corona is usually hidden by the bright light of the Sun’s surface. That makes it difficult to see without using special instruments. However, the corona can be viewed during a total solar eclipse.”
There has also been a myth about how hot weather can kill coronavirus. While it’s a myth which has been debunked by the WHO, because they’re really hot, in fact, they are some hundred times hotter than the sun’s surface.
But the only possible way for this solar corona to affect the coronavirus on earth, would be if they came in contact – which they won’t, since the sun is over 152.02 million kilometres.
The only scientific ways to ‘kill coronavirus’ so far is washing your hands for 20 seconds with soap and water, using hand-sanitizers, not touching your face often, disinfecting surfaces which may have come in contact with someone who could be a carrier of the disease.
Hence, the onus of protecting ourselves from the coronavirus is not on the sun’s corona but in our own hands, quite literally.