“Suddenly the sky collapsed into darkness and a dozen bright stars appeared. In their midst hung an awful, black ball, rimmed in ruby red and surrounded by the doomsday glow of the gray corona. No photograph can do justice to this appalling sight: The dynamic range from bright to dark is too great, and the colors are literally unearthly. (The ionized gas of the solar corona is hotter than anything gets on Earth except, momentarily, in the detonation of a hydrogen bomb, and is thinner than a laboratory vacuum.) I staggered back a few steps, like a drunken man—or like the Medes and Lydians, who stopped fighting and made peace when a solar eclipse interrupted their battle in 585 B.C. Observers more disciplined than myself have taken leave of their senses at just this moment. The astronomer Charles A. Young of Princeton University berated himself for falling into a trance during the 1869 solar eclipse in Iowa and failing to carry out his scientific tasks: “I cannot describe the sensation of surprise and mortification, of personal imbecility and wasted opportunity that overwhelmed me when the sunlight flashed out,” he recalled.” SunMoonAstronomyEclipseSolar EclipseTotal Solar Eclipse Book:Seeing in the Dark: How Amateur Astronomers Are Discovering the Wonders of the Universe Source: Seeing in the Dark: How Amateur Astronomers Are Discovering the Wonders of the Universe
“I placed some of the DNA on the ends of my fingers and rubbed them together. The stuff was sticky. It began to dissolve on my skin. 'It's melting -- like cotton candy.' 'Sure. That's the sugar in the DNA,' Smith said. 'Would it taste sweet?' 'No. DNA is an acid, and it's got salts in it. Actually, I've never tasted it.' Later, I got some dried calf DNA. I placed a bit of the fluff on my tongue. It melted into a gluey ooze that stuck to the roof of my mouth in a blob. The blob felt slippery on my tongue, and the taste of pure DNA appeared. It had a soft taste, unsweet, rather bland, with a touch of acid and a hint of salt. Perhaps like the earth's primordial sea. It faded away. Page 67, in Richard Preston's biographical essay on Craig Venter, "The Genome Warrior" (originally published in The New Yorker in 2000).” ScienceDnaGeneticsFreaky Book:The Best American Science Writing 2001 Source: The Best American Science Writing 2001