Total solar eclipse, vaccine controversy and coffee health benefits
Scientific American · LC · trust 34/100
Total eclipse wonder, vaccine misinformation and the strongest case yet for coffee
From eclipse awe to vaccine debate, earthquake recovery and coffee’s benefits
By Rachel Feltman , Andrea Gawrylewski , Fonda Mwangi & Alex Sugiura
Rachel Feltman : Happy Monday, listeners! For Scientific American ’s Science Quickly , I’m Rachel Feltman. Let’s catch up on some of the science news you may have missed last week.
Last Wednesday, the only total solar eclipse of 2026 swept across northern Russia, the Arctic Ocean, Greenland, Iceland, the Atlantic, part of northeastern Portugal, and northern Spain. If you caught the eclipse, I hope you protected those precious peepers of yours. And if you saw a partial eclipse somewhere off the path of totality, I hope you don’t make the mistake that I hear many, many people make about eclipses: assuming that hitting 90% or even 99% totality means you basically saw a total eclipse. I’m not saying that partial eclipses aren’t really really cool but allow me to be briefly insufferable and tell you that the moment of actual, 100% totality is weird and incredible and makes you understand why ancient civilizations treated these events as apocalyptic omens .There is absolutely nothing like it. I refuse to stop talking about how incredible it is to experience a total eclipse, because every time I’ve successfully convinced someone to go out of their way to see one, I’ve invariably made their lives at least a little better and more wondrous and magical. And not a single one ever said like, “Rachel, why did we drive 8 hours for this? That was stupid.”
With all of that in mind, the next time a total eclipse will meaningfully cross the U.S.—no offense, Alaska—is 2044, and that one will only hit Montana and the Dakotas. Luckily for the rest of the lower 48 we’ll get a cross-country totality path in 2045. And yes, I know that’s a long time from now! There’s a reason why all the science people you know made such a big deal out of the ones in 2017 and 2024! That was really a banner decade for American eclipse chasers looking to avoid international travel.
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Now, obviously going abroad is not always or ever feasible for many people, but if you’re planning on taking some big trips anyway, an eclipse is a great thing to plan around. If you want an excuse to finally check out New Zealand or Australia for instance, it’s definitely not too early to start booking stuff for their July 2028 total eclipse.
You could also try to catch the 2027 total eclipse that’s passing over the southern Mediterranean, perhaps even on an official Scientific American river cruise guided by our chief of reporters, Clara Moskowitz. Yes, Scientific American hosts science-y vacations! And no, no one told me to mention that. I haven’t gotten to go on one. I just really like eclipses. It seems like this will be a cool one. You can find out more about that at scientificamerican.com/travel .
Now for some public health news. Last Monday, President Donald Trump issued an executive order aiming to alter the U.S. childhood vaccine schedule. The president is reportedly asking Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. to present plans for breaking up the combined measles, mumps and rubella, or MMR, vaccine into individual shots. In presenting the order on Monday, Trump suggested that this combination of shots is dangerous, which contradicts a large and rigorous body of scientific evidence on the subject. And his order more broadly takes aim at the practice of administering multiple vaccines at once in children, “to the maximum extent feasible,” the order states, “all childhood immunizations should be administered at separate medical visits.” But all evidence shows getting multiple vaccines at once is safe including for children.
The president also alluded to the possibility that childhood vaccines could contribute to rising autism rates ...
[CLIP of President Donald Trump signing the executive order in the Oval Office: “ Decades ago, children received only a small fraction of the vaccines required today. In those times, people were much healthier, and of course, the high rates of autism now observed did not exist. So there’s a reason for such epidemic rates of autism, and we’re gonna bring it back to much closer to where it was.”]
Feltman : Which has also been repeatedly and definitively ruled out by scientists .
Now, even if you’re aware of the concrete evidence that vaccines save lives and are safe and do not cause autism. You might be wondering what’s so bad about breaking the MMR shot into three separate vaccines. The answer is that, theoretically, there’s nothing wrong with getting each vaccine separately. But the childhood vaccination schedule as set by the American Academy of Pediatrics was developed to give children protection against these potentially fatal diseases as efficiently as possible. If parents split shots up into multiple appointments, it takes longer for their kids to become fully inoculated against all the illnesses in question. And having the government advocate for the use of three separate shots definitely implies that there is something wrong with taking them all at once—which, again, to be totally clear, there is not—which could lead to parents unnecessarily delaying a child’s vaccinations.
It’s not clear what impact this executive order will actually have on pediatrician visits. But for the best, science-based information on childhood vaccinations, we always recommend referencing the American Academy of…
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