On a Wednesday that stretched its shadow from Spain to Russia, Earth received one of its remaining total solar eclipses — a phenomenon made possible by a cosmic coincidence so precise it borders on the miraculous. The moon, born from ancient catastrophe and drifting outward at the pace of a growing fingernail, will one day be too distant to fully veil the sun. Harvard astrophysicist Avi Loeb reminds us that what we call a natural wonder is, in the longer grammar of the universe, a temporary gift — one that will quietly expire in roughly 600 million years, leaving only partial shadows where onc