Lecture explores debate over eclipse in 'Odyssey' Posted
November 5, 2009; 04:07 p.m. Physicist Marcelo Magnasco will
discuss his research on whether Homer describes a total solar
eclipse in "The Odyssey" -- the subject of a longstanding debate
among scholars -- at 8 p.m. Monday, Nov. 30, in McCosh 10. In a
lecture titled "Is an Eclipse Described in Homer's 'Odyssey'?"
Magnasco will address the controversy over whether Homer refers
to a total solar eclipse in the 20th book of the epic. Such an
eclipse has been calculated as having occurred in April 1178
B.C., around the estimated end of the Trojan War. But some
scholars have dismissed the idea that Homer described it in his
poem, which emerged centuries later. Magnasco, a professor and
head of the Laboratory of Mathematical Physics at Rockefeller
University, will describe his efforts with colleagues to analyze
astronomical references in "The Odyssey" and to search for dates
matching the astronomical phenomena they probably describe.
Using three astronomical r