Sunday, July 16, 2006

The Moon


I've seen some nice moon rises over the last couple of nights. It's waning now and coming up later and later each night.
There is an optical illusion that makes the moon look really big when it's close to the horizon. It can look spectacular.

This is what I know about the moon. It might be wrong.

Apparently the Earth and Moon collided a long time ago. The result of this collision was that earth got all the iron and other heavy stuff (that we need for our bodies) while the moon ended up with lighter materials and started orbiting earth.

I've heard that at first the moon covered about two-thirds of the sky and spun around the earth at great speed. The tidal pull was massive, with the sea rising and falling miles at every tide. This was useful again, as it filled the sea with the minerals needed for life to form.

So over millions of years the moon revolved around the earth, the tides kept rising and falling until their constant rhythm sung life into existence - that's my theory anyway.
Some of these new creatures would be stranded by the tides; some would survive and decide they liked dry land and would consider trading their flippers for legs.

So good old moon! As well as being instrumental in bringing about life on Earth, it looks pretty too.

As it rises later and later into the early hours of the morning, it starts to take on a sickly orange-yellow hue and seems to have trouble getting out of bed. Until it disappears for a bit to re-appear as the evening crescent moon and start growing again.
Anyone living to 80 years will experience about 1040 moon cycles.

Were the moon landings faked?

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