<\/p>\n
\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0The power of the internet is revealed in the things people post and repost without actually considering the source.\u00a0 I recently saw a post where someone cited NASA astronaut (and second human to walk on the Moon) Buzz Aldrin\u2019s inclusion in <\/span>Transformers – The Dark Side of the Moon <\/span><\/i>movie (2011) as a kind of retro-proof that the Apollo Moon landings were faked.\u00a0 This poster seems to have missed the plot point Buzz was there to make:\u00a0 President Kennedy initiated the Apollo 11 landing as a cover story so NASA could explore the wreck of a Cybertonian spacecraft on the dark side of the Moon.\u00a0 Let me be the buzz killer here (no, I did not say \u2018Let me kill Buzz\u2019) and point out a couple of flaws in the plot if we really want to mix reality in with science fiction.\u00a0 First, use of the phrase \u2018dark side of the Moon\u2019 leads people to think that one side of the Moon is always dark (more on this a little later).\u00a0 Secondly, the Apollo 11 landing site on the \u2018near side\u2019 of the Moon would have made it virtually impossible for them to explore something on the \u2018far side\u2019 of the Moon in the time frame they were given in the movie.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Buzz Aldrin has never been shy about using his experiences as an astronaut and as one of the 12 humans to walk on the lunar surface to support his personal life.\u00a0 He has written books\u00a0 championing his ideas of how to make flights to the Moon or Mars cheaper and more efficient.\u00a0 Aldrin makes frequent speaking tours and talk show appearances – all have helped him forge a comfortable post-astronaut life.\u00a0 Can we claim to have a toy \/ animated movie character fashioned after and named for us (see Buzz Lightyear in <\/span>Toy Story <\/span><\/i>from 1995)?\u00a0 The real Buzz faced more ways to die on his journey to become a Moon-walker than most of us normal human beings encounter in a lifetime. \u00a0 I do not begrudge him earning a few bucks making a cameo in a FICTIONAL movie based on the old Hasbro Transformer toy line.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0I enjoy science fiction but my science teacher brain can not help to note plot points that stretch reality to the extreme.\u00a0 I have learned to keep those observations to myself so no one thinks I can not suspend belief long enough to enjoy a movie.\u00a0 In the case of the \u2018Moon landings were faked\u2019 crowd, it is not possible to stay silent when they fold a FICTIONAL movie plot into their delusional realm of NASA \/ government conspiracies.\u00a0 Blending Sci-Fi with real-life is not a good way to prove a point – especially when there are enough facts out there to punch Titanic size holes in theories claiming we have all been duped by massive governmental fraud.\u00a0 \u00a0 Move over, Flat-Earthers, the Moon Landing Deniers are taking your spot on my list of \u2018Crackpots of Scientific Discovery\u2019.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0The Moon is perhaps the most mystical of all the astronomical bodies our ancestors were able to observe.\u00a0 They saw the Sun on a daily basis, but it was a stable, seemingly unchanging body.\u00a0 Early people had no way of knowing it was a star of average age, size, and color because it is many times closer to us than all the other stars.\u00a0 The Moon, on the other hand, was in a constant state of change (appearance wise) as it made its way through the normal \u2018Moonthly\u2019 (monthly) cycle.\u00a0 When the Moon and Sun interacted during times of\u00a0 Lunar or Solar eclipses, it was a terrifying experience, at least until astronomers pieced together the \u2018how and why\u2019 of these celestial events.\u00a0 Back then, eclipse-deniers no doubt stuck with \u2018a dragon is eating the Sun\u2019 to explain what they saw but could not understand.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0When Galileo was tinkering with the first practical telescope, it was hard to convince people that the Moon was another terrestrial body, much like the Earth.\u00a0 The church doctrine of the day stated (more or less) that all things in the cosmos were divinely created and moved about the center of the Universe (the Earth) on perfect crystalline spheres.\u00a0 God, they would remind all, didn\u2019t create junk – just perfect objects that orbited the Earth.\u00a0 Galileo\u2019s discovery of the four largest moons of Jupiter offered proof of the Copernican, or Sun-centered model of the Solar System.\u00a0 By using his telescope to support this view, Galileo was in direct violation of the church.\u00a0 He announced he could see valleys and mountains on the Moon with his new telescope that resembled similar features on the Earth.\u00a0 It certainly did not help Galileo out of the pickle he found himself in by supporting the theories of Copernicus.\u00a0 Copernicus had taken great pains to protect himself by seeing that his work was not published until he was no longer on this mortal coil.\u00a0 Galileo took no such precautions.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0At some point in the deliberations with his inquisitors, Galileo had the officials who accused him of heresy look through his telescope at a familiar church across the valley.\u00a0 He asked them, \u201cIf you can recognize the familiar features of this cathedral magnified by my telescope, why can you not believe that the magnified terrain of the Moon is likewise familiar to features on the Earth?\u201d\u00a0 They were unswayed.\u00a0 He escaped being burned at the stake and was instead sentenced to house arrest for the rest of his life.\u00a0 Galileo had friends in high places who begged him to recant which he did (sort of).\u00a0 He retracted his statements about the Sun-centered universe and apparently they accepted it, even though Galileo added a \u2018but I am not wrong\u2019 jibe to his retraction.\u00a0 Since Galileo\u2019s time, we have studied the Moon in great detail and most school children know more about our companion than the learned churchmen of the 1600s.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Perhaps we can lean on the president of The Planetary Society, Bill Nye, to add perspective to the historical view of The Moon.\u00a0 In the Winter Solstice 2023 edition of <\/span>The Planetary Report, <\/span><\/i>Nye wrote, \u201cFirst, ancient biblical authors wrote, \u2018It\u2019s as though we have two sources of light to find our way:\u00a0 the Sun by day and the Moon by about half of our nights.\u2019\u00a0 Then, the Moon\u2019s gravity provides about half the attractive force that raises the ocean tides, which in turn create entire ecosystems.\u201d \u00a0 Our more distant ancestors may not have realized the cumulative power of the Sun and Moon to control the ocean\u2019s tides but maritime civilizations still charted them accurately over hundreds of years.\u00a0 The effects the Moon has on the oceans and on the human psyche have been observed for a long time – the latter being explained away by superstition and \u2018hoo doo\u2019.\u00a0 The mystery of our companion remained even after we understood the mechanics of the Earth\/Moon system better than the ancients.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Nye goes on to delve further into the cultural influence of the Moon\u2019s gravity and reflected light:\u00a0 \u201cAncient Greek observers noticed that when Earth\u2019s shadow falls on the Moon, it\u2019s always curved.\u00a0 The only object conceivable that casts a curve in any orientation is a sphere.\u00a0 Therefore, they realized that the Earth is round.\u00a0 By inference, so is the Moon.\u00a0 The Moon has also made us a spacefaring species.\u00a0 It\u2019s as though nature provided our species with an ideal jumping-forth place to explore the Cosmos.\u00a0 It is always up there beckoning.\u00a0 As humankind took flight, the Moon became the obvious destination beyond the sky. With an enormous investment, humans walked on its surface.\u00a0 And indeed, new crews will be back there in just a few years.\u201d\u00a0 From ancient times right up to the present, the Moon has held human minds captive.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0How did we come to have a moon to begin with?\u00a0 Over the years, there were three main theories put forth.\u00a0 One was the \u2018capture theory\u2019 which held that the Moon was a wandering asteroid that was pulled into our orbit by the Earth\u2019s gravity.\u00a0 This idea was dismissed with simple physics.\u00a0 For the Moon to have a nearly circular orbit, the speed and angle of capture would have had to be very precise.\u00a0 As we see with comets orbiting the Sun, a body being pulled into orbit by a larger body while traveling at a high velocity would end up with a highly elliptical orbit.\u00a0 The size and considerable mass of the Moon adds to the improbability of it having been captured by the Earth.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0A second theory astronomers debated was labeled the \u2018same time, same place\u2019 theory.\u00a0 In other words, both the Earth and Moon were created together from the cloud of gas and dust orbiting the proto-star we now call the Sun.\u00a0 Also known as the \u2018co-formation theory\u2019, it has been largely discarded, again due to the physics of the Earth\/Moon system.\u00a0 The angular momentum displayed by the Earth and Moon does not match up with both bodies having been accreted from the primordial materials revolving around the early Sun.\u00a0 The Moon also has a relatively small iron core (25 percent of its radius) compared to the Earth (50 percent) which casts further doubt on the idea of co-formation.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Other hypotheses were offered but none could check enough boxes to be considered viable.\u00a0 The one exception is known as the \u2018giant-impact theory\u2019 (or as I liked to tell my students, \u2018the big-whack theory\u2019).\u00a0 The \u2018G-I\u2019 theory places the early Earth in the path of a Mars-sized object that struck our planet with a glancing blow.\u00a0 When this body (called Theia) struck the Earth, it ripped material from both bodies and hurled it into space to form a disk of debris caught up in the Earth\u2019s gravitational pull.\u00a0 As this disk consolidated into one mass, the compression forces generated heat that kept it a molton body for tens or possibly hundreds of millions of years.\u00a0 The event that began the process of lunar formation was a violent, rapid event that took only hours to occur.\u00a0 New evidence has reduced this initial impact timeline down from the months or years that were previously speculated.\u00a0 The actual accretion and cooling of this body to form the modern day Moon, however, took a much longer period of time.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0How do we know this?\u00a0 Having taken place some 4.5 billion years ago, there obviously were no eyewitnesses to this event.\u00a0 We do not have a written record but we do have sufficient evidence to refine the \u2018G-I\u2019 theory.\u00a0 The rocks returned to Earth by the Apollo moonwalkers provided the first real proof of the Moon\u2019s connection to the Earth.\u00a0 Measurements of the Moon\u2019s oxygen isotopic ratio is nearly identical to Earth\u2019s.\u00a0 Without getting too deep into the chemistry, the oxygen isotopic ratio can be measured very precisely and provide a unique and distinct signature for each body in our Solar System.\u00a0 This points to the majority of the material comprising the Moon as originating from the Earth.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0There have always been other less obvious pieces of evidence pointing back to the Theia – Earth encounter which make more sense now.\u00a0 The Earth\u2019s axis is tilted\u00a0 23.5 degrees from a vertical line drawn to the Earth-Sun plane.\u00a0 Physics (again) dictates that planets formed from the debris disk around protostars should rotate around an axis perpendicular to that plane.\u00a0 Some force would be needed to upset this normal balance.\u00a0 Neptune, for instance, is actually laying on its side with an axis parallel to the plane of the Solar System.\u00a0 It would have taken an enormous \u2018big-whack\u2019 to tilt the whole planet 90 degrees.\u00a0 This tilt of the Earth\u2019s axis drives the seasonal changes we see (especially noticeable in our location halfway between the Equator and North Pole).\u00a0 Now we know the tilt (and thus our seasons) can be attributed to the Moon\u2019s formation.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0The \u2018dark side of the Moon\u2019 issue mentioned earlier also comes from the formation of the Moon.\u00a0 Technically, all bodies orbiting the Sun have a \u2018light side\u2019 and a \u2018dark side\u2019.\u00a0 People noticed the Moon always presents the same side to the Earth but mistakenly began referring to the side we don\u2019t see as the \u2018dark side\u2019 as if it never sees the light of day.\u00a0 The correct description would be the \u2018far side\u2019 of the Moon because that \u2018other side\u2019 does indeed see sunlight.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0When the Moon was still a molten blob orbiting the Earth, the gravitational pull of the larger body pulled its iron core toward it.\u00a0 When it finally solidified, the Moon\u2019s interior was lopsided – with the iron core being more on the Earthward side.\u00a0 The Earth\u2019s gravity keeps that side of the Moon facing our way so we only see that face.\u00a0 In order to do this, the Moon must spin on its axis once a month meaning a day there (one spin on the axis) lasts the same as one month (the time it takes to orbit the Earth one time).\u00a0 Imagine holding a small child by the arms and spinning them around you – they must face you at all times even though the direction they face changes as they spin around you.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Does this mean the far side of the Moon is perpetually in darkness?\u00a0 Not at all.\u00a0 Spinning once on its axis once per month (approximately 29.5 days) means daylight and darkness lasts about 14 days across the lunar surface.\u00a0 When Pink Floyd\u2019s <\/span>Dark Side of the Moon<\/span><\/i> album came out (March 1, 1973), the title spurred a lot of philosophical debate (\u201cI wonder what it would be like on the dark side of the Moon, man?\u201d).\u00a0 I had a standard answer:\u00a0 \u201cJust like the dark side of the Earth only it would last 14 days instead of half a day!\u201d\u00a0 This proved to be an unsatisfactory answer for those who wanted to believe one side of the Moon was always \u2018dark\u2019.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0More recent research aided by the newest generation of Lunar orbiting space probes offers new insights about the surface we see today.\u00a0 When we were finally able to document the far side, the landscape (or should we say \u2018moonscape\u2019) was much different than we see on the Earth-facing side.\u00a0 It has now been suggested the far side of the Moon cooled more rapidly than the side facing the hot, still molton Earth.\u00a0 The near side crust would have hardened more slowly.\u00a0 The lower gravity of the Moon also affected how the lava flows spread across the surface.\u00a0 The image of the \u2018Man in the Moon\u2019 (or \u2018Rabbit\u2019 for our friends south of the border) is a direct result of the large basaltic lava flows that spread far and wide to create the lunar \u2018seas\u2019.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0There is evidence the Moon was volcanically active up until about 50 million years ago.\u00a0 The early Moon may have had an atmosphere created by volcanic outgassing that was twice as dense as the current Martian atmosphere.\u00a0 Photos from NASA\u2019s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter coupled with ground penetrating radar scans by the Japanese spacecraft Kaguya show a large pit on the lunar surface that is too deep for its width to be an impact crater. \u00a0 Analysis of this feature has now led investigators to a new lunar puzzle:\u00a0 If this feature in the Marius Hills is a skylight from a large network of lava tubes, how extensive could these caverns be?\u00a0 Could they be the secret to housing humans safely on the Moon?\u00a0 Lacking an atmosphere to protect astronauts from harmful solar radiation (as we are so protected on the Earth), could the Moon harbor life safely in underground cities?<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Perhaps some will view returning to the Moon as a, \u201cWhy bother?\u00a0 We have already been there,\u201d endeavor.\u00a0 Personally, I am excited about the next round of lunar exploration – there is still so much more we can learn from our companion.\u00a0 It is just too bad it has taken us fifty years to go back.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Top Piece Video:\u00a0 CCR at Royal Albert Hall in 1970- Bad Moon Rising\u00a0<\/em>of course!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0The power of the internet is revealed in the things people post and repost without actually considering the source.\u00a0 I recently saw a post where someone cited NASA astronaut (and second human to walk on the Moon) Buzz Aldrin\u2019s inclusion in Transformers – The Dark Side of the Moon movie (2011) as a kind 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