Walking home late last night, I paused at the top of the hill. Hovering above the rugged cobblestone, above the blaring streetlights of Oakland, and above the South Side's points of light and jagged horizon, was the moon. The clouds hid and revealed its glow in two-second intervals, moving from bottom to top, giving it the illusion that the moon was moving, not the clouds.
The moon has been observed as long as we've been around as a species, and its beauty is something people have marveled at and will likely continue to marvel at forever. Its no wonder ancient people constructed deities around the moon. It looms above everything else. No matter how good or bad your night was, whether America is on the right track or the wrong one, whether your favorite team wins or loses, the sun will go down at night and the moon will emerge above it all, shining down on every one of us, as if to say, "Hey, dude. Welcome home."
This online article (http://www.astronomycafe.net/qadir/q106.html) suggests that if the Earth didn't have the Moon, the Earth's axis would stay fixed on the same point in the sky for hundreds of thousands or even millions of years. Can you imagine how many images of the sky and other galaxies we would miss out just because of the moon?
ReplyDeleteIt also says our seasons would be drastically different or we might not even have seasons at all.
Who knows if life on earth might even be sustainable without the moon.
Yet another tiny little link in the chain of life that could be vital for our existence.