Friday, September 4, 2009

Lunar Cycles

The full moon rises opposite the setting sun; like clockwork. You can see the same relationship if you spin the hands of your watch; the full moon is at 6:00, the new (or nonexistent; three days in the tomb) is at noon. I've heard that the moon is slowly drawing away from the earth and that as it retreats the reciprocal gravitational loss slows the earth's rotation, ever so slightly. My question is whether or not the alteration that has taken place during the brief span of our existence here, since we've been keeping records, alters the Babylonian's calculations that first gave us our clock in any meaningful way; or if Stonehenge is less accurate now then when it was built, minus continental drift?

Extrapolating far, far forward I see fodder for disaster movies in what happens when the moon finally breaks free from Mama. Oh, but surely there won't be any people left on Earth to worry about it by then; the Sun will probably have grown to be a red giant and swallowed up both mother and daughter.

Me? I'm going to party like it's 2012.

 

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