Alt text: They're up there with coral islands, lightning, and caterpillars turning into butterflies.
Our planet is scifi as hell. We've got natural magnetic shielding to protect our UV-blocking ozone layer from solar winds. This planet is so damn cozy<3
This planet is so damn cozy<3
Oh! Oh! Let's wreck it by polluting the hell out of it :3
:(
I wish we wouldn’t
but yummy pollutants! :3
Poison the air and recieve pieces of colored paper in exchange. It's a good trade
You know it's too expensive to fix for the people and companies with more wealth than 99.99999% of us, and with the decision maker(s) not valuing any future beyond their expected lifespan, and I don't think any of them think the previous generation will be the last generation to die
For now
I think it’s more wild that not only are big moons rare, ours is literally the same size as the sun from our point of view.
It also makes almost exactly 13 laps for every lap the earth makes.
Which is why a 13 month calendar all having 28 days would have made more sense
It makes 12 months because the lap the Earth makes is deducted from the 13 the moon makes, so effectively it makes 12 cycles around the Earth.
12 is an easier number to work with because of how many factors it has
hmm, how about 12 months each with 30 days, plus 5 days every year that's not part of any month?
5 days every year that’s not part of any month
Those are called intercalary months. They had them in the ancient egyptian calendar (5 every year, 6 in leap years) and were usually used for rest and religious ceremonies.
I'm pretty sure they're being cheeky and we're referencing exactly this ;)
And from what I have heard on science podcasts, the moon is, and has been, and still will be, moving away from the earth. Making the perfect solar eclipse only for a segment of the earth's history.
It honestly makes me feel lucky being born when I was.
We also get to see the after effects of the big bang which won’t be detectable for the majority of the lifetime of our universe.
I don’t recall what I was reading, but I once read about a lot of things lined up perfectly for evolution on Earth.
It’s bonkers that it all worked out that way so that I could be here, right now, reading your post and responding. It really boggles the mind and I don’t want to waste my time.
Welp, guess I’m gonna go look up random curse words in the dictionary. ಠᴗಠ
This is rather as if you imagine a puddle waking up one morning and thinking, 'This is an interesting world I find myself in — an interesting hole I find myself in — fits me rather neatly, doesn't it? In fact it fits me staggeringly well, must have been made to have me in it!' -Douglas Adams
Lines up perfectly ... for life as we know it. See also: The Anthropic Principle
But in the vastness of space, it was practically guaranteed to happen somewhere. There are a set of criteria that allow for the evolution of life (as we know it) and it was going to happen somewhere, the fact that it happened here is no more awesome than it happening 3 galaxies over.
I know the feeling you are describing and the words to describe what i am trying to say are hard for me to grasp.
Its like in a film where the hero survives seemingly impossible odds and people watching say "no way, thats impossible" and can't enjoy the film because its too unbelievable. I say no! This is a story about the one almost impossible time all these things happened. Thats the point. Yes its hard to believe, but thats what makes it awesome.
So the earth being here and humanity and all other animals evolving here is just the time in the impossibly vast universe that the "stars aligned" and the fact that we are experiencing it is just expected.
Look up Douglas Adams’ puddle analogy?
“If you imagine a puddle waking up one morning and thinking, 'This is an interesting world I find myself in — an interesting hole I find myself in — fits me rather neatly, doesn't it? In fact it fits me staggeringly well, must have been made to have me in it!"
Ah btw, this is the gravitational form (geoid) of earth:
The meters is the height difference of orbit.
Damn, now I get why cartographers and the like always try to make it prettier in post!
Never thought I'd be body shaming the Earth, but here we are 🤷
That is pretty severely exaggerated though to emphasize the form.
Lol, but the diff is actually x10000 or something, to make it more visible
That's just mean! 😉
If the Earth was scaled down to the size of a billiard ball, it would be the smoothest billiard ball in existence.
Winter is kinda wild too. The fact that the planet is tilted just enough to make it cold part of the year, but not so cold that it kills everything, and many plants and animals have integrated this into their life cycles.
If only we could cap our carbon emissions enough to keep it that way. But at least the top one percent are making money
By far the coolest and most unique aspect of the Earth-Lunar system is solar eclipses. The size and orbital distance is just right to allow for the spectacle we get today.
This is even more true when you consider that the Moon's average orbital radius is increasing by 3" (76mm) each year. In a million years, the Moon will be too far away to fully cover the Sun. A few million years ago it was close enough to fully cover the corona
Honestly, whenever I think about this, I get my tinfoil hat moment. Life being created by statistical probability and chance, well ok. Life being created and people with conscientiousness rising up at exactly the time this one planet has this perfect orbital distance - give me that tinfoil.
That's just our bias talking. There's certainly many other wonderful events we missed by a couple million years. We just think the moon size is special because of this coincidence.
I get similar feelings about earth when I can see the moon during the daytime. Something about seeing it with clear craters against the blue sky makes it feel much more like we’re just floating in space with a cratered barren partner.
And the sci-fi cliche is to have enormous moons filling the sky, but realistically, ours is comically large. Even planets in our solar system mostly see moons the way we see those planets. You get a dot.
I like to read science history books, the process of discovery and methods people come up with in search of answers is fun. Anyway, I read a whole book about tides, and one of the reasons people thought the tides rolled in and out was because somewhere in the ocean, a massive creature was slowly breathing in and out enormous volumes of water. These same people still went out on boats.
And seahorses! Dont forget them!
Hearts in their head. Males carry the babies.
They're insane!
Can't forget magnets. How do they work?
Like other elements, just a bit farther reach with their fields. Fun fact, nothing is solid. When you try and touch something, it's actually just forces against forces. Atoms are primarily made of nothing.
I wonder if life would exist on our planet if there were not tides.
The Sun also creates tides, just not as strong as lunar tides. So we would still have tides, even if we had no Moon.
The Sun also creates tides
The second worst British tabloid? I highly doubt it.
Exoplanets could have tides too though...
It's unlikely that there are many exo planets with a moon as big as the Moon. Much more likely to have small ones like Mars. Mercury, Venus and Mars are all great examples of bad shit that can happen to planets: Tidally locked + too close to the sun, rolled over on the side, and finally Mars too small to maintain a molten core and magnetic field. The Moon helps avoid the Venus situation and maybe the Mars problem.
Do you think "big enough moon" is going to be similarly rare to "liquid water"? We're getting better and better at finding planets. Not sure how we'd find their moons though.
Well it's not near the surface but rather far away in comparison. But also really big a moon.
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