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A solar eclipse, the moon moves between the earth and the sun, right? The moon is just the right size and is set at just the right distance to enable it to block out the sun perfectly. Heck of a coincidence or what!?

Yup. There are other heavenly bodies that transit without eclipsing, though, so we had more than one shot at it.

The moon also always faces us, which is pretty cool too. I think there's a theory that the moon was original part of earth when everything was still molten, got thrown out of the spinning earth blob and so orbits and spins in check with the earth's rotation.

The moon is getting further away, too, so the eclipses won't last forever.

themagicwand wrote:A solar eclipse, the moon moves between the earth and the sun, right? The moon is just the right size and is set at just the right distance to enable it to block out the sun perfectly. Heck of a coincidence or what!?

We live during the only time in the history of the planet that the Moon, which is slowly moving away from us, will cause solar eclipses. Charmed times or what!

There's yet another theory that if we didn't have the moon then we wouldn't have evolved, or at least would have evolved much more slowly. It had something to do with causing continuous fluctuations in salinity, which in turn led to a kind of partial reset button for micro-organisms. A bit beyond me, really.

There will be a point at which the moon will no longer control the tides.
This may cause catastrophic events on the face of the planet..
which in turn will effect the seasons, causing teh planet to nosedive into oblivion.....


But on the upside, it might cure P.M.T.

I read somewhere that the moon has also acted as a celestial bodyguard, soaking up impacts from meteors and comets that would have otherwise slammed into the earth causing goodness knows what damage.

Plus it turns sane men into werewolves.

daleshrimpton wrote:But on the upside, it might cure P.M.T.

Ever the optimist eh Dale? It will take a lot more than a global disaster to cure PMT!

Mr_Grue wrote:
The moon also always faces us,

How can it not face us?? its an orb?!!

kobain wrote:How can it not face us?? its an orb?!!

The light side of the moon always faces us. the dark side is always away from us. i don't believe the moon "spins". I think that's what was meant?

The Dark side of the moon isnt always facing away from us.
If it was, we would always have full moons.

daleshrimpton wrote:The Dark side of the moon isnt always facing away from us.

Well then how do the aliens that live on the dark side keep themselves hidden from us?

And don't get me started on the parallel earth that is always hidden from us by the sun.

It spins and orbits at speeds such that a particular hemisphere always faces us.


Gah!

themagicwand wrote:I read somewhere that the moon has also acted as a celestial bodyguard, soaking up impacts from meteors and comets that would have otherwise slammed into the earth causing goodness knows what damage.

There is a heck of a lot of evidence for this, just look at the moon! It's covered in thousands, if not tens or hundreds of thousands of impact craters. Some of them are pretty damn big as well, big enough to have caused some serious damage to earth.

Though what you said about the alignment for solar eclipses, I never really though of it, but it is a remarkable coincidence that we live in what is essentially a very small window for this sort of thing to happen. What a bizarre train of thought to go down, I'll be preoccupied all day now!

Also, I think I heard that the moon is constantly moving closer and then further away from earth, it can even drastically affect climate.

(Pssst, also its called Lunar I think, because earth actually has more than one moon )

themagicwand wrote:The moon is just the right size and is set at just the right distance to enable it to block out the sun perfectly. Heck of a coincidence or what!?

To me that sounds like the chances of a card being at a cirtain number in the deck being 52x52

But yeah, heck of a coincidence.
And with the same side facing us all the time you've got to think someone's in on this don't you?
Saying that, given the infinite number of planets out there it's got to happen somewhere, so why not here? We're just lucky.

themagicwand wrote:Well then how do the aliens that live on the dark side keep themselves hidden from us?

Come on now Paul don't ask silly questions, aliens aren't hiding behind the moon.

They're hiding underground.