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There's also an argument that the moon isn't actually a moon since it doesn't actually orbit around the Earth. If you look at their respective orbits, the moon and Earth kind of shift places like a spinning helix pattern and the orbit of the moon is more tied to the sun than the Earth.

I haven't watched this all the way through, but it looks to largely cover the same material. I don't know how common this is among moons, but I think it makes Earth's relationship with its moon that much more special.

[–] itslilith@lemmy.blahaj.zone 29 points 6 days ago (1 children)

Due to tidal effects the moon is slowly getting further away from the earth, so we're living at just the right time to see such spectacular eclipses

[–] AngryCommieKender@lemmy.world 18 points 6 days ago (1 children)

Just add some really massive thrusters to the Artemis 3 payload manifest and nudge it back every so often

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[–] rekabis@lemmy.ca 10 points 6 days ago (1 children)

There are some schools of thought that say that a large moon like ours should be a part of the Drake Equation, because without which life would have a very hard time even on supposed “garden planets”.

Another factor that is likely to affect civilizations is an easy source of energy, like oil. We got lucky, in that the evolutionary development in Lignin in plants - and the several million years needed for bacteria to catch up and be able to break it down - are what created those massive deposits of organic matter that became trapped deep in the Earth and modified into oil. Without that oil we are unlikely to have reached several milestones, including transportation, population levels, trade, high technology, and even access to space. And this would start affecting us several hundred years back, with steam engines.

[–] Chadus_Maximus@lemm.ee 3 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago) (1 children)

But maybe that's what normal civilizations go though before leaving their planet, and the abundant access to oil will cause us to destroy earth before we can leave it 🤔

[–] rekabis@lemmy.ca 2 points 4 days ago

I recall one paper that tried to analyze how long it would have taken to go from a pre-coal civilization in the 1800s to spaceflight, all without hydrocarbons from the ground, and they estimated over 8,000 years to develop sufficient biological sources of hydrocarbons that could advance tech enough to just get into orbit. And the planetary population would have never exceeded 2B in the process. Oil, gas, and coal have done a shitton to enable technology. Even something as simple as electricity requires significant hydrocarbons Just in the infrastructure, not to mention the production of electricity itself.

I like to imagine an alien "watcher" with a lifespan measured in billions of years who has been hanging out in our solar system since its formation. It finally decides to contact us humans and tells us that it saw our moon being formed from another planet smashing into Earth billions of years ago. "Yeah, we know - wanna see the movie we created showing it?"

[–] SL3wvmnas@discuss.tchncs.de 6 points 6 days ago (1 children)

I love that one of the characters in Iain Banks' "Transition" tries to find aliens by spotting airtight -looking vessels (ships, vans,..) during solar eclipses, for this exact reason.

[–] deadbeef79000@lemmy.nz 2 points 3 days ago (1 children)

That was, perhaps, the weirdest, Iain M. Banks book I've read.

[–] SL3wvmnas@discuss.tchncs.de 1 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Hell yes it was weird as hell! It was also the most conceptually mind boggling (with all the gender and sexual fluidity on top of everything else). I felt from style of writing and tone it was very personal and intimate, guess thats why I liked it so much.

The weirdest book to me was feersum endshin (sp?), but I mean, we're reading Banks "it was the day my Grandmother exploded", so....

[–] deadbeef79000@lemmy.nz 1 points 3 days ago

Feersum Endjinn that took such a long time to read the phonetic bits. Loved it though. Subsequent reads were better.

[–] kerrigan778@lemmy.world 3 points 5 days ago (2 children)

Our moon is only the largest moon to planet ratio in our solar system if you discount Pluto as a planet.

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[–] estra@slrpnk.net 4 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago)

Sometimes I wonder if the moons size / existence is one of the reasons why life is even possible in the first place - Maybe aliens would know what it's like to have a moon a quarter the diameter of the home planet because otherwise life has no chance, maybe life is even more likely on dual planet systems like Pluto and Cheron, maybe that's already too similar in size and life has no chance, maybe the median sentient creature in the universe has experienced a tide, or maybe not - anyways I dunno that much about exoplanets or astronomy in general so every thing I've said might be completely bonkers xD

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