The book lists the strangeness of the Moon, which includes the fact that it does not have a solid core like every other planetary object. It is either hollow or has a very low-density interior. Bizarrely, its concentration of mass are located at a series of points just under its surface – which caused havoc with early lunar spacecraft. The material the Moon is made from came from the outer surface of the Earth and left a shallow hole that filled with water and we now call the Pacific. This rock left the Earth to produce the Moon very quickly after our planet had formed around 4,6 billion years ago.
The Moon is not only extremely odd in its construction; it also behaves in a way that is nothing less than miraculous. It is exactly four hundred times smaller than the Sun but four hundred times closer to the Earth so that both the Sun and the Moon appear to be precisely the same size in the sky – which gives us the phenomenon we call a total eclipse. Whilst we take this for granted it has been called the biggest coincidence in the universe.
Furthermore, the Moon mirrors the movement of the Sun in the sky by rising and setting at the same point on the horizon as the Sun does at opposite solstices. For example, this means the Moon rises at midwinter at the same place the Sun does at midsummer. There is no logical reason why the Moon mimics the Sun in this way and it is only meaningful to a human standing on the Earth...read more>>>...