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What is the Moon’s Effect on the Earth?

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The Moon doesn’t seem to do much, does it? It just moves around up there, always watching with the same stoic face. The truth is, when two large bodies such as the Earth and the Moon are close to one another, they’re bound to interact. Here’s what the Moon does to the Earth.

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1. Are you a fan of the ocean?
The most obvious effect the Moon has on Earth is tides. Tides also occur due to the Sun, but we’ll focus on the Moon for now. Gravitational effects pull at the oceans and cause a bulge, which is high tide, on both the side facing the Moon and the side facing away. In the areas between the two high tides, there are low tides.

2. Little by little, one slows down.
The Moon is also slowing down the Earth by about 1.4 milliseconds over the last 100 years. That’s a tiny, tiny amount, and it’s caused by the friction generated by the pull of gravity between the planets. This slowing has also resulted in the Moon drifting away a bit. It won’t drift away forever; eventually it will become stable and settle into an orbit farther away from the planet.

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3. Some animals have evolved to use phases of the Moon to trigger reproduction.
The Moon also has some evolutionary side effects. Because the phases happen with regularity, some animals have evolved to use the phases as a sort of guide. Some coral, crabs, fish, and worms use the Moon to tell when to go into reproduction mode.
 
There is also the benefit of its unique apparent size allowing us to study the Sun in special ways during a total solar eclipse.

The Moon also passes in our shadow for a lunar eclipse, and it was noted by the ancient Greeks that our shadow is such that the Moon would need to be a sphere. This may have made the Moon more of a physical object and a little less divine, perhaps, so too might planets be.

It clearly orbits the Earth, arguing that the center of the Universe is Earth, though not at my house. So, not all things get handled properly.
 
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Nice photos. But what is gravity ?

Do you think it is instantaneous or not ?

Some believe it to be instantaneous action at a distance ( Newton's Third Law) while others do not, called it curvature of Space-Time ( Albert Einstein) ...........only to change his mind, later.

Some justify the instantaneity, action at a distance, Quantum Entanglement (1935), it falls in line with Newton’s third law.

So far, there is no common consensus on the nature of gravity, only its force.

If light could not be switched on and off, we would still believe that light speed is instantaneous.
 
Nice photos. But what is gravity ?

Do you think it is instantaneous or not ?

Propagation of a gravitational field travels at the speed of light*. This was demonstrated back in 2003, but few doubted that it did. Sir Isaac was wrong about this one.....

Gravitational waves, produced when an object of mass rapidly accelerates, also travel at the speed of light, as expected since both of these, fields and waves, are closely related.

* https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn3232-first-speed-of-gravity-measurement-revealed/
 
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Regarding the moon, its impact on the earth is fairly well established. It is the moon's effect on people that is not well understood.

We have all heard the terms : "lunatic" and "lunacy".

These are diseases thought to be caused by the moon. The words derive from "lunatics" meaning "of the moon" or "moonstruck".

Personally, I have been moonstruck on occasion looking at the moon with my Celestron C-11! And people have called me a lunatic from time to time, so there may be something to it.

However, as far as I have been able to determine, it has not been established that the moon does not cause these maladies, but it seems rather unlikely.
 
Propagation of a gravitational field travels at the speed of light*. This was demonstrated back in 2003, but few doubted that it did. Sir Isaac was wrong about this one.....

Gravitational waves, produced when an object of mass rapidly accelerates, also travel at the speed of light, as expected since both of these, fields and waves, are closely related.

* https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn3232-first-speed-of-gravity-measurement-revealed/
Yes, and another test came when we simultaneously received gravity waves and it's EM compliment. A billion or so light years distance and no time delay.
 
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3. Some animals have evolved to use phases of the Moon to trigger reproduction.
The Moon also has some evolutionary side effects. Because the phases happen with regularity, some animals have evolved to use the phases as a sort of guide. Some coral, crabs, fish, and worms use the Moon to tell when to go into reproduction mode.

Herb Archibald reported an interesting correlation between cyclic lemming populations that peak about every 4 years and lunar tidal cycles.

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Been discussing with him the possibility that this is straightforwardly calculated as an aliasing between the annual cycle and the primary lunar tidal cycles. The aliasing for the tropical fortnightly cycle of 13.66 days gives ~3.8 years and the aliasing for the anomalistic monthly cycle of 27.55 days results in ~3.9 years. The idea here is that the annual reproduction of either lemmings or of their prey, the Arctic fox, is timed to synchronize to a lunar extreme -- either a point in the sky for the tropical (synodic) fortnightly cycle or the apparent size of the moon for the anomalistic (perigean) cycle. Since the timing will jump around from year-to-year, it might be expected that the lemming litter (or fox litter) may have less of a chance of survival if the timing occurs too early in a year. Thus it may result in the cycling of the populations, which has traditionally thought to be caused instead by non-linear predator-prey dynamics (i.e. the Lotka-Volterra equation).

BTW, Herb has been working on this topic since the 1970's and may finally have found the basis for the mysterious cycle.
 
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Nice photos. But what is gravity ?

Do you think it is instantaneous or not ?

Some believe it to be instantaneous action at a distance ( Newton's Third Law) while others do not, called it curvature of Space-Time ( Albert Einstein) ...........only to change his mind, later.

Some justify the instantaneity, action at a distance, Quantum Entanglement (1935), it falls in line with Newton’s third law.

So far, there is no common consensus on the nature of gravity, only its force.

If light could not be switched on and off, we would still believe that light speed is instantaneous.
Gravity IMO is instant and C speed.
Simply the effect of gravity traveling at instant speed between quanta that no time or space exists and leaving a wave at C on regular space.
Gravity with duality and a reason we orbit the sun at it's true location not it's C speed location.
Gravity waves are detected at C because we live in regular space not between quanta..
Reason spooky action at a distance is instant, Gravity entanglement
How's that for an answer :)
Or gravity could be a simple compression of quantum fluctuation
at instant speed and at C depending on your perspective.
 
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IG2007

"Don't criticize what you can't understand..."
Gravity IMO is instant and C speed.
Simply the effect of gravity traveling at instant speed between quanta that no time or space exists and leaving a wave at C on regular space.
Gravity with duality and a reason we orbit the sun at it's true location not it's C speed location.
Gravity waves are detected at C because we live in regular space not between quanta..
Reason spooky action at a distance is instant, Gravity entanglement
How's that for an answer :)
Or gravity could be a simple compression of quantum fluctuation
at instant speed and at C depending on your perspective.
There are enough proofs across this space.com website and many other websites to support Gravitational wave theory.
 
There are enough proofs across this space.com website and many other websites to support Gravitational wave theory.
I think both instant and C speed is the answer to gravity.
Instant communications in void space and C speed waves in normal space.
Might be the answer to the duality of everything is just the property of fluctuation.
Fun to think about that void space between quanta and it's no time/space property yet the area exists and it's most of the universe.
About 99.99 % nothing. :)