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The other night we were driving back from a family party and had the privilege of watching the late rise of a waning gibbous Moon. It was gorgeous, luminous and looked mysterious and awe-inspiring hovering over the spans of the Tappan Zee bridge in New York State. As is my usual practice, I stared at it for awhile, just taking in the "Moon"-ness of it all; the three-dimensionality of the world next door to Earth. It's a wonderful thing to watch the Moon and think about all the people who have studied it, the handful of men who have visited it, and the many who will visit it in the future.
We see beautiful moonrises and full moons and appreciate moonlight because the Moon is bathed in sunlight, same as Earth is. The sunlight is made up of photons, packets of energy that are given off by the Sun as a result of nuclear reactions deep inside. It's a process that has been going on since the Sun and planets formed more than 4.5 billion years ago. Granted, the reflected light isn't as intense as the light straight from the Sun. But, even though a full moon is 500,000 times fainter than the Sun, moonlight is still reflected sunlight.
I was amused to read today that some guy in Arizona is channeling moonlight and reflecting it onto people, who then claim to have been healed of asthma and cancer, and had their depression lifted. He claims that the different colors in the light will activate parts of the body and help them heal. There's no scientific evidence for this claim, but I do suspect that there's a psychological connection that this guy is deliberately claiming as a real, physical effect. I'd like to see some scientific proof.
Because us human folk have active imaginations, we often see things in the Moon that really aren't there, such as the patterns of light and dark on the surface that we often call "the Man in the Moon" or "the rabbit in the Moon." There are lots of old folk tales about how moonlight affects people, usually as a calming influence or, paradoxically, as a cause of mental illness or derangement.
It's much more likely that the folks who are "bathing in moonlight" are confusing the feelings of awe and inspiration and other emotional reactions that the Moon elicits with actual physical reactions. Entirely understandable. But, it's not medicine and it's not science. It's metaphysical. And, it's not the Moon's fault that humans have a psychological capacity for things mysterious and magical. The Moon will sit there and cheerfully reflect sunlight from now until the end of the solar system and it'll still be sunlight (reflected). It only becomes magical, metaphysical, or mysterious when humans (and their imaginations and emotions) get into the act.
What's loony about this idea of moonlight curing diseases? The fact that people are paying money to stand in the way of some moonlight when most of us can do it for free on any moonlit night.
So, here's a challenge for you: look at StarDate's Calendar of the Moon's phases and figure out a time when you can go stand in some moonlight. Then, go out and do it! Take along a pair of binoculars (or a telescope, if you have one) and check out the lunar craters. You'll enjoy the moonlight and get to do a little lunar exploration, all in one go. And, the feeling of accomplishment you'll have will be all your own, not caused by the supposed "mysterious" qualities of reflected sunlight.
A couple of days ago, just after I wrote here about humanity's return to the Moon, I got an email from the web editor at Scientific American, pointing out an article about an interesting idea from a scientist who hopes to explain the phenomenon of lunar transients. The article, called Lunar "UFOs" May Be Volcanic Belches, describes work done by Arlin Crotts of Columbia University. He has been studying what he calls a "hairball of a data set" containing reports of flashes on the Moon's surface that date back many years. In fact, people have been reporting strange flashes on the lunar plains since the 1500s. Crotts's idea is that the flashes, if they really do exist, are the result of dust stirred up by emissions of radon gas belched out from under the lunar surface. Many of these "transients" appear to happen around the crater Aristarchus, which is known to be the most volcanically active region of the Moon in the past.
Crott's idea is that volcanic gas is escaping from the lunar interior. When it reaches the surface, it disturbs the dust, creating what looks like a flash of light (since the dust is reflecting sunlight).
Now, it sounds plausible, but I was a little skeptical—as are other planetary scientists who are nonetheless interested in the idea. There are many questions about the interpretation he's making, most of which can be answered with more research and data.
The first objection that popped into my head as I read the article (and I was glad to see somebody else bring up) is that these things, by their very nature, are transient. That makes them hard to predict and observe, and prediction and observations are at the heart of understanding what's happening here. To really determine the cause, we need to observe more of them under more rigorous conditions. Crotts anticipates this and is setting up a robotic imaging system to track the Moon and watch for transients.
I suppose when we return to the Moon, lunar geologists will be able to study these phenomena in real time, which is a good argument for having people there to do the work. Not only will they be able to measure the emissions, but they can also monitor seismic conditions more closely and do more extensive surveys of the geologic makeup of the regions where these "UFOs" are lighting up the surface.
(Not that these are UFOs. I'm just echoing the headline, which uses the term "UFO" in quotes to indicate that they know these things aren't little green men or aliens from the Pleiades or other nonsensical beings that the tinfoil crowd brings up every time there's an unusual sighting in the sky.)
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