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Comment by ionwake | Hacker News Reader

funny how the moon is almost exactly 400x smaller and 400x closer then the sun, perfectly sized for solar eclipess – makes you wonder how lucky we are to study coronal ejections and anomalies like that.

like im sure that not common right? maybe it is i dunno

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The thing about sentient life is we are always finding it odd that everything seems just right for our evolution when that's why it happened in the first place.

Temperatures, resources, distances, orbits, etc.

If there's a world out there without a moon and could not really see other plants and stars, would they have developed the math and science that we have without such motivation? Maybe but slower?

But without our extra large moon, at the right mass and distance, helping tides and lighting the night for hunting, would life even exist? Maybe but not as advanced or a lot slower evolution?

(it's kinda like that Star Trek Voyager episode where they inspire a planet to industrialize after being trapped in their orbit in a dramatic time dilation)

S6E12, "Blink of an Eye": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blink_of_an_Eye_(Star_Trek:_Vo...

Yes but that’s an argument for why life bearing planets might have larger moons relative to the planet’s size, how would the moon’s apparent size relative to the sun influence evolution?

It's somewhat of a demonstration/argument of the anthropic principle

Because we're here and that appears to be a "special case" and rare and no other life spotted (yet) elsewhere, it might very well be the reason we are here at all (that we haven't figured out yet)

It certainly enabled math and science to progress because it was accidentally possible to calculate distances because of that size/distance particularity even before telescopes and computers, though I realize that's not biological evolution

fascinating, you made me dig further. Apparently the existence of the moon allowed:

Ancient Past, Navigation, Tidal patterns enabled early coastal navigation and fishing patterns, critical for survival; Prehistory, Evolution of Life, Stabilization of Earth's axial tilt led to climate stability, promoting diverse ecosystems; Early Civilization, Timekeeping, Regular lunar cycles allowed ancient societies to develop lunar calendars and plan agriculture; Ancient Astronomy, Observing Celestial Events, Solar eclipses (due to perfect alignment) inspired early understanding of the cosmos; Future, Gravitational Lensing Studies, Its size and distance offer a natural model to study lensing phenomena and gravitational effects; Far Future, Space Colonization, Potential base for observing the universe free from Earth's atmospheric interference.

> If there's a world out there without a moon and could not really see other plants and stars, would they have developed the math and science that we have without such motivation? Maybe but slower?

They would have other advantages and disadvantages, and develop math for different reasons. Then they'd look at our planet and say, 'lacking our conditions, how could they develop mathematics?'

It’s one of many lunar anomalies, read “Who Built the Moon?” by Alan Butler if you’re curious.

For ref: https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Who_Built_the_Moon%3F

thx man right up my alley for a read between coding sprints, r u on twitter? we seem to share lunar fascination

Couldn't you study coronal ejections just as well if the moon were bigger? You wouldn't see them on all sides of the moon at once, but in return you'd have more total solar eclipses.

From an aesthetic point of view, we're uniquely lucky to have the moon just the right size for beautiful eclipse phenomena like the diamond ring, but for science I don't think it makes a big difference.

Apparently if being the perfect size allows for this: Gravitational lensing verification during a solar eclipse relies on the Sun being just barely covered to observe the bending of starlight near its edge.

If the Moon were significantly larger than the Sun:

The Moon would block not just the Sun but also the surrounding starlight, making it impossible to observe the light bending around the Sun’s edge.

As a result, Einstein’s prediction of light bending around the Sun, famously confirmed during the 1919 eclipse, would not have been observable.

I used chatgpt i ahve no idea wat it means

EDIT> previous comment i made was unhelpful because i forgot how to read

This is nonsense. You don't need to observe the entire edge of the sun's disk to observe gravitational lensing. A partial view would work just as well.

> I used chatgpt i ahve no idea wat it means

Please don't do that. You're just filling the comment section with misleading noise.

You are right in that I should not have been light hearted about using chatgpt, but it isn't noise , it is a rebuttal to your point that the size of the moon can be larger without it affecting the number of mass coronal ejections which can be studied, which is wrong.

You then changed your assertion for some odd reason (Ignoratio elenchi) have half through the discussion.

Weirdest thing is, I only typed out my comments to try and help you learn something new which is pretty ungrateful on your side, You also seemingly downvoted me too. A simple thanks man I didnt know that would of sufficed.

Quick go make another new throwaway account.

> almost exactly 400x smaller and 400x closer then the sun, perfectly sized for solar eclipess

for now.

this is purely coincidence that you are observing at this point in time, its getting further away

It's extremely rare. It occurs nowhere else in the solar system, and isn't even true for the vast majority of Earth's history and future. We could survey a million exoplanets and likely not find even one single other example.

Neat, though.

There are so many rare things that it is not rare to witness a rare thing.

Like someone's exactly 2.000 meters tall. How rare is that ? Well, just as rare as someone being exactly 1.999 meters talls eh.

It is in context of things which are not rare. For example the number of blondes at a beach party in Italy, which has a large brunette poopulation.

Imagine an all-blonde beach party in Siciliy. Pretty rare right?

So is a beach party where everyone is tall, or short, or has the same name, or a beach party during which there's an earthquake, a meteor etc etc.

All would be rare events, but there are so many rare events that could possibly happen that is is not that rare to witness something rare, especially if we are looking for that.

Therefore witnessing a rare event may not mean much.

This is related to p-hacking https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_dredging

It's also a temporary anomaly as the moon has been moving and continues to move further away from the earth. See Lunar Recession.

Temporary on the scale of 600 million years or more

https://archive.is/2024.04.12-145123/https://www.nytimes.com...

Nope, a coincidence. We are extremely lucky

Luck is a funny thing isnt it. My favorite quote is "When skill meets ignorance, we call it luck."

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