Life and Lunar Influence

milhayser — Tue, 20 Aug 2013 08:22:13 +0000

Posted to the homepage on August 11, 2013.

The Moon—like the sun, stars and Earth—is easy for a human being to take for granted. But the Earth's moon is truly exceptional, and should be appreciated for shaping the exceptional world we live on. Earth is the only planet with a single moon, and relative to the Earth, Luna is the largest moon in the solar system. The Moon thus exerts a strong, solitary influence on the planet it was torn from. Evidence suggests that the Moon was blown into orbit by a massive asteroid impact about 4.5 billion years ago, shortly before the emergence of life on Earth. Even if this cataclysm was incidental to abiogenesis, life as we know it would not exist without the Moon. On Starts With a Bang, Ethan Siegel says that a moonless Earth would have drastically shorter days, and our tilt towards the sun would vary over time. As Ethan explains, "without our Moon, there would be nothing preventing catastrophic shifts in our rotational axis" and at times—like Mercury—we would have no seasons. So the Moon not only stabilizes our world, but adds another layer of periodicity, of yin and yang, to the forces that shape our lives.

milhayser Tue, 08/20/2013 - 04:22

Tisn't the Season

milhayser — Sat, 09 Jun 2012 06:40:17 +0000

Tisn't the Season

Spring is in the air, and Clostridium tetani is in the earth. On Casaubon's Book, Sharon Astyk writes "with playing in the dirt comes minor injuries that you really don’t want to turn into anything nasty." Infection through open wounds can be fatal, as the bacterium releases a neurotoxin that causes uncontrolled muscular contractions. So if it's been ten years or more since your last vaccination, now is a good time for a booster. Meanwhile, Dr. Dolittle shares the amazing winning images of the inaugural Bio-Art competition on Life Lines. From the discharge of electric fish to the branching capillaries of a mouse kidney, serious science is made more accessible through imaging and visualization. And finally, The Weizmann Wave introduces us to the IceCube neutrino detector at the South Pole, where 5,000 detectors arrayed in a cubic kilometer of ice wait for weakly interacting massive particles. A summer day in Antarctica can reach 40°C below—but south of the equator, winter is just around the corner.

milhayser Sat, 06/09/2012 - 02:40

Periodicity

Life and Lunar Influence

Tisn't the Season