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Chapter 5 - The Moon Rises from the Ashes

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 September 2014

Arlin Crotts
Arlin Crotts
Affiliation:
Columbia University, New York
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Summary

From his mind the Moon was born,

And from his eye the Sun.

– “The Sacrifice of Primal Man” in the Rig Veda

  1. “The moon is backing away from us

  2. an inch and a half each year. That means

  3. if you’re like me and were born

  4. around fifty years ago the moon

  5. was a full six feet closer to the earth.

  6. What’s a person supposed to do?

  7. I feel the gray cloud of consternation

  8. travel across my face. I begin thinking

  9. about the moon-lit past, how if you go back

  10. far enough you can imagine the breathtaking

  11. hugeness of the moon, prehistoric

  12. solar eclipses when the moon covered the sun

  13. so completely there was no corona, only

  14. a darkness we had no word for”

  15. – Dorianne Laux, 2004, “Facts About the Moon”

Mythology in most traditional cultures tells of the Moon’s birth. It seems appropriate that, of all creation’s elements, the Moon was born from the Hindu primal entity’s mind. Of all scientific accounts of creation of major extraterrestrial Solar System bodies, the Moon’s has most generated debate, and still does. Foremost physicists attacked the problem, and it has orbited basic scientific questions such as Earth’s age and how the Sun and stars generate energy. The effect of the Moon’s birth on Earth was so profound and unbelievably violent that it took time to accept it. Before Apollo, understanding the Moon’s birth was largely a mental exercise, starved for data, while stellar or galactic astrophysics progressed via remote telescopic and spectroscopic observations. Now we ask how much our understanding of the Moon’s origin is complete and correct.

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The New Moon
Water, Exploration, and Future Habitation
 , pp. 158 - 173
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2014

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