The Book of the Bizarre: Freaky Facts and Strange Stories (74 page)

• It takes 29 days, 12 hours, 44 minutes, and 3 seconds for the moon to go through all of its phases, from one full moon to the next. This time period is close to the length of a month—which is why the word “month” is derived from the Old English word for “moon.”
  
• The light that comes from the moon is sunlight reflected off the moon's surface. It takes 1¼ seconds for the light to travel to earth.
  
• The moon only reflects 7 percent of the light it receives from the sun.
  
• The moon is smaller than any planet in the solar system, but relative to the size of the planets they orbit, our moon is the largest of any planet's moons.
  
• The moon is 2,160 miles in diameter—about a quarter of the earth's diameter. If the earth were as big as a fist, the moon would be the size of a stamp—placed ten feet away.
  
• The average temperature on the moon is minus 283 degrees to minus 266 degrees Fahrenheit.
  
• Since the moon spins once on its axis every 271/3 days—the same amount of time it takes to go around the earth once—we end up seeing only one side of the moon (about 59 percent of its surface).
  
• The side of the moon we always see is called the near side. The side we never see from earth is the far side. (That's probably where cartoonist Gary Larsen got the name for the comic strip.)
  
• There is no sound on the moon. Nor are there weather, wind, clouds, or colors at sunrise and sunset.
  
• If you weigh 120 pounds on earth, you would weigh 20 pounds—or 1/6 of your earth weight—on the moon.
  
• A 3-foot jump on earth would carry you 18 feet, 9 inches, on the moon!
  
• Astronauts have brought over 843 pounds of moon samples back to earth.
  
• The moon is moving away from the earth at a rate of about 1/8 inch a year.
  

ONCE IN A BLUE MOON

Where does the expression “once in a blue moon” come from? And what does the song “Blue Moon” refer to?

According to the
Dictionary of Word and Phrase Origins
, the term “blue moon” first appeared in England in 1528. The source was a book entitled
Read Me and Be Not Wroth
, which said, “If they say the mone is blew/We must believe that it is true.”

The term “once in a blue moon” was apparently derived from this sarcastic little rhyme about the upper class. The phrase originally meant “never,” but by the early 1800s it was used to describe a very rare occurrence. This meaning is actually more correct, because two kinds of blue moons really do exist. The phenomenon of a blue moon is associated with unusual atmospheric conditions—a blue moon, or a green one, is most likely to be seen just before sunrise or just after sunset if there is a large quantity of dust or smoke in the atmosphere. The dust or smoke particles can filter out colors like red and yellow, leaving only green and blue to color the moon.

BLUE MOON

A modern definition of the term “blue moon” says it is the second full moon that in a calendar month. Double full moon months occur every thirty-two months
or so, so clearly they are not a usual occurrence. A blue moon appeared on June 30, 2007, and will also appear on December 31, 2009, and August 31, 2012.

Another definition of a blue moon says it is the third full moon in a season that has four full moons. In order to set the date for Easter Sunday properly, the medieval ecclesiastic calendar required a maximum of twelve full moons during the year; by calling the occasional thirteenth full moon a blue moon—meaning it didn't really count—the calendar was kept on track.

Saying the moon is blue, serious people tell us, is like saying it is made of green cheese. But with air pollution, clouds, and ice crystals in the atmosphere, the moon does occasionally appear to be blue.

MOON GODS

In many ancient cultures, the sun was seen as a god and the moon as a goddess. The sun's energy is projective. Daytime is more important than nighttime. Sun gods are strong and creative; moon goddesses are mystical and mysterious.

But to some European cultures, the sun was female and the moon was male. In the far-northern European countries, where the sun shone little or not at all during
the winter months, the spring sun was welcomed as a nurturing, generating, creative—and therefore feminine—force.

The so-called man in the moon first appeared in a Saxon folktale with his wife, the woman in the sun. Earlier, the Sumerian city Ur was named after the moon god Hur. The Babylonian moon god, Sin, was known as the father of time. His name is a contraction of the Sumerian words “Su” and “En,” meaning “the crescent moon.” Also called Nanna (“the full moon”), Sin was the father of Ishtar. The latter is said to have been the source of the voice that spoke to the Hebrew leader Moses from the famous burning bush, the divine presence on Mount Sinai, and the carver of commandments. In Iran, 4,500 years ago, the moon was worshipped as the Great Man, who incarnated on earth as a divine ruler. Even the great thirteenth-century Mongol emperor Genghis Khan traced his ancestry back to a moon god.

The moon gods were overthrown by the sun and sky gods. Solar gods married solar goddesses and usurped the moon gods' mythologies. Conquering tribal chiefs married female shamans and stole their powers. Men mastered the horse, fire, and metallurgy, and built cities and temples. It is said that men came to fear what they couldn't see in broad daylight, under the blazing
sun, so they relegated the mysteries of the night to something else they feared—woman.

UCLA astronomer Andrea Ghez has observed supermassive black holes at the center of the Milky Way and has posited that most, if not all, galaxies have similar black holes at their cores. These cosmic giants can eat stars whole, and the one at the center of our galaxy is said to have the mass of forty suns.

Every 100,000 years the earth's orbital path goes from circular to almost elliptical, altering the distance between the earth and the sun.

Every 42,000 years the earth's tilt alters and changes the area exposed directly to the sun.