Friday, February 4, 2011
Do We Really Need the Moon?
There's a BBC program asking, in a very pro-moon perspective whether we need the moon. It pretended to be objective then spent an hour explaining how the moon was absolutely vital. Apparently having seasons and critters that care about seasons, and not wobbling all over the place makes our moon very essential for life. But, really without the constant polar ice caps we'd have a lot more water and water critters could do plenty well, and saying that just because nothing has evolved to go from death-valley temperature to antarctic temperature and therefore it's impossible is rather bizarre. I mean, plenty of critters have the ability to hibernate, and trigger activity based on heat, and cope with heat and cold. Just because there's not anything around (save a few bacteria) that tend to do that doesn't mean nothing could. Somehow I always feel that doubting evolution is some kind of intellectual fallacy.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
2 comments:
....and if you watch closely you will see a error with regard to the orbit of the moon around the earth. The moon does not orbit in the oppisite direction that the earth revolves. Bad science for the BBC.
Heh. I missed that minor error. I suppose I could watch it again, but I don't care enough. With regard to the Earth it's good to know the earth actually spins ~366.25 but one of the spins is hidden by the orbit around the sun. I'm just more questioning whether an Earth without a moon could still have life, which seemed the entire pro-moon message.
In one hand the rapid switches of temperature because of the seasons is good and vital and essential as they are caused by the moon. Then the rapid switches of temperature are far too much for any life form to cope with, and this is what we'd have without the moon. There'd likely be water critters and plenty of healthy ones without the moon. And "we" as humans evolved in a world with a moon. So if things were different, we'd be different. You can't just yank a fish out of water, but if you give it a few million years it wouldn't be too much trouble at all.
Post a Comment