Post 991830478

Full moon tonight. Have to remember to take a look. It's always such a beautiful sight, don't you think? And now some scientific information to brighten up this page: "The Moon and the Earth presently orbit the barycentre in 27.322 days, the sidereal month. Because the whole system is moving around the Sun once per year, the angle of illumination changes about one degree per day, so that the time from one full Moon to the next is 29.531 days, the synodic month. These periods are slowly changing with time owing to tidal interactions. Tidal friction slows the Earth's rotation, but the angular momentum of the Earth-Moon system remains constant. Consequently, the Moon is slowly receding from the Earth, with the result that the month and the day are both getting longer. Extending this relationship back into the past, both periods must have been significantly shorter hundreds of millions of years ago, and this hypothesis is confirmed by measuring the diurnal and tide-related growth rings of fossil corals." What are the effects of the full moon on us? And what do the skeptic's say?