Wolfgang Korsus Dipl.-Ing.NT, Astrophysiker
Klingenberg 40
D-25451 Quickborn
Mobil 01625680456 FNetz 0410669295
Webside : wolfgang.korsus.net Email : wkorsus@kabelmail.de
I’ll start very simply……
I have known the moon as a celestial body since childhood. It was just there and it looked like this and looked like that. Full moon, new moon, half moon waxing, waning etc.. You just get older, also with the moon…. what a luck, coincidence, and …much more…???
A recurring question of very few people is still called :
Have men already been on the moon ?
I say only one word: „Yes“.
A probe has been on its way for some time now and it shows all the landing sites of the American moon landings : Apollo 11, 12, 14, 15, 16,17. Instruments, mirrors for laser measurements from Earth, vehicle tracks and footprints of the former visitors…….so that’s what we have now…..
For us humans, the moon has always had a special significance for life on Earth in general, and this is because its gravitational pull causes the tides (i.e. low and high tides) and thus controls and regulates the life of numerous beach animals and marine organisms, for example.
For example, in moonlight, numerous algae come to the surface of the sea and form the food base for a large number of marine life.
But one thing is for sure, today I really love this satellite of the earth. Why ?, some people ask…. and I answer…
Why roam far away, when the good is so close……!!
He!!! ….. is it, …. without which mankind would not have had the slightest chance to live on planet earth. Since time immemorial, he has mainly been said to have magical powers. I consider a list of this nonsense simply nonsensical and prefer to turn to what we really know today, it has to do with the physical interaction of earth and moon.
There is another meaning that our moon has for the complete life of all living beings on planet earth. One of the truly greatest meanings of the moon for life on earth is that the moon keeps the inclination of the earth’s axis largely stable.
However, even the smallest variations in this angle (it is currently 23 degrees and 27.54 minutes) can have very profound effects. As everyone should know, the surface of our planet is heated up in a damned different way. And this is mainly due to the angle of incidence of the sun’s rays. Further, ……this in turn is also the main cause for the existence of the large climate zones, and they are the large heat zones, because they are directly related to the angle of inclination of the earth’s axis.
The Moon is heavy, the Earth has the heaviest Moon of all the planets in the solar system. Nevertheless, the moon/earth ratio is relatively small ?! !!!!!!!!!!!
What happens if the moon suddenly disappears?
A very speculative question…. I have to admit. It is only meant to be an insignificant thought experiment – but it makes it clear what an enormous influence the Moon’s ever-present gravitational pull has on our Earth. Should the moon suddenly disappear from our orbit, nothing would be the same as it was.
Simply stated, the moon, which we know well, is unusually large for a planet of Earth format. Astronomers say that it orbits very close to us, averaging only 380,000 kilometres, if you look at these two enormous and therefore extraordinarily close bodies. ….I hear you calling…gravitational force !!!
We experience the effect of the moon very simply. I like to remind you of the following: we stay on the North Sea coast and feel the tide. But also the attraction of the moon is still to be felt several times, namely: The tidal mountains are pulled out of the direct line to the moon by the fast rotating movement of our earth and therefore they follow the law of inertia as a part of the earth, and the gravity of the moon counteracts this very effectively. It attacks the tidal mountains and pulls them back, so to speak, until a new balance of forces is established. This equilibrium means that the rotation of the earth is actually gradually slowed down.
It follows naturally that if the moon did not exist, the water mountains of the tides would be much smaller, because the attraction of our sun is only about one third as strong as that of the moon. Further: This would mean that the mass of the oceans would be closer to the axis of rotation of the earth, and the moment of inertia would be reduced. Since the total angular momentum of the Earth is maintained, the speed at which the Earth rotates around its own axis increases. But this is already generally known.
By whom or what ? of course, as almost everyone knows about figure skating, or almost everyone has already seen, when the figure skater stretches out her arms during a pirouette, she turns slower; when she puts her arms back on, she turns faster. Because of the moon, a rotation of the earth on its own axis – that is, one day – takes about 24 hours. As mentioned before, the moon stabilises the inclination of the earth’s axis at about 23.5 degrees, like a „magnet“ (as mentioned before).
Furthermore, the consequences would be devastating, first for the world’s coastlines. Because of the moon’s lack of attraction to the oceans, the water mountains on the side facing the moon would collapse – they would melt and redistribute themselves – ultimately following the much weaker attraction of the sun. In the meantime, however, a gigantic global wave would first flood the mainland.
And there would be other consequences as well. Without significant tides, there would be no more braking effect of the water mountains on the torque of the earth: our own rotational speed would gradually increase so much that a day would pass three times as fast: because after 8 instead of 24 hours it would be over.
Next : the stabilizing influence of the moon on the earth’s axis prevents our planet from spinning like a spinning top about to topple over. Without the moon, the axis of the earth would sway back and forth regularly. As a result, in a hundred thousand years the inclination of the earth would change dramatically again and again. This would result in serious climate changes, they would be unavoidable. Different regions of the earth would tilt towards the pole or equator and would be more towards or away from the sun. This would lead to strange results: the poles would turn into the tropics and the equator into an ice desert – and this neither once nor very gradually.
Part 2 follows