Photo: Laurent Emmanuel / AFP via Getty Images
Maybe you already knew this, but today I learned that the moon is active of us, year after year. She’s full, she’s ready, she’s finished with what we’re doing here, and she just does not want to be anymore.
I discovered this difficult but understandable fact from a New York The time article describes how scientists have difficulty measuring just how fast the moon moves away. This is because of the five light-reflecting “retroreflector” panels they typically use to measure the rate at which they deviate. The panels have been left by astronauts on the moon’s surface for decades; When laser beams from Earth are pointed at them, how fast do they reflect light back to us, scientists help determine the distance between the Moon – who might have hated us? – and our planet over time. But the retroreflectors are now only about a tenth as efficient as ever, in part because they are covered in a layer of lunar dust.
However, the retroreflectors are how we know the moon is moving away from us at a rate of about one and a half years. In our defense, she has got have been doing this for billions of years now, and the inching-away rate has fluctuated between 1.9 and 0.005 inches annually. But still, you can not really blame her for continuing in this retreat, given the way things are going. Things are not great here. The moon itself was recently the subject of an attempted witchcraft by “baby TikTok witches.” At least we can hope that some aliens come out into space and let them know that some of us are really ready to go somewhere else.
