this post was submitted on 04 Aug 2024
1062 points (98.6% liked)

Science Memes

10885 readers
3931 users here now

Welcome to c/science_memes @ Mander.xyz!

A place for majestic STEMLORD peacocking, as well as memes about the realities of working in a lab.



Rules

  1. Don't throw mud. Behave like an intellectual and remember the human.
  2. Keep it rooted (on topic).
  3. No spam.
  4. Infographics welcome, get schooled.

This is a science community. We use the Dawkins definition of meme.



Research Committee

Other Mander Communities

Science and Research

Biology and Life Sciences

Physical Sciences

Humanities and Social Sciences

Practical and Applied Sciences

Memes

Miscellaneous

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
 
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] CptEnder@lemmy.world 24 points 3 months ago (1 children)

I mean she's not wrong. Isn't it, astronomically speaking, pretty rare that Earth has a moon that appears exactly the same relative size as its host star?

[–] johannesvanderwhales@lemmy.world 7 points 3 months ago (1 children)

As far as we know it's extremely rare and a bit of a mystery how it came to be that way. One theory is that it was the result of a collision with another protoplanet in the early formation of the solar system.

[–] JimVanDeventer@lemmy.world 17 points 3 months ago (2 children)

But it isn't a mystery at all. The moon is moving away from us. For billions of years the moon's apparent size was larger than the sun. For billions of years later it will appear smaller. It's simply a lucky coincidence we live in this moment in time, in that regard.

[–] johannesvanderwhales@lemmy.world 17 points 3 months ago (1 children)

The "mystery" I was referring to was how we came to have such a large moon to begin with. It's very unusual, and moons on other terrestrial planets are much smaller and probably formed through completely different ways than earth's moon.

[–] JimVanDeventer@lemmy.world -5 points 3 months ago (1 children)

That isn't clear at all and I'm not even sure I agree, regardless. Hydrostatic equilibrium is a regularly occuring thing. No, I'm not looking up how regular. The Universe is mind-bogglingly enormous and everything is unusual. Have a good day.

[–] Melatonin@lemmy.dbzer0.com 8 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Massive W for johannesvanderwhales

[–] Melatonin@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 3 months ago

I really think we should be called a twin planet system. It would be much more representative of our relationship with our satellite.