'North Pole' *wolf howling* Hey Paul, turn on the TV TV? What for? Waiting on our favourite show to start?
Yes, just as it's been for decades. We are at the peak of tecnology, Lester! We can watch what we want anytime!
Well then open up YouTube and mirror to the TV, because the first episode of Nostalgia Science is up! Oh. .
. hope that schnozzle won't let us down. Did you know the Moon gets further away from Earth by the minute?
Each passing year the Moon moves away four centimeters from Earth! And what does that mean? It means the distance between the Moon and Earth is eighteen times bigger today than when it appeared up in the sky!
That happened about 4,5 billions of years ago! And what does that change in your life? Well, actually.
. . nothing at all.
The days are getting longer, of course. But this extra time consists of one second a year. So you won't even notice.
But before we get to the facts on why this is happening we need to understand HOW the Moon appeared! I am Felipe Castanhari and welcome to Nostalgia Science! *Rad cosmic Nostalgia Science intro* Well, i don't know if you know this but I'm a big science enthusiast.
People who follow me on Twitter and Instagram (@fecastanhari) know that in my bio it says I'm an astronaut at NASA. Well I'm not an astronaut at NASA. This is just a hint for my passion for science and the cosmos.
So everytime I can I like to watch documentaries, read about it, I absorb a lot of everything involving science and astronomy. So I gathered up with the biggest scientists in this area to create Nostalgia Science! Here you will discover that science has so many cool things just as movies, series, and all the stuff that I show here on Canal Nostalgia.
So you guys will realize that understanding how our world works is so cool. And I'd like first and foremost to say that this is a very ambitious project; It's a 100% original. So I count on you to share this video, leave your like and subscribe to the chanel to keep us moving because I really want to keep taking this project forward and for that to happen, I need your feedback!
But let's leave that aside. Why? Because now it's time to look to the sky and find out how did the Moon appear?
Well, we live in privileged times. And I say that because our scientists here on Earth found out a lot of stuff about the Universe. We're about to set our feet on Mars!
And we can observe entire galaxies in detail! Of course we know actually just a little bit of the Universe. But don't forget that the Universe is practically infinite.
So, knowing a little bit about something infinite is a huge deal. And it gets better when we compare to the science from the past that barely was crawling to discover the things about the Universe. And mankind has always made use of science to explain things.
For instance: Formerly we used legends, miths, stories. Basically every myth that's ever existed on Earth has it's own explanation about how the Moon appeared. And they vary clearly from each other.
Because obviously, they were conceived by many folks from very different cultures. The chinese believed the Universe came up thanks to a cosmic egg that kept Ying and Yang. When the egg crashed, there emerged Pan Ku - the first being in Universe.
Pan Ku had bad luck and even though trying hard, he cracked in many pieces and so these pieces transformed into the world we live. Pan Ku's blood became the rivers, his hair became grass, his sweat became rain, and so on and so forth. The same happened to stars up above.
His left eye became the Sun, his right eye became the Moon, and that originated day and night. But we have a few flaws in that story! I mean many flaws, this story contains a lot of them.
The thing is, the chinese didn't know that between the creation of the Sun and the Moon it had been thirty million years. Even the indiginous tupi-guarani tribes had their own way to tell that tale. For the Tupis, the origin of our planet was connected to Tupã who one day came down to earth and created seas, rivers and trees.
But there didn't exist the night yet So he created the Moon to illuminate the darkness. Alright, those stories are pretty cute, but they don't really explain HOW the Moon appeared. And there is where our friend comes in: [singing] SCIENCE!
Through time, science has gained space in society and started to be used to explain phenomenons we had no idea how they occured. And that started exactly in one of those ancient civilizations. Scientists from Babylon, Greece, mayan and other folks started observing the sky carefully.
Centuries went on, and the knowledge of men about the Universe expanded. We learned the Earth spins by itself, and that Earth and all other planets spin around the Sun. And so another thing appeared: the telescope, on XVII century, so we could observe stars closely.
Since then, our knowledge about the Universe has evolved day by day. Nowadays what we know about the Moon would drive any scientist from that time just crazy! We already learned that it is bigger than it looks.
The Moon's diameter is almost 3500 km long! That is about 27% the Earth's diameter. We also know that what's on the Moon's soil and even what it's core is made of.
Do you know what else we found out? How it formed! Well, at least we have an idea how it happened.
After scientists discovered the material of the rocks on the Moon was very much alike the rocks here on Earth, it was clear the origin of the Moon was linked with the origin of our planet, anyhow. For us to understand that, we need to rewind to a time when our Solar System was still forming. Four billion and a half years ago there was not much around in this part of the Universe.
There was no Sun, no planet. . .
Everything that existed around here was an enormous gas and dust spacial cloud. In it's core the number of gas and dust was too high and since every little piece of dust had it's own gravity all these elements that were nearby each other started attracting themselves and merging. Meanwhile these elements grouped up they collided, and that formed heat.
That heat incrieased by the time, giving birth to the star we know as [singing] OUR SUN! Wonderful. Our gas cloud now had a star.
But. . .
*Warning alarm* what about the rest of the Solar System? Let's go back to our dust cloud. After the formation of the Sun this cloud of dust started to flatten.
We can think of it as pizza dough. While that dough spins, it gets flatter and rounder. And that dusty space cloud does just that.
In it's center was the Sun. On the further away outer parts there were dust and gases that were not attracted to the star. But look, they also started to merge!
Each bigger group of dust formed a [singing] PLANET! That got into orbit with the [singing] SUN! One of those planets was our Earth!
But it was very different from Earth we know. It was basically made of lava and rocks. So it wasn't totally solid nor liquid.
It was like an enormous big hot orb made of honey. All of other planets in the Solar System were transforming. It was happening with Mercury, Uranus, even with a little fellow called: Theia!
When the planets formed in the Solar System one of them, known as Theia, was at the same distance from the Sun as Earth. That means, Earth and Theia were neighbors and shared the same orbit. Well, at first it wasn't much a big of a deal.
There are a few spots on Earths orbit in which the gravity of our planet and the Sun's cancel each other completely. Theia was just at that spot. So it wasn't getting closer to Earth, nor to the Sun.
For around thirty million years our neighbor was quietly at that spot. But just as Earth, Theia was getting bigger. One fine day, it's size was bigger than half of Earth.
And that was enough for it to escape that point of neutral gravity. It's orbit became unstable. The colliding with Earth was just a matter of time.
Planets in formation are constantly bombarded by objects that come from space. Like meteors or little asteroids. And that is normal and has happened to Earth while forming.
But the bigger part of those impacts were not strong enough to bother Earth. But we are talking about a planet the size of Mars that came out of it's orbit and came right on our planet's direction hitting Earth at around forty thousand km per hour. The damage was big.
Theia, that was smallar than Earth, lost out. One part of its core sinked into Earth and got absorbed by our planet's own core. But the power of that impact made that the rest of the planet and huge pieces of Earth's surface got thrown into space.
Those fragments from both planets stabilized on Earth's orbit and slowly gathered up and merged. So there was born our dear [singing] MOON! The impacts of spacial objects continued for a long time.
And the one who suffered most was the Moon. The Moon has no atmosphere to burn those objects attracted by it. So poor Moon got hurt at every new impact.
And there is where it's craters came from, those holes on the Moon. I mean, not from that alone. .
. There is a theory that says the wreck pieces of Theia and Earth could have formed two different Moons. But through time, they would have collided and the pieces of the smaller one would've been absorbed by the bigger one that got even bigger and marked as such.
Who knows maybe someday this theory can be proved or denied. But meanwhile, our Moon keeps getting farther away from our planet. Now, why does that happen?
When the Moon formed up in our sky, it's distance to Earth was of 22 km. Today it's distance is of 384. 000 km.
Just a little bit far away, right? Even though 38. 000 km may seem a lot, truth is that the Moon is still very close to Earth.
So one's gravity influences on the others existence. As if it was a big gravitational hug, so beautiful. We all know that the Moon is responsible for the tides in the seas.
Actually the Sun is as well, but in a more subtle way. The tide levels are always changing because the Moon pulls the ocean that is closer to it. The ocean on the other side of Earth is also pulled, but with less strength.
So it gets farther from the Moon. For us here on Earth it's as if the Moon pulled one and pushed the other one making the planet look like an egg. Now the moon affects the oceans, but also Earth affects the Moon.
The oceans on the tip of this 'egg' are never 100% synchronized with the Moon. That is because Earth's rotation movement. Earth turns around it's center faster than the Moon spins around the Earth.
So since Earth is faster, the rotation movement of our planet brings the tips of that 'egg' forward and faster than the Moon. But the Moon cannot be behind! So it start's to turn a little bit faster to follow Earth along and this increase of speed brings the Moon farther away from Earth.
It's like a roundabout. Remember the roundabout from school? The faster the roundabout is, the stronger is the feeling of being pushed away from it.
But look how weird it is. . .
It also makes Earth spin slower because that change of tides makes some kind of a friction between the surface of the planet and the ocean. That causes a loss of energy from Earth. So we can say it's as if this energy gets stolen by the Moon that is spinning faster by the time.
Soon, eventually, those speeds will equal. And the Moon's orbit will be completely stable. But it's a pity we won't be here to see it happen.
Because before that, the Sun will become a giant red star very much bigger and hotter. And we all, human beings, little animals, plants, Moon. .
. Are going to die burning. Chill out because that is just going to happen in a billion years.
And I could talk about that but I think it's best to leave it to the next episode. Most important is that now you know HOW THE MOON CAME TO BE! And this was our first Nostalgia Science!
Once again, if you liked this new project and want me to continue, don't forget to leave your 'like' and subscribe to the chanel! I want to ask you to follow me on Instagram @fecastanhari and comment about what you think about this new project, I want to hear from you. Go there and talk to me, because I want feedback from you all.
And I'll leave it here, thanks for watching. And remember: Always be curious! Thanks!
