Monday, October 24, 2016

What if the Earth had Two Moons?

I've often wondered this, since I'm a writer, and I like to think about these things. Especially since I've been working on a fantasy book with a planet that has two luna sized moons, and I needed to do research to even see if that's possible. Anyway, I found this really interesting article which I recommend you check out on Universe Today, about the possibilities of two moons orbiting a planet our size. 


The Earth and Moon as seen from Mariner 10 en route to Venus.
Image credit: NASA/courtesy of nasaimages.org
Reading the article, I discovered, as I expected that life would be very different. Two moons, for one thing, would create a massive difference in high and low tides, measured, according to the article, in thousands of feet. I'm assuming that's vertical feet, not thousands of feet in and out on a slightly tilted shoreline. If I'm right, that's a whole lot! 

Personally, though it's interesting to speculate about what life would be like somewhere else, I'm perfectly happy to live on this little, mostly blue, planet, with a chunk of a moon that's a whole 1/81st the size of this planet, which helps give us the lovely seasons that we have. 
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http://www.universetoday.com/92148/what-if-the-earth-had-two-moons/http://www.universetoday.com/92148/what-if-the-earth-had-two-moons/

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