Understanding The Universe: Moon

Understanding The Universe: Moon

If you're ever lucky enough to visually experience the moon on a long late night drive; you can easily fall into the movement of awe or euphoria, what ever word you must use to describe the feeling of appreciation that this cosmological event is giving you, by looking at the beautiful color shifts from red-orange to white, or perhaps the cycle of full moon to new moon. We as the observer from earth get to look at this strange sphere floating in space by some long range force called gravity and deduce what external effects are changing this sphere's appearance. The amazing implication about searching the skies to understand the universe, even in Galileo's time, is that it offers us an improved version about how the universe began, and maybe how we can learn from it.



Taking the moon cycles into consideration, we can look back to stone painting records found from the Aurignacian  Culture of Europe, C. 32,000 B.C. (found on NASA website). They would use these recordings to help understand the natural cycles of their climate; very useful tool if you're trying to hunt for food, or perhaps to keep warm. If we were to time travel back into early modern man night skies, your only night light was the moon. Without it your field of vision is very limited. This is a great advantage on predators that have a tissue layer called Tapetum Lucidum in the back of their eye; which increases the amount of light available to the eye to give them night-vision. Being aware or predicting when the moon would rise up and be full or new moon has been an important survival skill.

The moon is 238,900 miles away from earth and is still moving away from us each year. Our moon is a natural stabilizer in our planets rotation and axial-tilt, of course it's slowly slowing us down due to the moving away vector of the moon, since the earth use to spin a lot faster during young earth and moon formation. The moon has also probably saved us from extreme or cataclysmic asteroid impacts (too bad the dinosaurs didn't get helped out). Even though the moon isn't being controlled by someone, us earth life-forms are listening to the universe and its elliptical motions.

So the next time you find yourself pondering at the moon and it's beautiful ancient light show, know that information is awaiting for your discovery!

Understanding The Universe

         If you ever find yourself pondering at the simple beauties of a nature such as a rainbow, sunset, waves, and any other natural phenomenons; you've just completed a thought experiment. It doesn't need to be complex or in-depth in the analytical sense since this elegant phenomenon has just thought you something new, even though it may not feel so. People who do take on the deeper path of understanding nature can do some beautiful and amazing things. We've all seen remarkable paintings that have captured stunning landscapes with vivid detail and lighting. If you could peer into the artwork (hand drawn art) you would see non-linear lines, shades to create lighting effects, and blending of colors to create this “mess” that adds up to re-create the captivating landscape.

It's our natural experiences that help us derive what we feel and see from the universe. Many people would argue that our senses can lie to us, but when we actually evaluate something on an intellectual level and test it with the scientific method. We gain a new piece of information on how the universe works on any subject matter. There's a beauty behind failure in the scientific world since the more you ask questions about something, the better you get to understanding the question, or perhaps how to re-think the question. To me this natural skill isn't something to take for granted since it truly allows us to immerse ourselves into something more than our modern day doings.

         From the beginning of modern day man, expanding back to 200,000 years from fossil records, we've developed tools. Pattern recognition has been a strong skill to use. It gave raise to knowledge of objects that seemed on a consistent sequence. For example, sunrise and sunset is a very useful pattern recognition if you want to hunt or collect things, while cosmic photons light up the land, since you needed to know how long the day light would last, or else potential dangers could arise. This is something we all experience each day. Our bodies now have natural sleep rhythms based on this survival skill. Number counting is another useful tool. Being able to know how much there is of something or the value that it carries is truly critical in our everyday living. Without the understanding of numbers how could we ever tie meaning to the shareable amount of crops we have or the amount of water we have to drink. We would probably just say (with arm expressions) “you have this much”.

         If we take time to actually stop and see what nature can offer to us, we can develop skills or obtain knowledge that will benefit us for the long run. So the next time you find yourself asking why the sky is blue, or why 1 is one; just know that the universe is trying to offer you a new piece of information. What is information? That's for another day...  

------Gonzalez Julian

        02/12/15