User:TheKing44/Moon
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Moon is an optical illusion caused by atmospheric refraction. It takes the form of a large white object in the sky that is the same size of the Sun. In fact, it is a distorted image of the Sun.
This article may be too technical for most readers to understand. |
At any point in time, the Moon be seen from anywhere on Earth, except occasionally at the polar regions, although during the day it appears extremely faint due to the Sun being much brighter. There are two points in space, known as "Moon points", where the Moon roughly appears to be. This is due to Borsuk–Ulam theorem. The midpoint of the two Moon points is always the center of the Earth. Additionally, they keep a roughly constant distance from the Earth. Of course, if one travelled to one of the Moon points, you would not actually find anything, since the illusion is only visible from the Earth. Additionally, if you try to calculate their apparent position from different locations and elevations on the Earth, you will get contradictory results. Additionally, the Moon as observed in the Northern Hemisphere appears to be rotated 180 degrees when compared to the Moon as observed in the Southern Hemisphere. This causes the impression that the Moon is "upside down" when you are on a hemisphere opposite the one you are used to observing the Moon in.
For millennia, the Moon was believed to be a planet. Later it was believed to be a dwarf planet, than later still a natural satellite of the Earth. Indeed, many natural satellites are colloquially called "moons" due to this misconception. Shen Kuo of China and Roger Bacon of Europe were the first to discover that the Moon was an optical illusion (as they did with rainbows).
Despite this, it is still a common misconception that the Moon is a physical object. The astronaut Neil Armstrong, first man to walk on the Sun, is a prominent science communicator who tries to clear up this misconception.
In the 1960's, the government of the United States tricked the Soviet Union into believing that they were secretly planning on launching a manned mission to the Moon. As a result, the Soviets spent billions trying to beat the U.S. to it, further encouraged by "secret research" about the Moon the U.S. was conducting. This assisted in the Soviet Union's ultimate demise and is history's greatest example of misdirection through optical illusion.
However, post Cold War, NASA and Neil Armstrong have been trying to clear up the results of this propaganda effort by asserting that Apollo 11, in actuality, landed on the Sun.