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How does the moon effect the earth and the sun

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How does the moon effect the earth and the sun

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The moons effects the earth because when ever there is a full moon or a new moon there are high tides. The moon doesn't effect the sun.

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However, it's the Moon that matters because it is closer to the Earth. There is a much larger difference in the Moon's gravitational field between the Earth's near surface, the Earth's center, and the Earth's far surface than for the Sun.

This means that the Moon's contribution to the Earth's tides is roughly double that of the Sun. The reason the Moon has a greater effect on the Earth's tides is not the magnitude of its gravitational force over the Earth but because it's closer to us than the Sun. And because it is much closer, the Moon is constantly attracting waters of the Earth.

The gravitational attraction between the Earth and the Sun is more than 177 times that between the Earth and the Moon but, because the Sun is 390 times further from the Earth than is the Moon, the Moon rules the tidal movement.

There's a major difference - 6 percent - in its gravitational pull on the water on the near side vs. the far side, while for the Sun the difference is much less (even though the Sun's gravitational force is greater).

It's the difference from near to far side that's important in creating tides, not the absolute strength of the gravitational pull. The Sun's impact on the tides is 44 percent that of the Moon, i.e., slightly less than half.

When the Moon is in line with one side of the Earth, it pulls on the water, causing a high tide. Because the Earth rotates on its axis, the Moon completes one orbit in our sky every 24 hours and 50 minutes. Thus, we observe two tidal peaks - as well as two tidal troughs - roughly every 12 hours.

Since the Moon moves around the Earth, it is not always in the same place at the same time each day. So, each day, the times for high and low tides change by 50 minutes.

When the Moon, Earth and Sun are perfectly aligned, the sum of the gravitational pull of the Sun and Moon cause maximum tide or extreme tides.

When the Moon lies between the Earth and the Sun, we observe a New Moon. When the Moon is on the opposite side of the Earth from the Sun, a Full Moon is visible. In both of these cases, tides are 20 percent lower and higher, respectively, than the normal tides.

The Guinness Book of World Records declared that Bay of Fundy's Burntcoat Head, in Canada, has the greatest mean spring range with 47.5 feet (14.5 meters) and an extreme range of 53.5 feet (16.3 meters).

Tides change our favorite waves and spots, but they also alter the way we surf them. With time, experience and observation, you'll notice that tides can be more important than the classic swell variables of height and period.

Many times - if not always - the ideal conditions of a surf break are a sensitive combination of tides, swell, and wind. That is why planning your surf session around the tides is, quite often, highly stressful.

In many breaks, and with the right combination of swell and wind, surfing is only possible in low and high tides. In other wave peaks, mid-tide conditions will guarantee the best surf.

These variables can be considered, along with the ocean floor and shore geography, to establish standard patterns for above-average surfing days.

But the bottom line is that surfers must adapt to tide times to score the best waves in a relatively short time window.

Discover the tidal "Rule of Twelfths" in surfing. For more information, consult the tide times, charts, and tables for your region.

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How do the Moon and Sun affect tides and surfing?

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However, it's the Moon that matters because it is closer to the Earth. There is a much larger difference in the Moon's gravitational field between the Earth's near surface, the Earth's center, and the Earth's far surface than for the Sun. This means that the Moon's contribution to the Earth's tides is roughly double that of the Sun.

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The moon is orbiting around the earth. It takes 27 days for the moon to orbit completely around the earth. To us the moon seems to orbit us every 29 days.

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Half of the Moon's surface is always illuminated by sunlight. However, just how much of that light we can see from our point of view on Earth varies every day and this is what we refer to as a Moon phase.

Sun Lights Up the Moon

The Moon does not radiate its own light, but the Moon's surface reflects the Sun's rays.

Primary and Intermediate Phases

In Western Culture, we divide the lunar month into four primary and four intermediate Moon phases.

Technically, the primary Moon phases occur at a specific moment in time, and the intermediate Moon phases take up the time in between.
Opposite phases on the far side of the Moon
New Moon

New Moon is the first primary phase and it occurs the moment when the Sun and Moon are aligned, with the Sun and Earth on opposite sides of the Moon.

A New Moon cannot normally be seen from Earth since only the dark side of the Moon faces our planet at this point. Sometimes, if the New Moon is close to the Lunar nodes of its path, it can cause a Solar Eclipse.

The greatest difference between high and low tide, also known as spring tides, takes place around New Moon and Full Moon.

Waxing Crescent Moon

The moment a thin sliver of the Moon becomes visible after New Moon is the beginning of the first intermediate phase, the Waxing Crescent Moon.

In the past, this used to be called New Moon while the darkest phase was called Dark Moon. This traditional definition of New Moon is still in use in some cultures, defining the beginning of the months for instance in the Islamic calendar.

The rest of the Moon is also sometimes faintly visible during most of this phase because Earth also reflects sunlight onto the Moon. This phenomenon is called earthshine or Da Vinci glow, and it is most noticeable in April and May.

First Quarter Moon

First Quarter Moon is the second primary Moon phase and it is defined as the moment the Moon has reached the first quarter of its orbit around Earth, hence the name. It is also called Half Moon as we can see exactly 50% of the Moon's surface illuminated. Whether you see the left or right half illuminated, depends on several factors, including your location.

The smallest difference between high and low tide, also known as neap tides, occurs around the 2 Quarter Moons.

Waxing Gibbous Moon

The second intermediate phase, the Waxing Gibbous Moon, lasts until the next primary phase. Waxing means that it is getting bigger. Gibbous refers to the shape, which is larger than the semicircle shape of the Moon at First Quarter, but smaller than a full circle.

Full Moon

The Full Moon appears in the night sky when the Sun and the Moon are aligned on opposite sides of Earth.
How can Full Moon be in the daytime?
Technically, this alignment only lasts a moment. However, the Moon can appear to be full a day before or after while more than 98% of the Moon's disc is illuminated.

When a Full Moon occasionally passes through Earth's shadow, it will cause a lunar eclipse.

When the Full Moon comes close to the points of its orbit that are closest or farthest away from Earth, we call it a Supermoon or Micromoon, respectively.
What is the Moon Illusion?
Waning Gibbous Moon

The next intermediate Moon phase is the Waning Gibbous Moon. The portion of the visible half of the Moon illuminated decreases during this period.

Third Quarter Moon

The Third Quarter Moon occurs the moment the opposite half of the Moon is illuminated compared to the First Quarter Moon.

Waning Crescent Moon

The Waning Crescent Moon. The Sun illuminates less than half of the visible part of the Moon during this Moon phase and you can sometimes see earthshine on the rest of the Moon towards the end.

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Half of the Moon's surface is always illuminated by sunlight. However, just how much of that light we can see from our point of view on Earth varies every day and this is what we refer to as a Moon phase.

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The moon is farther away than you think. It is 238,855 miles (384,400 kilometers) away from earth

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The moon is incredibly important to the Earth. It provides the basis for many calendars and affects the oceans' tides. But how did it get there?

It's an answer we thought we knew, more or less. But now a group of scientists have used complex modelling to propose a new theory - and it involves a violent collision that vapourized much of our planet.

"Despite smart people working on this problem for 50 years, we're still discovering surprisingly basic things about the earliest history of our world," lead researcher Matija Cuk said in a news release.

The findings, published this week in the journal Nature, were co-authored by scientists at the University of California, Davis; Harvard University; the University of Maryland and the SETI Institute - an organization perhaps better known for its efforts to find alien life - where Cuk is a researcher.

"It's quite humbling," he said.

Old theory: boom

For decades, one of the leading explanations about the moon's origin has been the "impact theory."

The story goes that billions of years ago, Earth and a Mars-sized protoplanet called Theia collided.

The debris formed a ring around the Earth's equator and was eventually drawn together by gravity to form the moon.

The moon would have formed very close to Earth, eventually drifting farther away.

It sounds nice and tidy, but there are some facts that throw a monkey wrench into this theory - chiefly, the moon's chemistry and weird angle.

"This idea came around before computers could really do detailed simulations of planet formation," senior author Sarah Stewart, professor of earth and planetary sciences at the University of California, Davis, told CBC News.

Computer simulations now show that the impact would have created the moon mostly out of Theia's debris, but scientists have since learned that the Earth and moon have strikingly similar chemical makeups.

"So that really put a brake on the giant impact hypotheses," Stewart said.

What's more, had the moon formed from debris around the equator, we would expect it to orbit along the equator today. In fact, its orbit is tilted five degrees.

"This large tilt is very unusual. Until now, there hasn't been a good explanation," astronomer and co-author Douglas Hamilton, of the University of Maryland, said in a statement.

"But we can understand it if the Earth had a more dramatic early history than we previously suspected."

New theory: much bigger boom

Dramatic, indeed.

Under the new, tweaked theory, the collision would have occurred at a much sharper angle and been much more intense.

"It takes a lot of energy to change an orbit," Stewart said.

The new model proposes a high-energy impact that would have been so violent that it vapourized not only Theia, but much of the Earth as well.

Vapour and molten material would have formed a massive cloud, 500 times the size of today's Earth. Some of that material would have cooled and fallen back to Earth, while the rest would have formed the moon.

What's more, the bigger collision would have been so powerful, and at such an angle, that it knocked Earth's rotational axis off by between 60 and 80 degrees and caused the planet to spin so rapidly that days only lasted two hours.

Slowly, the moon moved away from the Earth, which slowed down and turned somewhat upright again, the new model proposes.

"Over billions of years, the moon's [orbital] tilt slowly decayed down to the five degrees we see today," Cuk said. "So today's five-degree tilt is a relic and a signature of a much steeper tilt in the past."

Still, there are questions left unanswered.

The next step is to better understand the chemical makeup of the moon - exactly why and how Theia's and Earth's debris combined.

"We have work in progress on that part, but until that comes out, I don't think people will buy in completely," Stewart said.

The benefit of the new model, she said, is it that accounts for the moon's current orbit without relying on some as-of-yet unknown intervening steps.

"You don't have to have something else come by and doing anything to the Earth. It really is just a giant impact, and then stand back and watch."

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Where did the moon come from? Scientists posit new theory

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The moon is incredibly important to the Earth. It provides the basis for many calendars and affects the oceans' tides. But how did it get there? It's an answer we thought we knew, more or less. But now a group of scientists have used complex modelling to propose a new theory - and it involves a violent collision that vapourized much of our planet.

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The moon shines because its surface reflects light from the sun. And despite the fact that the moon seems to shine very brightly, it only reflects 3 to 12 percent of the suns light.

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The Moon is Front and Center During a Total Solar Eclipse

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In the lead-up to a total solar eclipse, most of the attention is on the sun, but Earth's moon also has a starring role.

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Since the moon has a very weak atmosphere, many asteroids, meteorite, and comets strikes have hit leaving behind craters. The temperature is about -260 degrees Fahrenheit (-127 degrees Celsius).

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For as long as humans have lived on Earth, the moon has been our nearest celestial companion, and a rich natural canvas for the human imagination. When the Earth passes between the moon and the sun early on April 15, resulting in a total lunar eclipse, darkness will cover the craters and mountains in which humans, for millennia, have spotted faces and figures.

In Western cultures, perhaps the most familiar vision is "the man in the moon." In East Asian cultures, moon-gazers might point to a rabbit; in India, a pair of hands. From ancient times to the modern era, from different spots on the globe, a tree, a woman, and a toad have all been found hiding in the moon's shining face.

"When you first look at the moon, you pretty much see light areas and dark areas, and some are more gray than others," said planetary geologist Cassandra Runyon of the College of Charleston, in South Carolina. "The lighter areas are the mountains, often referred to as the highlands. The dark areas are volcanic-the mare, which is Latin for 'seas.'"

In the contours and colors of the lunar surface, people can find meaningful figures for the same reason that we "see" the face of Elvis in a potato chip or Jesus in a grilled cheese sandwich. It's just the way our brains work.

"The brain is really a predictive organ," said Nouchine Hadjikhani, a neuroscientist at Harvard University. "We try to find sense in the noise all the time, and we fill things with information."

The phenomenon of seeing faces where there are none is a form of information-filling called pareidolia. It's something all humans do.

Joel Voss, a cognitive neuroscientist at Northwestern University, Chicago, is studying how our brains help us ascribe meaning to otherwise random assortments of shapes and lines. In studies, he has presented research participants with computer-generated squiggly lines-meaningless shapes derived from triangles or circles-and asked subjects whether the shapes resemble something meaningful.

"About half end up being meaningful, on average," Voss said.

Voss used fMRI-a neuroimaging procedure that measures brain activity by tracking changes in blood flow- to study the brain regions activated when a person sees the squiggles. He found that the same areas involved in processing actual, meaningful images lit up when the squiggles were viewed.

"To your visual system, there's no difference between a picture of a frog and some weird collection of dots and lines you've never seen before that vaguely resembles a frog," Voss said. "Your brain is very happy to treat those things as the same thing."
Brain Wiring and Storytelling
Why do our brains do this? In The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark, astronomer Carl Sagan offered a possible explanation. Perhaps recognizing faces, even in vague shapes, was evolutionarily advantageous, Sagan suggested: "Those infants who a million years ago were unable to recognize a face smiled back less, were less likely to win the hearts of their parents, and less likely to prosper," he wrote.

Voss proposes another explanation. Think of the human brain as a flexible, all-purpose machine meant to succeed in whatever random environment it inhabits. To triumph in strange places, Voss says, the brain must be able to quickly process unfamiliar visual stimuli-like new shapes and lines-and figure out what's worth paying attention to. Seeing faces and figures is merely a consequence of the brain's tendency to match stored information with new stimuli.

"Although we see the world as this very structured, object-containing environment, it's really just a bunch of random lines and shapes and colors," he said. "The reason why it's so easy to see meaningful things in nonsense shapes is that those nonsense shapes have a lot of the same features as meaningful things."

In scientific terms, what a moon-gazer sees may come down to brain wiring. But through the ages, what civilizations perceived in the moon's face took on greater significance, in the preservation of cultures, origin stories, and beliefs.

"The night sky is one of the greatest storytelling panoramas," said Adrienne Mayor, a science historian at Stanford University in California who studies how ancient cultures interpreted data and derived meaning from the natural world.

"Things in the natural world are the hints and clues for the story," Mayor said. "When you see the moon, you remember the story you heard when you were a kid and you pass it on."

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For as long as humans have lived on Earth, the moon has been our nearest celestial companion, and a rich natural canvas for the human imagination. When the Earth passes between the moon and the sun early on April 15, resulting in a total lunar eclipse, darkness will cover the craters and mountains in which humans, for millennia, have spotted faces and figures.

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The moon has a very weak atmosphere, called an exosphere. It does not have any protection from the sun's radiation or impacts from meteors.

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Picture of blue earth seen from the moon surface stock photo, images and stock photography.. Image 39598346.