MYSTERIOUS MOON
Photo taken March 24, 2024, JPP
“For my part I know nothing with any certainty, but the sight of the stars makes me want to dream.”
The Moon holds many secrets and mysteries that have captivated the human imagination for centuries. Ancient cultures around the world have myths that speak of a time "before the Moon appeared in the sky," as if one day it simply materialized. At first glance, this seems absurd—but a closer look at the Moon’s unique characteristics compared to other planetary bodies reveals that it truly is an anomaly.
For instance, the Moon is about a quarter the size of Earth—an unusually large ratio for a planet and its satellite. No other known planets in our solar system, nor any observed exoplanets, exhibit this kind of arrangement. This striking size relationship, along with the Moon's specific distance from Earth, is what allows for the phenomenon of total solar eclipses. By sheer coincidence—or perhaps by design—the Moon is almost exactly the right size to completely obscure the Sun during an eclipse, leaving only the glowing corona visible.
“Coincidence and intention are two sides of a tapestry, my Lord. You may find one more agreeable to look at, but you cannot say one is true and the other is false.”
During the Apollo missions of the 1960s and '70s, NASA sought to study the Moon's composition by installing seismometers on its surface. On November 20, 1969, scientists deliberately crashed the ascent stage of the Lunar Module to measure the resulting seismic activity. What they discovered was astonishing: the Moon "rang like a bell" for nearly an hour. This unexpected resonance led to speculation about the Moon’s density and interior structure, even fueling theories that it might be at least partially hollow. While many of these theories are highly speculative, the data remains intriguing.
Another curious lunar feature is the shape of its craters. On Earth, impact craters typically form concave depressions, resembling shallow bowls. But on the Moon, many craters have unnaturally flat bottoms, as if the impacting objects could only penetrate to a certain depth before being halted by an impenetrable layer beneath the surface. This raises questions about the Moon's subsurface composition and structure.
Yet another anomaly was discovered in lunar soil samples brought back by Apollo astronauts. The regolith (moon dust) collected from the surface was found to be older than the material beneath it. This contradicts the natural expectation that deeper layers should be older than those on the surface. What could have caused this unusual layering? It remains an open question.
These are just a few of the oddities surrounding the Moon—there are many more, some even more perplexing than these. Such mysteries have led to wild theories about the Moon's origins and possible purpose. While some ideas are undoubtedly far-fetched, others point to legitimate questions about the Moon’s history.
“The moon puts on an elegant show, different every time in shape, colour, and nuance.”
One particular mystery, seemingly unrelated at first, eventually led me back to the Moon in an unexpected way. It started with a simple observation about our calendar and has been staring me in the face my whole life and I never even thought about it.
Let’s begin with a question: How many limbs does an octopus have? Eight. Just as an octagon has eight sides. And how many years are in a decade? Ten. These words have Latin roots—"octo" means eight, "novem" means nine, and "decem" means ten. So why, then, are October, November, and December the tenth, eleventh, and twelfth months of our calendar, rather than the eighth, ninth, and tenth?
The answer, as I discovered, is rather uninspiring—it has to do with tax collection schedules in ancient Rome and later calendar reforms. Many of our months are named for Roman figures (March for Mars, July for Julius Caesar, August for Augustus), yet this seemingly arbitrary shift in numerical alignment has persisted for centuries.
This discrepancy led me to research what kind of calendar might have existed before the Roman modifications. That’s when I stumbled upon the lunar calendar, and suddenly, everything clicked.
The lunar calendar is based on Moon cycles and follows a 13-month system instead of 12. If you divide 365 days by 13 months, you get 28 days per month, making each month equal in length. Even more remarkably, this system aligns with natural rhythms—each date would always fall on the same day of the week every month (e.g., the 10th of every month would always be a Tuesday).
This system also accounts for the "missing" day—364 days fit perfectly into 13 months, leaving a single "day out of time" to celebrate the New Year. Interestingly, this aligns with the natural world as well—certain species, like turtles, exhibit this pattern. An adult turtle’s shell often has 13 large plates (scutes) on its back, surrounded by 28 smaller ones, mirroring the lunar cycle in nature.
“Three things cannot be long hidden: the sun, the moon, and the truth.”
The deeper I delved, the more it became apparent that the Moon has been a quiet but ever-present influence over timekeeping, mythologies, and even life itself. Whether by chance or by some greater design, its existence shapes our world in ways we are only beginning to comprehend.
Perhaps the Moon is not just a passive celestial body orbiting our planet. Maybe it is a key—a silent guardian of knowledge, waiting for us to decipher its riddles.
Photos taken a year apart at the Gulf and at the Great Lakes of a full moon over the water.
