Back in November, the BBC aired a documentary called “Do We Really Need The Moon?” in which Dr. Maggie Aderin-Pocock (a Moon fanatic) explores our intimate relationship with the Moon. Besides causing the tides, the moon dictates the length of a day, the rhythm of the seasons and the very stability of our planet (the documentary originally aired in 2011). The Moon may even have played a role, through that stability, in allowing life to evolve into ever more complex organisms.
The Moon, as we know, is always on the move. It recedes from Earth by about 3.8 cm per year so, in the past it was much closer to the Earth and in the future it’ll be a lot farther away.
That it is now perfectly placed to sustain life and regulate its rhythms is pure luck, a cosmic coincidence (a bit like the Sun and Moon being the same size in the sky so we can enjoy solar eclipses).
Using computer graphics to summon up great tides and set the Earth spinning on its side, Aderin-Pocock implores us to look at the moon afresh: to see it not as an inert rock, but as a key player in the story of our planet, past, present and future.
The documentary is currently available to watch on YouTube. It doesn’t look like it was officially uploaded by the BBC so it could get pulled at any time. Watch it below while it’s still available.
Filed under: The Moon
