The moon is so easy on the eyes -- an absolute beauty in the night sky. Most nights I find peace through going outside and simply looking up at this glowing marvel. For me, I look up to find myself; knowing as much as I do about astronomy has given me a wonderful perspective on life. So when necessary, or simply whenever I can, I gaze up into the stars at the wonderful sight of the moon. It fills my mind with many thoughts, much of which has inspired quite a few of my previous articles. In fact, my first published article was directly based upon the moon and how it inspired Isaac Newton.
Speaking of inspiration, what else has the moon inspired? What modern significance does the moon hold on our daily life? We know that the moon affects tidal shifts in the ocean, that we learned throughout our lives. However, something that wasn't touched on in our days at school was how the moon affected time.
I hadn't realized the significance the moon had on time for a majority of my life. I never even thought about what exactly makes time; time. We know that science is based on observational facts and our attempt to explain said facts through experimentation. Yet time has existed since the dawn of time (pun intended). Throughout history many different scales for time measurement, while different, still revolved around the same basic concepts. Time is simply a measurement of repetition. Time must be measured from objects which repeat a motion otherwise time would not be measurable. So our basic elements of time, since early man, had to have been based off of simple repetition within our environment. So the observation of our seasons; winter, spring, summer, fall -- they all are different areas of time within a year because they repeat. A year is a measurement of time because, its a measurement of how long it takes to go from winter to winter, or scientifically -- the time it takes for the Earth to revolve around the Sun.
So we have our seasons and our year measured from the Sun's influence on the Earth; however the moon also influences time. The moon influences the weeks within a month due to its moon cycles. Each quarter moon cycle (the first and third quarter moon cycle) in combination with a half moon and full moon, represent the four weeks within a month. The moon also influences our days and nights. When the sun no longer is visible in our sky, we perceive this as night time. Many animals on Earth use the days and nights as a simple measurement of time as well. For some animals the night time symbolizes the time to hunt, or the time to sleep.
I'm sure many will say this is all common knowledge, but it may not be so common to think about in this perspective. However its something that people may not really notice, since these repetitions are apart of our daily lives. Some people may not know that the moon isn't only out at night, it is within our sight during the day as well, we just don't notice it as much. Regardless, our environment affects every part of our lives whether we realize it or not. This is just an attempt to draw more attention to the little things in life, which mean a great deal in the grand scheme of things. After all, time is constant within every living creature in the universe, we might as well know why right?
