The Super Moon Phenomenon

Last night, people from different regions of the world waited for the rising of the super moon. As we all know from news and other information sites on the net, it’s an occurrence when the moon is at its closest approach to earth. Unfortunately, it was very cloudy from where we are last night so I failed to witness the rare event.

Many superstitious beliefs have spread about the super moon. Some say that it has something to do with the earthquake and tsunami that hit Japan two weeks ago and they say some similar disasters could occur in the following weeks too. They argue that the close distance between the earth and the moon would have strong influence on the earth’s and the moon’s gravitational connection, which might result in earthquakes and tsunamis.

However, scientists dispel that theory saying that there is no evidence that would link the super moon occurrence to natural disasters. For example, when the earthquake and tsunami hit Japan, the moon is at 400,000 kilometers from the earth and that is even farther than the average distance between the earth and the moon throughout the lunar cycle (wikipedia). Therefore, the possibility of the moon’s distance influencing the movement of the bedrock near Japan looks like far fetched.

Well, science is saying that super moon occurrences should not terrify us. In fact, I believe a super moon is a fascination. Perhaps, it’s what they call, a “lover’s moon”. It would have been a romantic night for lovers together under a bright and full super moon.

Image Above Courtesy Of:

http://earthsky.org/human-world/earthsky-22-the-march-19-supermoon