Saturday 19 March 2011

Super Moon

At this time of the year, we celebrate the new life flooding into the environs of Husborne Crawley. But it's all a little slow this year. The Daffs haven't really kicked off, only the apricots are in blossom and the Beaker Fertility Folk are confining themselves to barracks until Mayday.

But it's Super Moon later!  Can you imagine? Not your boring old Full Moon  - beautiful, yellow, scary, sure - but just full.  This is a Super Moon! 14% bigger!

Guaranteed to produce earthquakes in Japan two weeks before it happens, and other related disasters, because it's a Super Moon.
Let's just, for a moment, consider the scientific load of foetid dingo's kidneys we're dealing with here. "Did the Supermoon cause earthquake?" asks the Sun. No. No, it didn't. It didn't because even if a "Super Moon" could cause an earthquake (it can't) the earthquake didn't happen now, it happened then. When there wasn't a full moon, and the moon wasn't at perigee. It was just somewhere in its orbit, and crescent. Not a super moon, and not even gibbous - let alone full. No, it didn't cause it. Or, to put it into full scientific rigour - no. For goodness' sake get a grip.

Now it actually is Super Moon, can that cause extreme weather, earthquakes, volcanoes and worldwide woe? No. It it can't. It can't because it's not actually that super. We get full moons every month with no discernible ill effects (apart from the werewolf hauntings on the Ridgmont Road, but I reckon that's a co-incidence). And we get the Moon at perigee monthly also. This one's slightly closer.  So yippee. We even get the "Super Moon" every 18 years or so - and yet, after billions of years of Super Moons, the Earth is still spinning and we're all here. To be on the safe side, I should say that any disasters that do happen today will be a co-incidence.

I'm gonna add this to the "ooh let's get irrationally excited" pile in the Community compost heap. Alongside the "Planets in alignment end the world" scare we get every few years. Though I'd better worry. That pile of compost is getting pretty high. And the Super Moon could cause it spontaneously to combust. It does things like that.

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