PBS Space Time asks 'Why Is The World Rushing Back To The Moon?' for National Moon Day 2024

Happy National Moon Day, the 55th anniversary of Apollo 11 landing on the Moon! For this year's celebration, I'm revisiting CNBC explains 'Why The World Is Rushing Back To The Moon' with PBS Space Time phrasing the subject as a question, Why Is The World Rushing Back To The Moon?

The Moon has been one of the most important theoretical stepping stones to our understanding of the universe. We’ve long understood that it could also be our literal stepping stone: humanity’s first destination beyond our atmosphere.

PBS's video is definitely more focused on the science than CNBC's, but it did examine the geopolitics enough for me to repeat what I wrote in January: "I'll take a space race between the U.S. and China if it motivates the U.S. to return to the Moon and spurs us to go on to Mars." Also, it let its geek flag fly with the Dune and Star Wars references. I'm O.K. with that.

Host Matt O'Dowd mentioned a lunar telescope, so here's the video for it, PBS Space Time asking What NEW SCIENCE Would We Discover with a Moon Telescope?

In order to see the faint light from objects in deepest space, astronomers go to the darkest places on the planet. In order to listen to their quite radio signals, they head as far from any radio-noisy humans as possible. But there’s nowhere on the earth, or even orbiting the Earth, that’s far enough to hear to the faint radio hum from the time before stars. In fact, we may need to build a giant radio telescope in the quietest place in the solar system—the far side of the moon.

As O'Dowd pointed out, scientists and others have been proposing radio telescopes on the far side of the Moon since the 1960s. They even appear in Larry Niven's Known Space stories (longtime readers should have expected me to mention that). Just the same, O'Dowd described a scientific reason for building them that I hadn't heard before, so I learned something new. As I'm fond of writing, it's always a good day when I learn something new.

O'Dowd also mentioned the formation of the Moon as the result of the collision of a Mars-sized planet with the very early Earth. The NEW SCIENCE of Moon Formation describes the latest ideas about this in detail.

Einstein once asked whether “the moon exists only when I look at it?". It was rhetorical objection to the idea that measurement in quantum mechanics causes reality to become real. But there was a time when the moon didn’t exist, and then hours later suddenly did. At least, according to the latest simulations of its formation.

I've already watched this video and shown it to one of my geology classes as an example of the power of modeling, so I hope my readers learn something new from watching it.

That wraps up this year's celebration of Moon Day. Here's to sharing more progress on returning to the Moon for next year's observance. In the meantime, stay tuned for an examination of this year's Emmy nominees for Outstanding Commercial as the Sunday entertainment feature.