The moon is slowly moving away from earth at the rate of 3.8 centimeters a year. That means when Julius Caesar was looking at the moon, it was about 257 feet closer.
There is water on the moon in the form of ice.
When Apollo 12 deliberately crashed the Ascent Stage of its Lunar Module onto the Moon's surface, it was claimed that the Moon rang like a bell for an hour, leading to arguments that it must be hollow like a bell. Also seismologists stated that during some moon-quakes, they left the moon ringing like a bell.
Where did the moon come from? The most widely-accepted explanation is that the Moon was created when a planet sized rock named Theia, about the size of Mars, slammed into Earth shortly after the solar system began forming about 4.5 billion years ago. This gargantuan collision ejected debris from earth flinging it out into space only to be captured by the earth’s gravitational pull and slowly forming into our rather large moon perfectly placed in the heavens, not too big, not to small and at just the right distance to effect the earth with life friendliness. If the moon was further away, or much closer, or not there at all, we might not be here either. It’s as if someone or something placed the moon in exactly the right spot.
Deep below the moon's South Pole -Aitken basin (the largest preserved impact crater anywhere in the solar system), researchers have detected a gargantuan "anomaly" of heavy metal lodged in the mantle that is apparently altering the moon's gravitational field.
Gold, platinum and other metals known as highly siderophile ("iron-loving") elements are far more abundant in Earth's crust than they are in its natural satellite. That may seem odd, given the two worlds' shared history as a Mars sized asteroid slammed into the earth ejecting material that later formed the moon.
The moon stabilizes the earth’s axis. If earth had no moon, its axis would be unstable.
Ours is a moon with two faces: the nearside boasts a thinner and smoother crust, while the far side crust is thicker and dotted by impact craters left nearly undisturbed by lava flows.
Lately, researchers used models to explore what may be possible explanations for the stark differences. They argue that those distinctive sides could be the result of giant asteroid slamming into the moon and leaving a massive crater across the entire nearside.
So there are some amazing facts about the moon.
The early solar system was not a nice place and extremely hostile. Few planets were safe from great chunks of rock slamming into them. A huge heavenly body smashed into Uranus knocking it on its side, so compared to the other planets, Uranus is laying down. It also has rings and rotates from east to west as does Venus while the other planets rotate west to east.
Another odd sequence of events is that Uranus and Neptune actually switched places about four billion years ago. How do they know that? The same way that they know that Jupiter has a fluffy core instead of a solid one.
Mars was also slammed into by a giant asteroid hitting its South Pole and giving Mars a rather odd shape.
Yes the moon, in fact our own solar system is a strange place.