There are those things that you kind of know, but never really think about.
Like the far side of the moon. One side – or to be correct 82% of one side – of the moon is never visible from the Earth.
I’ve watched 2001: A Space Odyssey and even then didn’t think much about it. Like sure, one side is never visible from Earth.
Never?!
But then there is this moment when you are figuratively hit by a grand piano released 18 stories above you as you suddenly realize how weird this is.
There is one side of the moon that is permanently hidden from sight! And this is real!
But why?!?
Doesn’t the moon rotate around its axis?
It does, but do to tidal locking it takes the moon just as long to rotate around its own axis as it does to revolve around the earth. Make a dot on an orange and try to rotate it around a pen while making sure the dot always faces the pen. You can only achieve this by constantly rotating the orange around its axis as you go around the pen. If you don’t want to play with food, use a bottle or check the GIF on the Wikipedia page about tidal locking.
Anyway, the result is that we always see the same side of the moon. Tidal locking is a natural (not random) effect and therefore in our solar system most moons that are close to their planets are tidally locked.
So far so good, but then I googled an image of the far side. It was placed right next to an image of the near side. And guess what? They look completely different.
I guess you already knew this.
I didn’t, and again I think it’s really weird. There are some theories floating around about why this is, but nothing is proven yet. Another real unsolved mystery
Regardless of unsolved or solved mystery, to me, it seems we have lost our imagination. With the ever new records and wild news, we don’t recognize the ‘normal’ wonders because we don’t take the time to take them in. Just open and close a zipper really slow and tell me that’s not fantastic.
Let me end with some last facts about the moon: Because the moon has no atmosphere, the sky is always black, and you can’t hear any sound. Shadows are pitch black even in bright daylight.