Provide a 6 pages analysis while answering the following question: The Origin of the Moon. Prepare this assignment according to the guidelines found in the APA Style Guide. An abstract is required. Today, people more or less look upon the moon as ‘eye candy’ and pay little attention to its cycles. This was not the case for our ancestors who carefully monitored its movements. Several calendars of ancient civilizations were based on the cycles of the moon and some are currently such as the Islamic calendar. The date of the Chinese New Year is set by the cycle of the moon. The Sun was used by man until relatively recently to measure short intervals of time but the moon was judged more reliable for long-time measurements. What is commonly known as a month is based on the 29-day cycle of the moon. The term ‘month’ is derived from the term ‘month.’ “Without the moon’s cycle we might have ended up with a very different way of keeping track of time, and we most probably would have called it something other than a month” (Miles & Peters, 2001). The Christian celebration of Easter is calculated by determining the first Sunday following the first occurrence of a ‘full’ moon subsequent to the beginning of the Spring Equinox. The reason for this is that Christians had traditionally used the light of the ‘full’ moon to aid in their pilgrimage to their holy lands for Easter.

Though the moon is the closest object to Earth and has been explored by man, questions remain regarding its exact origins and whether or not life ever existed on or within it or if it could sustain life. It was discovered more than a century ago that the moon’s density is less than Earth’s. Galileo noticed craters on the moon’s surface through the use of the telescope in the 1600s. Currently, more is known about the moon than any other celestial body, the knowledge that was inconceivable until recent times (Hamilton, 2005). Prior to the common use of telescopes, when the moon was viewed unaided, all that could be discerned were two distinct kinds of topography, dark and bright areas configured in a way that produced the illusion of the ‘Man in the Moon.