I think the reason some people might believe this claim is because we’re taught in school that the moon’s gravity causes the tides. I think the reasoning goes, “well if the moon’s gravity can affect the tides, surely it can affect smaller things too”
It’s a very small force. If you consider such small forces to have an effect, you must also consider gravitational pull of objects that have the same or a larger effect: passing trucks, entering buildings, passing a mountain, going upstairs, going underground.
Also, all movement will cause same type of force on you (acceleration) plus change your body’s alignment to Earth gravity has a large effect on gravity’s pull on organs: shifting position, leaning, walking, driving, taking an elevator, lying down, figeting, trying to stand on a wooden floor, all have several orders of magnitude more effect on you than the moon.
In short: You can’t hear someone whispering ten rows behind you at a Metallica concert.
https://oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/gltides.html
If the great lakes only see a fluctuation of 5cm max, I don’t think it is affecting the human body in any meaningful way.
Take an inflatable swimming pool, let it sit outside. Notice any tide? No? Well, why would your kidneys have tides then?
Then why do I pee more when the moon is full, huh? Checkmate, atheists!
/s
Fine, I’ll admit there’s a god… just put away the moon pee!
Edit: The moons gravity affects everything on the planet. That doesn’t mean it is harmful. It’s going to be very insignificant.
The moon would affect the tides regardless of how long it’s been there. Calculating the effect of the moon’s gravity on the earth is a standard exercise in a graduate classical physics course. In essence, the moon’s gravity “squashes” the earth at the two poles, causing tides at the nearest and farthest end of the earth.
I don’t think that last part is entirely accurate. The reason the weak gravity causes tides is actually because it’s acting over the entire ocean all at once.
It turns out that the ocean is a bit heavy… when you add up the entire mass of all of the water, this imparts quite a substantial bit of potential energy. This can be seen as a “bulge” outward in the moon’s direction, making the planet look a little “squished”.
If the planet were perfectly smooth, this probably would be fairly stable as the bulge wrapped around the planet… however, because we have continents and the sea floor, this movement of water crashes into the land and causes ripple effects with a huge amount of kinetic energy.
I don’t think it would take more that a few years for this process to ramp up to our current level of tides, if there were some way of doing such a ramp up in a controlled way.
The ocean is not only very heavy, it’s also very long (tall, viewed sideways from POV of the Moon). This means the bits near the moon are more affected by gravity, pulled harder.
There’s so much fun to be had with this effect. When the moon is overhead, you’re stretched out an unmeasurably tiny bit, for example. It also causes tall objects to orient themselves perpendicular to moon (one end is lighter, the other end is heavier. Just like a weighted stick floats upright in water).
Oh, and then there’s the fact that your head (which could be seen as kinda momentarily orbiting the moon, with orbital period of once a month) has a higher orbital velocity than your feet, thus your head is constantly dragged sideways, and lying down helps alleviate this effect (only your nose is now pulled off your face, not your whole head). This is the reason why it’s easier to fall asleep when lying down.
For billions of years. There was once a time when tides were massive and the moon took up most of the night sky (it’s slowly being slingshoted out of orbit and will eventually become a dwarf planet orbiting between earth and mars, but the sun will likely engulf the earth system before that happens)
Why is this being upvoted when it is blatantly false?
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Well it does affect the gravitational pull, and were like 70% water. So yes it does fuck with us on a biological level. So full moons causing people to go crazy is a real thing, but it’s exaggerated of course and very subtle.
Idk why I’m getting downvotes, this is a very real thing https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7322537/
First of all, the amount of water in your body doesn’t matter. Gravity doesn’t just affect water.
Secondly, the gravity of the moon on earth is about 1/10 millionth of the gravity of earth itself. So basically you lose more weight by spitting once than you lose because of the moons gravity.
And thirdly, why only during full moon? The moon is still there even when it’s not full, so the gravity is also still there. Even during the day the moon is still there.
All this full moon stuff is just pseudoscience.
In theory it has some kind of affect but not anything anyone would notice. Like I’m not even sure it would show up on a scale and anyone trying to measure it with something sensitive enough to do so would have a hell of a time separating the change from normal things like eating, going to the bathroom, sweating, or just breathing.
If we say for a moment that it does have an affect on people the next question would be what effect might there be. Again I think a major issue would be measuring results when there would be so many other things at play. Also what are we measuring? What might the proposed effect be?
This idea mostly sounds like pseudo science or a half assed attempt at supporting some new age idea.
No. If gravity on such a small scale affected us, we’d have evolved to incorporate it as many animals do for navigate, or evolve to ignore it. We did the latter, if it was ever necessary. The gravity of the earth is many magnitudes greater. And you can prove that the shifting gravity from the moon is moot by the sheer fact that you can sleep on your back, either side, or stomach and not feel inverse affects. You can even move around through the night, like the moon does.
Also the tides thing is half right. About half as strong in tidal energy is the sun. Solar tides exist. So the question would also need to be “does the sun’s gravity affect us?” And the answer is the same as before.
I do think that in fact if you embrace your friend, he has a higher gravitational pull on you than you moon. Or so I believe, the math should work itself out.
Ask them how the moon effects weightless astronauts. I imagine you’ll get a confused response before they find some way to integrate it into their narrative.
