Hey! That moon hit my eye! Owww

A very dear friend told me an interesting story today.

While she was shopping in the grocery store late last night, the clerk had mistakenly put her groceries in plastic bags instead of paper as she requested. Upon realizing his error, he said, ‘I’m very sorry, it’s quite late and I’m out of it.’ Then he added, ‘And besides it’s a full moon tonight.’

She replied, ‘Oh, a full moon? Right, b/c astrologically that causes lunacy, which leads to wrong kind of grocery bagging, yeah?’

The clerk: ‘Nooo, it is because the gravitational pull of the moon factually causes tidal changes and natural instinct to change and that pregnancies are more likely to occur in the presence of full moon.’

My friend brilliantly ended the conversation with this:

Yeah, geez, with all of this, it is a good thing we don’t have Pluto to worry about anymore–I mean, after all, Pluto isn’t even considered a planet anymore, thank God.

Alluding to the astrological significance Pluto is always given in virtually all the bad things that ever happen or will happen on Earth.

The clerk nodded his head in understanding.

It never ceases to amaze me what people will accept as scientific fact about our universe. I have often heard something similar, and the really funny thing is, the people relating the importance of the moon, stars or whatever to their current circumstances are always emphasizing the ’scientific fact’ part:

• It’s a scientific fact that the full moon causes epileptic seizures
• Studies show dogs bite people more during a full moon (sort of a werewolf effect, I guess)
• 4 out of 5 doctors say the there are more emergency room visits during a full moon.
• Police report more accidents and crime during full and new moon

The simple truth is that for every study that concludes that there is a ‘lunar effect’ on something or someone, there is almost always another that has found no lunar effect. People latch on to hearsay and propagate it like crazy.

My personal favorite is the tides. Everyone knows that the moon affects the tides, and since humans are made up of mostly water, surely that affects us too, right? Ok, sure the moon’s gravity is pulling on us, and perhaps we slosh a little more toward the Moon because of its gravity. However, a person standing six inches away exerts 12 million times more of a tidal pull on you than the Moon does, just by being in your personal space.

And having someone in my personal space affects me WAY more than a full moon does.

What people don’t seem to remember is that the tides occur twice per day, not once per month. The effect of the full moon on tides isn’t even related to the moon at all. A full and new moon occurs when the Sun, Moon, and Earth all line up. The increased gravitational energy there (very slight though it is), is due to the Sun’s presence, not the Moon’s.

This page sums it up quite nicely:

So how do we explain all those cops and emergency room nurses who believe in the lunar effect? Easy. Nobody notices when there’s a full moon and nothing happens–you only notice when something does happen. In other words, heads I win, tails don’t count. Case closed.

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