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Here’s another fascinating story from Bernard Beitman’s new book, Meaningful Coincidences: How and Why Synchronicity and Serendipity Happen. “There is one coincidence for everyone on Earth to see: the sun and moon appear to us to be exactly the same size. Solar eclipses, when the moon passes between Earth and sun, dramatically demonstrate their apparently equal size. But, of course, they are not the same size. They are about ninety-three million miles apart. The sun is about four hundred times larger than the moon. But because the moon is also four hundred times closer to Earth, the geometry makes them appear to be the same size.15 Written algebraically, 400/1 × 1/400 = 1. |
“Astronomers say that the moon was created 4.5 billion years ago when a Mars-sized object (or perhaps a series of many smaller objects) crashed into the Earth, sending bits of the Earth’s crust into space. The bits fell into the Earth’s orbit and eventually coalesced, forming our moon. That newborn moon—a ball of molten rock covered in a magma ocean—was nearly 16 times closer to Earth than it is today. Now the moon is being pushed away from Earth by 1.6 inches (4 centimeters) per year.16
“If this moon creation theory is correct, then a second coincidence is that, in the broad expanse of time for the moon to reach its current position in the sky, perhaps one hundred million years, the apparent equality in size is happening while humans are around to observe it.
“The two incidents of this coincidence are the moon’s evolution matching in time the evolution of human consciousness to be able to notice the similarity between the sun and the moon. As usual with very low- probability coincidences, people invoke their preferred explanations. Astronomers support randomness, that in our ever-expanding universe, any weird thing can happen. Parapsychology and quantum mechanics offer no clues. On the fringe are hard-to-believe conjectures that the moon was somehow manufactured. I believe that the sun-moon coincidence is there to remind us Earth dwellers to pay attention to coincidences.”
