Moon

I love the moon.

On a full moon's day, nothing is more romantic that to walk in the moonlight with my wife. And especially, when you peer into the night sky, the pale yellow orb of the moon speaks to you in a whisper: "Feel my light, feel my glow, feel the quiet, feel the peace." You can't do this with the sun.

Yet, there is more to the moon than the light, the glow, the quiet or the peace. Just a few days ago, I was watching an interesting programme on National Geographic where it was argued that the gravitational force of the moon could trigger earthquakes.

The moon's orbit around the earth is ecliptical, just like the earth's orbit around the sun is. At perigee, the earth and the moon are at their closest point to one another. Likewise, at perihelion, the earth and the sun are closest to one another.

The TV programme suggested that when perigee and perihelion occurs together at a time when the sun, earth and moon are aligned, the gravitational forces on the earth's tectonic plates are at their strongest. The force may even be strong enough to trigger the plates to slip, thus triggering earthquakes.

The 26 Dec 2004 earthquake of magnitude 9.1 off Sumatra that caused the destructive tsunami in the Indian Ocean coincided with a full moon. The 6.4 magnitude earthquake on 6 Mar 2007 happened a day after the new moon. Likewise, the 9.2 magnitude earthquake in Alaska on 27 Mar 1964 happened on a day of maximum high tide and as you know, tides are caused by the moon's gravitational pull.

Today is also a full moon's day and I arrived at the office this morning to learn that a big 8.1 magnitude earthquake had occurred in the Pacific Ocean and it set off a tsunami that hit the Solomon Islands badly.

So it may really be true after all that the moon is potentially dangerous for people who live in earthquake-prone regions. In the past, the full moon was linked to crime, suicide, mental illness, disasters, accidents, birthrates, fertility, werewolves and vampires, among other things. Add to this growing list of events now is an earthquake.