God finely tuned many factors to make Earth a habitable planet for advanced life (Isaiah 45:18). One of those factors is the relatively large Moon which stabilizes our planet’s spin axis. Earth would literally flip over without the Moon and would be uninhabitable for advanced life due to the resulting catastrophic climate and seasonal changes. For example, Mars has no large moon (just two small asteroid-moons) and there is evidence its tilt has varied widely causing wild swings in Martian climate. Our Moon keeps Earth tilted at a just-right-for-life 23½ degrees. In addition, there would be times when the North Pole would get more direct sunlight than the equator, like what happens on the planet Uranus.
One thing physics and astronomy focuses on is angular momentum, which is prevalent in the Earth-Moon system. Angular refers to curved motion and momentum means “to keep spinning.” Just as kids’ playing tops have angular momentum, which allows them to balance on a little point, so the Moon keeps the “top” we live on from going topsy-turvy and either frying or freezing us.
The Moon likely came about as the result of a spectacular, Providentially ordained collision. Earth and a smaller planet “posthumously” named Theia smacked together 30 million years after Earth started forming (30 million years is not a long time for God!). Some of the “rock splash” from the impact orbited Earth and coalesced under its own gravity to form our Moon.
Mars, too, was brutally bashed around. Though the enormous impact did not make a beneficial moon, it did create the largest crater in the solar system-the entire northern hemisphere of Mars! At sunset during January and February, you can see Mars rise as a bright, coppery red star.
From the sky above your backyard, Mars and the Moon testify to God’s creative genius. A mega impact made Earth more habitable but when that object hit Mars, a desolate world stayed desolate! When Theia hit the nascent Earth, an uninhabitable world took one giant leap toward becoming peopled. And, those people-you and me-are made after God’s own likeness and stamped with His image.
The eastern sky for January and February 2010 around 7:30 PM local time. (This image set for February 1st.) Note Mars near the middle and Orion’s Belt in the extreme upper right. Image created with Starry Night software.
