DIGGING UP THE MOON

The Moon and Earth orbit each other around a common center of gravity. Because the Moon is so small, and thus light in weight, it does not move the Earth much, and so the two orbit around a point that is within the radius of the Earth. That point is called the barycenter of the Earth-Moon system.

Of course the barycenter moves laterally, around under the surface of the Earth near the equator, and drifting north and south somewhat because of the Moon's inclination. Yet it always remains closer to the center of the Earth than the surface on which we live.

Since living animals first swam in the seas, life has always taken the Moon into account in its reproductive cycles, because the most balanced sense of gravity resulted in the best conceived eggs. That started at least half a billion years ago and more like up to three billion years. Always, the barycenter of the Earth-Moon system was within the Earth, and so the net gravitational field in which life existed, was always down, roughly toward the center of the Earth.

That means the Moon was always assumed to be at once both somehow in the sky and within the Earth. The result is profound. Gravitationally the Moon seemed to be within the Earth, yet visually the Moon seems to be, half the time anyway, in the sky. Sometimes, like today, it seems almost nowhere to be found, except that on looking carefully, and with the aid of my pocket computer, it is there, close to the sun, a very dim faint pale white crescent in the intense light blue haze from the air.

So what of this? It means that in terms of the Earth, men often assume the Earth contains something which must be dug up - the Moon - and so they set to digging vast quantities of the Earth with bulldozers, steam shovels, hole diggers, giant scrapers and many other machines. Strip mining and even the sheer removal of entire mountains is taking place all around the world. Sometimes it is a light element like carbon in coal that is dug up. Dig, dig, dig! See the men dig! What are we digging? It isn't really the Moon.

If we stopped digging for the Moon, would it cause a recession?