Imagine an alien world --
a scorched, barren landscape
hot enough to boil water,
where mysterious holes in the battle-scarred surface
reveal a labyrinth of winding tunnels,
each wide enough to house a city.
This world is dead.
Yet it breathes life into its nearest planetary neighbor.
This extraterrestrial place is closer than you might imagine.
This is our moon.
Have you ever dreamed about traveling out of this world?
My name is Mike massimino,
and I turned that fantasy into a reality
when I space-walked to repair the hubble space telescope.
Nice job, Mike.
Now, as we expand our knowledge of our solar system
from Mercury to the cosmic unknowns,
I want to take you on a personal journey to...
captions paid for by discovery communications
welcome to "the planets." I'm Mike massimino.
My love of space began in 1969,
when I saw Neil Armstrong walk on the moon.
Since then, I've been obsessed with outer space,
especially the moon.
But where did this gigantic piece of rock
that orbits the earth come from?
My childhood heroes, the Apollo astronauts,
provided essential clues.
Look at our solar system from an alien visitor's perspective.
What would surprise you?
What would make you look twice?
The surprising answer?
Our oversized moon.
If you look at our moon and compare it
to all of the other moons in our solar system,
it's actually quite odd.
It's a giant moon. It's almost like we're
a binary planet -- two objects orbiting around each other
to some degree.
Our planet-sized moon is unique in the solar system,
and this battle-scarred giant serves as our guardian angel.
Its vast gravity raises the tides that breathe life
into the earth's oceans.
The moon stabilizes the tilt of our planet,
regulating the climate and seasons.
Without the moon, humans may never have evolved.
We owe everything to our moon,
yet its formation is one of the greatest
unsolved mysteries in planetary science.
There are many ideas for the origin of our supersized moon,
but they all start the same way --
4.6 billion years ago.
When the solar system first formed, it would've looked
very different from the way it looks now.
Instead of having a few planets and mostly empty space
surrounding the sun, you would've had a -- a disk,
and this disk would have been thick.
It would have been composed of gas and dust and rocky bodies.
The infant sun sparks into life,
blowing away the clouds of gas that are closest to it.
The rocky fragments that are left behind clump together
over time to form planets like earth.
But there are many more of these planets than we see today.
Giant rocks jostle for position,
crossing paths as they struggle to find stable orbits.
Is it possible that one of these planets was destined
to become our moon?
There have been a lot of ideas about
where our oversized moon came from.
One idea was just that it was wandering around
in our solar system, and we captured it.
According to the capture theory,
a wayward planet passes a little too close
to the early earth, and our planet's immense gravity
captures hold of it.
The planet settles into orbit around the earth,
and it becomes the moon we see today.
This theory seemed to check all the boxes,
but scientists needed proof it was right.
If it was really true that the moon was a captured planet,
you would expect that its constituents
would be different than the earth.
It was something that formed in a different place than the earth
and then got captured, so you would expect them
to be made of different stuff.
To prove the theory,
scientists needed to compare the moon's earliest rocks
with similar examples found on earth.
The best rock for comparison is a mineral that could've only
have formed when the newly-born moon was still molten.
On earth, this type of rock is formed
in highly-volcanic places like Iceland.
This is what we want.
You see this anorthosite, how -- how white it is.
Anorthosite forms in a different way than normal basalt.
Um, you can almost think of it, uh, like the white foam
on the head of a dark beer, sort of floating up to the top.
So in a magma environment,
this would form and then just float up to the top of a --
of a magma sea.
Getting a sample of anorthosite from the moon
is important because darker rocks
could've had their chemistry altered by asteroid impacts.
We really had to have a piece of -- of this anorthosite rock
because we just couldn't learn about the origin of the moon
from the dark materials.
In the 1970s, Apollo astronauts collected samples
and brought them back to earth for comparison.
The results shocked the scientific world.
What they found was that the composition of the moon
was almost exactly the same
as the composition of the crust of the earth.
So this idea that the moon was a captured planet from elsewhere
in the solar system was out.
There was no way that was true.
With the captured planet theory
blown out of the water,
planetary scientists took action.
Scientists said, "look, we've got to get together
and figure this out."
And they went to a conference together in kona, Hawaii,
all the top scientists in planetary science,
and they hammered out all of the leading ideas.
They locked themselves into a room together
and emerged from that meeting and said, "yes, this can work."
The new theory focused on the water contents
of the moon rocks.
They were surprisingly dry.
Something must have heated up the moon to unimaginable
temperatures, and we were led to think that it must be
some sort of collision.
The new theory was built around the idea
of a catastrophic collision 4.5 billion years ago.
But it wasn't an impact into the moon.
It was an impact into the earth.
**
there was a crazy idea that the earth formed,
and, while it was still young,
another planet-sized object,
something about the size of Mars,
came in and hit the earth...
...blew off a huge amount of material,
which then coalesced and formed the moon.
This was a pretty cool idea.
It was groundbreaking, I guess, literally.
Scientists name the Mars-sized planet theia,
and they modeled how the impact would have played out.
4.5 billion years ago,
theia catches the earth with a glancing blow.
The impact throws molten debris far into space,
forming a ring of burning rock around the earth.
If we could travel back in time and --
and somehow stand on the surface of the earth when the moon
was forming, it would have been amazing.
A bright ring of fire was stretching across the sky,
and here in the sky would've been a bright ball
of magma glowing,
with all kinds of shrapnel and small rocks being attracted
to that point because of the immense gravity.
This was the proto-moon, the thing that would eventually
become the moon we have in our sky today.
**
our moon forms in under a year.
Its crust is almost chemically identical to the earth's
because they share a common origin.
This impact idea, as weird as it sounds,
actually does the best job explaining everything
that we see about the moon.
The impact hypothesis becomes the leading theory
for the origin of our oversized moon.
But when space probes journey to the far side of the moon,
they find something that throws the theory into chaos.
The moon has a dark secret --
it was born with a twin.
For centuries, scientists have wanted to know more
about the glowing sphere in our night sky.
In 1959, the first photos were taken
of the far side of the moon.
Those early photos revealed a remarkable past
and led to a radical theory --
our moon has a secret twin.
Take a look at the moon tonight,
and you might see a familiar face
or perhaps a rabbit,
or a tree, depending on your culture.
Myths and legends surround the patterns etched
on the surface of the moon,
but what can these marks tell us about the riddle
of our oversized guardian?
These dark patches appear to be unique to the moon.
Centuries ago, astronomers thought they were seeing
enormous oceans of liquid water.
We now know the dark stains are actually ancient floods
of volcanic lava.
Planetary scientist jani radebaugh
takes a bird's-eye view of similar features on Hawaii,
using her research kite cam.
These lava flows we're standing on are identical
to the things we would see if we were standing
on the dark patches of the moon.
They are dark in color.
They're made of basalt, and they flowed out
in vast lava flows across the surface.
It turns out the dark plains of lava on the moon
are battle scars,
evidence of a violent past.
Four billion years ago, asteroids rained down
on the newly-formed moon, tearing into the surface.
Where the fractured crust is thinnest,
molten lava seeps from the moon's hot interior,
spreads out in giant pools
and solidifies to form the scars we see today from earth.
**
and strangely, although the moon rotates,
the earth's gravity holds onto it so tightly,
the same face points towards us at all times,
making the features on the far side of the moon
a complete mystery.
For all of history, the far side of the moon
was invisible to the earth.
It's the back side. You can't see it.
In 1959, the Soviet spacecraft Luna 3
flies past the moon's far side
and photographs it for the first time.
Astronomers expect to see the familiar dark and light patches.
They were in for a big surprise.
When scientists saw the pictures, they were shocked.
The far side looked completely different than the near side.
It's saturated with craters.
It just was such a huge dichotomy.
Nobody was expecting that at all.
The far side still had massive impact craters,
but it was uniformly pale.
It seemed like no dark lava had bled out onto the surface
at all -- but why?
The only solution we could come up with
is there's a difference in thickness between the crust
of the near side and the crust of the far side,
that the back side must be so thick that lavas
are not able to come up through them
and erupt out onto the surface.
Instead, on the front side, where it's very thin,
lavas can easily come up through cracks
and flow out onto the surface.
Recent NASA missions confirm the crust
on the back of the moon is around 30 miles thicker
than the crust on the front.
So one the biggest mysteries in planetary science
over the last about 50 years is, you know,
why is the crust to the far side so thick?
The impact theory doesn't really cover that.
It just forms the moon, but it doesn't say why
one side should be so different than the other one,
unless something strange happened.
The new age of supercomputers brings about
the first credible explanation.
The impact of theia could have made two moons,
not one,
and this double birth might also explain
our double-sided moon.
According to the theory, 4.5 billion years ago,
there are two moons in the night sky.
The smaller moon chases its larger sibling,
gradually getting closer.
Eventually, the two moons mush together in slow motion.
And the smaller moon covers the far side of the larger moon,
creating a new, much thicker crust.
Not all impacts are high-speed,
super-violent events that eject material everywhere.
Instead of just, wham, smacking into it,
it would have just merged with it,
just been pulled apart and smeared out over the moon.
Essentially, when you look at one half of the moon,
you see more of one body,
and when you look at the other side of the moon,
you see more of the other body that kinda wrapped around
the first body, and so it's thicker on that side.
Two moons become one.
The evidence for this cosmic collision is stacking up,
inside supercomputers, at least.
But not all astronomers are convinced.
They search the heavens for a different solution,
and they finally find it on an alien planet
that's being broiled alive.
If I could travel to space again,
I would definitely go to our moon.
Not only do I get another chance to see earth from outer space,
but I'd also get to help scientists
answer their long list of questions.
A new generation of pioneers is developing bold theories,
not only about the moon's origins,
but also how humans depend on it.
480 light-years from our solar system,
a rocky, earth-like planet orbits a sun-like star,
but this is no place for life.
Corot-7b is a sungrazer.
This bizarre exoplanet orbits 60 times closer to its star
than the earth does to the sun.
This close proximity blocks one face of the planet
to its fiery companion,
just like the moon is locked to the earth.
The result is a cosmic barbecue.
Temperatures soar to over 3,000 degrees fahrenheit
on the near side of the planet,
reducing the rocky surface to a boiling ocean
of liquid magma.
In contrast, the shaded, far side of the planet
has a cool and solid crust.
This overcooked exoplanet is the inspiration
for a surprising new theory about the formation
of our moon's lopsided crust.
The idea comes from a pair of young researchers
with no background in lunar science.
Because I work in exoplanets, I knew very little
about lunar geology when this whole thing started.
In 2011, Jason Wright is discussing
sungrazing exoplanets with colleagues
when conversation turns to the moon's half-and-half crust.
And then I remembered that the moon, when it formed,
was very close to the earth, and the earth would have been
extremely hot after the impact that formed the moon.
And in fact, the geometry's almost exactly the same
as the corot-7b system.
That got me thinking, "well, maybe something similar
happened to the moon."
Jason theorizes that the hot earth
cooked the near side of the moon,
just like stars cook sungrazing planets.
So if you imagine that the moon is forming,
and this big hot ball of the earth is hanging
in its sky, on the far side of the moon,
it would be quite cool.
The near side of the moon is kept hot
by the molten earth.
Vast clouds of mineral vapor stream from the hot surface,
feeding a cloud that surrounds the moon.
On the cool side, these minerals condense and rain down,
building a thicker crust.
It's a neat idea, but it only works
if the moon locks one face to the earth right after it forms.
Jason asked grad student arpita Roy
to see if that's even possible.
When Jason first came to me with the idea,
he was very excited about it,
and he believed it was a big deal.
The calculation to check the tidal locking of the moon
was pretty easy to do.
Um, the number was so small that we were surprised.
It was on the order of 100 days,
which is very, very quick in astronomical timescales.
Arpita's breakthrough means
that the near side of the moon locked to the earth
while our planet was still molten,
supporting Jason's theory of a cooked moon.
It's still very new, but the theory has legs.
In science, if you have two ideas that explain something
with the one
that has more natural outcome.
This broiling earth idea is a natural outcome
of what we know must have happened.
Thankfully for us, the surface of the earth
is a lot cooler today,
but the inside is still hot,
thanks to the radioactive decay of metals
deep inside the core of the earth.
This rising heat drives the volcanism
and the geological activity we see on the surface today.
There are mountain ranges being pushed up
and other mountain ranges being subducted into the ocean.
The crust of the earth is continuously changing.
The moon doesn't have a radioactive core,
so scientists have always assumed that its center
is cold and its is geology dead.
But a series of unexplained observations suggest that,
once again, we're wrong about the moon.
One of the big questions we've been trying to answer
over the last few decades is, is there any activity
on the moon left at all?
For hundreds of years, astronomers have reported
strange bursts of light coming from the moon.
Others have witnessed reddish glows
that lasted for minutes at a time.
Could these rare sightings show that the moon's
geological heart is still beating?
Aristarchus is a volcanic region
in the northwest of the moon's near side,
astronomers have reported over 700 glowing lights here
in the last 50 years.
Even Neil Armstrong saw something strange here
from the window of the Apollo 11 lander.
-Roger, 11. We copy.
What's going on in aristarchus?
The smoking flanks of volcanoes, like this one in Hawaii
give planetary scientists an idea,
because where there's smoke, there should be fire.
You know, one clue to how these events are happening on the moon
is where they're found.
They're actually found in a very special location
on the moon, and it's very much like
what we're standing on right now.
Aristarchus is covered in vast floods of volcanic ash,
and some scientists believe this fine, light material
is responsible for the strange sightings we see from earth.
Gases escaping from this active volcano
carry particles of fine volcanic ash
and steam into the air.
Sunlight brightens the plume, making it visible for miles.
Perhaps something similar could happen on the moon.
There's gas, it comes out of the vent,
picks up the very fine lunar dust and spreads it out
across the landscape so that we can see it
illuminated by sunlight.
If the theory's true,
it means the moon's volcanoes are still alive.
Something like is just kinda so mind-boggling
that it's hard for us to wrap our minds
around the fact that the moon
actually could still be alive today.
I mean, we've thought for many years
that the moon is cold and dead,
but maybe these are happening now,
and that means that the moon is not dead.
The moon is alive. That's very exciting.
We thought we understood the moon,
but each time scientists peel back the layers,
they find another secret.
And perhaps the biggest secret of all is that,
without the moon, we wouldn't be here.
Our moon has bizarre, powerful forces.
I think about how our moon dictates the tidal system
of all the world's oceans and rivers.
But researchers are considering
that the moon plays an even more vital role in human life.
The earth and the moon were born together,
they have dramatically shaped each other's evolution.
And we now think that life, too, was given a head start
by the presence of our oversized moon.
This is the earth 4.4 billion years ago,
around the time scientists think life on earth got started.
The newly-formed moon sits just 15,000 miles away,
appearing much larger in the sky than it does today.
Its gravity raises enormous tides in the earth's warm,
young oceans.
In that era, the tides were not measured in feet.
They were measured in miles.
You'd have these massive tsunamis that would wash up
on land and then wash back into the sea.
The moon's gravity creates tides
by drawing earth's oceans up toward it
in a bulge of water, and, as the earth spins,
this bulge washes onto land as a tide.
The closer the moon, the bigger the pull of gravity
and the stronger the tide.
Some scientists think that the warm rock pools
these giant early tides left behind
formed the perfect mixing bowl
for the ingredients of life to come together.
The good thing about a tidal pond
is that environments change,
water comes in and brings nutrients, it goes away.
The nutrients concentrate.
So that may have been a process
that concentrated the stuff life needed
in a way that led to life.
4.4 billion years ago,
onrushing tides stir up organic molecules
from the surface of the earth.
As the tides recede, these chemicals are left behind
in shallow rock pools,
which then evaporate in the heat of the sun,
concentrating down their chemical contents.
And perhaps the first life was born
inside this rich organic soup.
If we had tiny little moons around the earth like Mars does,
then we never would have had the massive tides that carry
materials and energy up onto the beach environment
where life really might have gotten a foothold.
And -- and so we wouldn't have had the minerals.
And maybe we wouldn't have had life.
Did the moon create life on earth?
The jury's still out, but one thing is certain --
intelligent life takes time to evolve,
at least 4 billion years in our case.
We've gradually changed from simple, single cells
to the kind of organism that can question its own origins.
And it's the moon that's provided the stability
for life to evolve
by holding the earth's axial tilt steady
for over 4 billion years.
The moon locked that tilt into place and has actually
stabilized our rotational axis
and made sure the seasons are mostly the same
century after century, millennia after millennia.
When we look at the tilt of the earth,
it's been about the same for the time, uh,
that -- that complex life has existed,
and this is really important.
You know, as we progress out of single-celled,
simple organisms to much more complex organisms,
greater stability really helps that.
How different would things have been
without the moon?
Just look at Mars to see the devastating effects
of an unstable tilt.
Mars actually had a tilt that is as far as 60 degrees.
That means that there was actually --
it was cold at the equators on Mars,
and it was warmer at the poles.
That's really a difficult environment
for life to arise and grow.
When we look at Mars, we see that its axial tilt
has swung around to such a degree that --
that it's inhibited life.
If the earth had swung that chaotically,
ice ages would have come and gone like seasons.
Life would have needed to start from scratch over and over,
not having time to evolve into complex organisms.
Mars serves as an indicator that our supersized moon
was instrumental in the development
of intelligent life on earth,
and increasingly, scientists believe
similar cosmic partnerships are the key to finding
other intelligent life in the universe.
When we're looking at exoplanets
and we're wondering which one of these
could have civilizations -- advanced life forms --
and there was a bunch that had a big moon
and a bunch that didn't, well, I would say,
let's first look at the ones with a moon,
if for no other reason, we know that on --
on this world, we have a big moon, and we have advanced life.
As we're looking out beyond our solar system,
we're looking into the galaxy,
looking for exoplanets that might be habitable,
you know, maybe we should be looking for an object
that has a supersized moon
in the right location around its star.
It just might be the perfect place to look for life.
If we ever want to see
these distant exoplanets up close,
we'll need a cheap, reliable route into space,
and the moon could be the key to unlocking this journey
to the stars.
I'd love to walk in the footsteps
of my childhood hero, Neil Armstrong.
But I would hope to space-walk even further than Neil
and maybe even check out one of the moon's secret caves.
Scientists have discovered a massive cave system,
and there are future plans for astronauts
to go take a closer look.
Futurists believe
mankind's destiny is to conquer space.
Surprisingly, the moon may be the key
to making these dreams reality,
because a lunar launchpad has so little of the atmosphere
and gravity that make earth launches so challenging.
So if we establish a base, uh, on the moon, for example,
now we need very little energy to get off of the moon
and, uh, to go and explore other bodies from there.
What would it take to build a lunar cape canaveral?
It turns out the biggest hurdle
is keeping the ground crew alive.
One of the biggest dangers
of being on the surface of the moon
is you're not protected by a magnetic field.
On the moon, you don't have that.
If there's a big solar storm,
the flux of high-energy particles would hit astronauts
with so much energy they would break down the cells
and destroy our DNA.
The moon is also hit with radiation
that originates from far outside our solar system.
Distant supernovas throw out charged particles
called cosmic rays at close to the speed of light.
**
on earth, our atmosphere blocks most of the incoming.
But on the moon, astronauts are in the firing line.
And many have reported seeing tiny flashes
as cosmic rays smash through their optic nerve.
**
incoming space rocks are another major hazard on the moon.
On the moon, there's no atmosphere,
so something the size of a grain of sand is
moving at speeds multiple times the speed of a bullet.
And if that hits your colony,
it can put a pretty good hole in the wall.
Yet another obstacle to long-term survival
on the moon are the radical temperature swings.
One of the things we don't really think about
about the air around us is that it actually redistributes heat.
On the moon, you have no air.
So if you have your hand, and half of it is in sunlight
and half of it is in shadow,
you've got a 400-degree difference there.
The best protection
from all these long-term problems
is a thick layer of rock,
but a recent discovery suggests future astronauts
won't need to dig to build their shelters underground.
This remarkable hole on the surface of the moon,
called a skylight, is the size of a football field.
We are seeing big openings to massive cave systems
that might form the perfect base for lunar exploration.
Skylights are the entrances to a network
of vast tunnels, which likely run for miles
under the surface of the moon.
There are already underground caverns there,
and it -- they're not carved by water.
These are carved by lava.
Similar natural tunnels, called lava tubes,
exist on earth in volcanic regions like Iceland.
So we're in the bottom of a hole that's formed, uh,
from a collapsed lava tube.
Of the moon,
there are holes like this, and if all indications are correct,
they also lead to giant lava tubes just like this one.
Lava tubes form when flowing rivers
of molten rock start to cool.
The surface solidifies first,
insulating the hot lava below that continues to flow,
carving out long underground tunnels.
Living in a tube like this, uh, actually wouldn't be that crazy.
In fact, this is a big tube. I mean, it's quite large.
But, you know, the ones on the moon
are 10 times bigger than this.
On the moon, lava tubes run
below hundreds of feet of solid rock,
protecting the tunnels from radiation, micrometeorites,
and keeping the temperature stable.
A lava tube like this on the moon would be
nice and stable, and perhaps never get much colder
than the coldest caves on earth.
Astronauts on the moon
could seal themselves inside these tubes by adding airlocks.
We could pump in air.
We could make the temperature right.
You could actually get out and walk around
in this vast subterranean tunnel.
You could have an entire city down there,
lighting up the walls of the lunar terrain.
Scientists think these lunar space stations
could be self-sufficient.
There are craters that are always shaded,
and they contain water ice, and so that is really exciting
because we didn't realize that there was actually
still water on the moon.
Water is the perfect resource for a lunar launchpad.
As well as drinking it, you can split water with electricity
to create oxygen to breathe and hydrogen to use as a fuel.
When you think about it, rocket fuel is made of liquid hydrogen
and liquid oxygen, and, hey,
those are the components of water.
The moon's craters hold around 6 billion tons of water ice.
That's enough to launch 20 rockets into space
every day for over 100 years.
**
for over 4 billion years,
the moon has driven our evolution,
shaped our climate, and in the future,
its resources will allow us to conquer space.
But it's not going to be around forever.
Scientists have mapped out the death of the moon,
and it's going to be brutal.
The planets in our solar system are captivating subjects,
but sometimes it's the moons of those planets
that are even more fascinating.
That could certainly be said for our own gigantic moon.
As we continue to uncover clues about the moon's origins,
we are able to see its future much more clearly.
And it might be just as action-packed as its past.
For over 4 billion years,
the earth and the moon have traced
a delicate dance around the sun.
But our celestial partner is gradually slipping away.
So, it's there night after night, year after year.
But it turns out the moon is actually
moving away from the earth, and that's due to
the interaction of the moon and the earth's tidal bulge.
The bulge of water pulled up by gravity
sits slightly ahead of the moon
because the earth spins faster than the moon orbits.
The moon pulls by gravity on that bulge
and slows the earth's rotation.
Over billions of years,
that has slowed the earth's rotation a lot.
We used to be spinning a lot more rapidly,
probably more than twice as fast as we do now.
But like a gravitational whipline,
the moon's attraction to the bulge also speeds up its orbit.
This speed makes the moon's orbit wider,
pushing it farther and farther away.
It's a very small amount, so it's only about
3.8 centimeters, which is about an inch and a half a year.
Over billions of years,
the moon will shrink to a dot in the night sky,
and the earth's spin will become so slow
that the moon will appear to freeze above our heads.
There will come a time where the earth is actually locked.
One side of the earth faces one side of the moon,
and the two of them will go around in lockstep.
So there'll be one place on earth
where you can see the moon.
So you might imagine you'd have to go on some kind of, uh,
vacation to actually see the moon at that point in time,
is this the long-term future for our moon?
Some scientists envision a more dramatic ending --
a death by fire that will destroy the moon
and, quite possibly, all life on earth, too.
The process begins with the expansion of the sun.
The actual future history of the earth-moon system
will depend upon the sun,
and it could produce remarkable effects.
As the sun gets older, it expands,
filling the inner solar system with a denser solar wind.
This wind will impede the moon.
So as the moon orbits around the earth, there'll be drag.
There'll just be more stuff in space
for the moon to push against.
So the moon has been moving away from the earth
for billions of years.
Maybe at that point, it'll start coming back.
This new inward trajectory is a death spiral.
The moon eventually is going to spiral
closer and closer, and then,
because of the gravitational forces,
the tidal forces are going to be so strong, it's going to,
essentially, explode.
The moon, 11,000 miles above the surface of the earth,
reaches a point of no return.
The gravitational pull of the earth finally overwhelms it.
And you'll see it shaking. You'll see it quaking.
It'll be stretched way out.
Now, it'll be stretched sort of toward us and away from us,
so it'll be hard to tell, but, eventually, you'll see that
actually breaking apart --
an entire world being shattered by the gravity of earth.
The fractured remains of the moon
create a saturn-like ring of rocky debris.
Having a ring around the earth would be a phenomenal sight.
I would love to see that.
You would look up, and you would be able to see the ring.
It would be at an angle to the earth.
If you were at the right place on the earth,
you'd be able to see it, broad, stretching across the sky.
But the beauty soon turns to terror,
as pieces of the ring rain down on earth.
**
I mean, it's gonna be an awesome sight,
a terrifying sight.
I mean, the whole sky is going to be filled
with raining meteors just showering through the sky,
and they're gonna be huge.
**
eventually, all of that material
will be incorporated into the earth, and now,
these two siblings, separated at birth,
now are finally again one body.
A new earth is born out of the fiery inferno,
but this world is sterile.
The moon's presence allowed life to arise on the earth,
and the moon's presence will also destroy life on earth.
It's pretty sad to imagine
the earth without the moon.
We're partners. We've affected each other's development.
Seeing the moon in the sky is something that gives me joy
every single time.
That has never gotten old.
**