Jeffrey Andrews-Hanna

With that, I'll just wrap up.

And I think we've got time for a few questions.

Either or neither.

They both have some challenges to them, to be honest.

These two objects of exactly the same size hitting each other, well, that may not be the most probable thing that you would expect to see.

At the same time, to get the Earth spinning as fast as it had to be spinning for the other hypothesis to work, that's also difficult to do.

One of them may be right.

Improbable is not impossible.

And improbable things happen all the time.

Surf the internet.

There's enough people in the world that something incredibly improbable has happened to everyone out there.

So maybe one of these improbable events is the answer for the moon, but I can't say I've got a favorite.

So yeah, so tidal effects is a very attractive explanation for it.

Because if the side facing the Earth is so different than the side facing away from the Earth, the Earth itself, you want to play a role in that.

Tides are one thing to do that.

Tidal heating is one.

The one problem with tides is that if you go to the beach and sit for a day, I highly recommend you spend a day at the beach.

What you'll notice, high tide happens twice a day because the tides are actually symmetric.

So the Earth raises a tidal bulge on the near side of the moon as well as on the far side of the moon.

And actually, that is a very good question because we see that pattern.