I think it has to do with a full moon at it’s closest orbit to earth?
The two, happening at the same time?
I fail to see what direction the sun strikes the moon has to do with anything. The moon’s mass isn’t increasing.
“Earth’s satellite will be at its closest point to our planet in 18 years.”
And you all remember what happened 18 years ago, right? Plague, pestilence, famine, fire and brimstone, poisonous rains falling from the sky, deadly monsters stalking the earth, Bill Clinton moving into the Oval Office. That’s why the mere mention of the year 1993 strikes fear in the hearts of mankind.
And it’s a bizarre but 100% true scientifical fact that a full moon weighs no more than a half moon.
The moon is the same size and distance from the earth regardless of it’s phase. The appearance of the moon from earth has nothing to do with anything
Yes, and there is a physical effect associated with it, namely the lunar tidal potential, which varies as the inverse cube of the lunar distance.
However, there are several points which depreciate the significance of this. The first is that spring tides occur at full and new moon, so a lunar perigee at new moon would have the same effect.
The second is that the solar tidal field also varies with the solar distance from earth, and this occurs in late January, so a SUPER supermoon would have to occur then.
Perhaps the most important point is the nature of the variation, which is very flat near the maximum. The article mentions 90%, but the lunar tidal force is within 90% of its maximum value when the moon is within 70 degrees of perigee, and this approaches half the time ( my calculations here. )
The force is within 95% of maximum for angles within 45 degrees, and 99% for 20 degrees. When the moon is within 10 degrees of perigee, the tidal force is within 99.75% of the maximum.
So physically, there is nothing very significant about very close approaches to the theoretical maximum. The press made the same sort of hullaballoo about the close approach of Mars a few years ago, which was said to be the closest in thousands of years. People were walking around saying that Mars would be as big as the moon! In fact, I was asked about this last year, I think, because a popular article about the event “went viral” and surfaces every August.
Well, yeah. A full moon is twice as heavy as, say, a half moon. So of course it’s much scarier.
:-)