"Death rates spike when more than half of the moon is visible in the night sky, according to research by longevity analysts."

"As our closest neighbor in space, a time-capsule of planetary evolution and the only world outside of Earth that humans have stepped foot on, the Moon is an obvious and ever-present location for future exploration by humans. The research that can be done on the Moon — as well as from it — will be invaluable to science. But the only times humans have visited the Moon were during quick, dusty jaunts on its surface, lasting only 2-3 days each before departing. Long-term human exposure to the lunar environment has never been studied in depth, and it’s quite possible that — in addition to the many inherent dangers of [...]

Russia wants to build a permanent base on the moon, which is mostly indicative of what a terrible hellhole Russia is.

"Everybody knows that there's just one moon orbiting the Earth. But a new study by an international team of astronomers concludes that everybody is dead wrong about that." —Somebody go read the rest of this and tell me what the deal is; I just don't think I have the strength to face it today.

Photo by fotum, via Shutterstock

Do you want to watch a 24-minute video about the birth of the moon? You do? Come here for a second. No, no, stand right there. Close your eyes. [GIANT SMACK] I'm sorry, but sometimes that's the only way to deal with abject stupidity. You really disgust me sometimes. Besides, all you need to know is right here. Idiot.

Click here if you want to see a photo of an ugly, useless bunch of rock that loiters about our orbit hoping to be noticed even though it DESERVES NOTHING BUT SCORN. And here it is trying to look deep and soulful. IT'S NOT WORKING, you pretentious piece of junk.

Hahahaha, suck it, moon! Even your supposedly unique minerals can be found right here on earth! What are you good for, moon? Apart from mockery, NOTHING!

"A police constable has risked embarrassment after launching an investigation into a 'suspicious light source' which was later found to be the moon."

Jamie Dimon: I don't see JPMorgan being wiped out unless the earth is hit by the moon.

— CNBC (@CNBC) June 19, 2012

Don't make me root for the moon, Dimon. Just don't.

You're dead to me, Talking Points Memo. I mean, I understand that all the action is in slideshows these days, but I cannot abide your celebration of the latest lunar idiocy. Good day.

"From year to year, the moon never seems to change. Craters and other formations appear to be permanent now, but the moon didn't always look like this. Thanks to NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, we now have a better look at some of the moon's history." Hahahah, yes, NASA is pretending that this is about education, but we know that they hate the moon as much as all right-thinking people do and they probably took a great deal of joy in putting together this video of the moon getting assaulted by space. I'm gonna be so useless for the rest of the day. TAKE IT ALL, MOON.

What's going on with that stupid piece of rock up in space? Earth's Moon appears seismically quiet: its major volcanic and tectonic activity is confined to its distant past, as evidenced by the lack of new large-scale features on the surface. However, recent images from the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) have revealed smaller features that had escaped earlier notice. Several regions exhibit small ravines known as graben that are free of cratering or other marring, which indicates relatively recent formation.

A new paper in Nature Geoscience (by Thomas R. Watters, Mark S. Robinson, Maria E. Banks, Thanh Tran, and Brett W. Denevi) suggests these shallow graben may have formed [...]

As someone with a very serious interest in seeing Newt Gingrich at the top of the Republican ticket, I was initially disheartened by his recent promise to put an American base on the moon that would eventually become a state. The idea that the moon—a giant piece of space garbage which even Science has admitted is completely worthless—might get itself two (no doubt obstructionist) Senators and a representative in the House is almost too much to take, because it is the moon. It deserves nothing but scorn and pillage. But then I remembered that Republican industrial and environmental policies are essentially designed to promote exploitation and decay, [...]

Look, we are at this point HOURS AWAY from the winter break. Please do not make me consider the possibility that Earth has two moons. I mean, it actually makes sense, in that the one moon we see all the time is A USELESS PIECE OF GARBAGE THAT CLEARLY CANNOT PULL ITS WEIGHT, but really, I'm SO TIRED RIGHT NOW. I just… can't.

"A space elevator capable of taking robots and humans back to the surface of the moon can be built today, a California firm has claimed. The radical Liftport system would allow cheap and simple access to the lunar surface via a ‘ribbon’ cable. Eventually it is hoped a 'space elevator' could even take people from earth directly to the lunar surface." —Naturally, they are on Kickstarter. Whatever, it is too early in the week to get worked up about this.

"[T]he changing force exerted by the Moon as it orbits—the same thing that drives the tides—creates subtle differences in the position of the hardware within the [Large Hadron Collider]. The differences are tiny for any individual piece of hardware, but they add up when it comes to something as big as the LHC, which has a circumference of nearly 27km. Plus, the LHC hardware is very, very sensitive to being out of alignment, given that it has to accurately direct bunches of protons that are moving at nearly the speed of light. The net result is that the LHC's operators sporadically have to tweak the beam's alignments…" —All of [...]