Popular Culture Review Volume 29, Number 2, Summer 2018 | Page 34

Space Race Figure 6
Phase 6 : Old Gibbous
It turns out that the moon ’ s black eye gets erased every 81,000 years . Given the extremely thin lunar atmosphere , tons of space debris ( mostly rocks ), hit the surface of the moon without breaking up upon entry . This churns up the dusty surface , mixing up the top inch of moon dust so much that it amounts to a complete resurfacing . But the truth of the past is never so easily obscured .
The reason that the moon shines so brightly is , of course , that it merely reflects light from the sun . But in reality , it is actually a horrible reflector and is mostly black . It ’ s just that given how dark the rest of the sky is , even a 3 % solar reflecting ability makes the moon look bright in comparison to the vast emptiness of space . And we Earth-bound animals have looked up to the brilliance of the moon surely as long as we have had eyes to do so .
Late in his life , when Albert Einstein was at Princeton ’ s Institute for Advanced Study , he glanced up . Walking through
19