Kryptonite for the supermoon

Kryptonite for the supermoon: "

If you believe the mainstream media, you might think this weekend’s "supermoon" will cause earthquakes, volcanoes, bad weather, halitosis, dust bunnies, and hangnails.

Guess what I think of this idea! Hint: check the name of my blog. Got it? Good.

In reality, this "supermoon" nonsense is, well, nonsense. I have some details below, but for those of you who are impatient (the tl;dr crowd) here are the bullet points:

Yes, the Moon is closer today than usual, but only by less than 2%.
This does happen around full Moon, which is when we get bigger tides, but that happens every single month. The Moon being closer amplifies that, but only a tiny little bit.
The Moon’s possible effect on earthquakes has been studied for a long time. The result? Major earthquakes are not correlated with the Moon’s position or distance.

Therefore,

Anyone claiming this "supermoon" can cause earthquakes or whatnot is, to be blunt, totally, completely, utterly, wrong.

Say.

OK, so, how about some details?

Brief overview

I went over a lot of this in my post showing the Moon had nothing to do with the Japanese earthquake. Briefly, the Moon orbits the Earth in ...

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