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For centuries, humankind has gazed up at the Moon in awe and wonder been a source of inspiration to artists, astronomers, poets, and mathematicians alike. But how much do we really know about our closest neighbor? Explore the history of mans relationship with the Moonthe science, the myths, the facts, and the fictionand how it affects our everyday lives and the world around us.

\"Throughout time, people have created stories to explain...[the moon's] presence and appearance.\" (NEW MOON) Four myths about the moon are presented.

\"The moon has fascinated people since ancient times. It shines in the night sky with the reflected light of the Sun. But for most of history, humans didn't know this. They believed it glowed with its own light.\" (AQUILA Magazine) Learn more about the moon.

\"Have you ever looked up at the Moon and wondered where it came from? In modern times, many scientists have tried to figure out the answer to this question. They believe that something happened billions of years ago to form Earth's satellite. A satellite is something that orbits, or circles, a larger body.\" (NewsCurrents Read to Know) Read more about this theory about the moon.

From ancient Egypt to the Aztecs, from the Amazon to the Baltic, the sun has always played a leading role in mythology and tradition. A look at the sun's influence on culture throughout history is presented.

The Star Trek franchise’s depiction of artificial intelligence (AI) and affiliated technologies—namely, supercomputers, androids, and holograms—evokes common themes and motifs from the myths of the ancient Mediterranean. This article analyzes the mythological underpinnings of Star Trek’s historical treatment and approach to AI, from The Original Series to The Next Generation and up through the newest additions to the canon, Short Treks, and Picard. AI in Star Trek, like Data, the Doctor, and Zora, expresses qualities associated with divinity: superhuman strength, intelligence, and agelessness. These very qualities distinguish them from humans and bar them from considerations of personhood. Like the Greek gods of myth, AI can present as immortal, which fundamentally distinguishes it from mortal humans, as seen in the tensions between gods and humans in Homer’s Odyssey and the Homeric Hymns. The ancient tension between mortal and immortal is manifested in the combative relationship between organic creator and artificial creation, a common sci-fi trope, that can lead to a cycle of fear and hostility evocative of the divine generational warfare in Hesiod’s Theogony. The artificial–organic tension resonates with the contemporary audience’s conflicted experiences with evolving technologies and problematizes the show’s presentation of the evolution of humanity into a posthuman existence. Just as mythology is used to consider humanity relative to the divine, narratives about AI are fertile ground to analyze what it means to be human and establish parameters for what is decidedly not human.

At a time when the viability of planet Earth as a suitable home for the human species is in doubt, outer space is big business. This paper examines the politics of space migration and its effects in perpetuating myths of human exceptionalism. How can we think differently about the ontological determinants that govern our relationship to the planet that we think of as home?

Amerindian myths dealing with the related themes of incest, eclipse, and the origin of the moon's spots reveal glimpses of an elaborate cosmological system, widespread across the Americas, that presents nature in terms of darkness, chaos, corruption, and mortality—in opposition to culture, which is identified with light, order, immortality, and the sacred. This opposition takes diverse manifestations and the mediation of these opposites is achieved, in both myth and ritual, in complex ways. This article uses a comparative approach to analyze myths and motifs documented by Claude Lévi-Strauss. The notorious abuse of comparative mythology in the past to vindicate colonialist and racist agendas has cast a dark shadow over this discipline. Instead of reducing the material to generalized functions of the mind or of human society, the ideas expressed are treated as manifestations of an intellectual tradition. Starting with the structural links that Lévi-Strauss makes between a large body of Amerindian myths, this article will reveal the richness and intellectual depth with which the relevant mythic ideas are elaborated in different cultures. The variations of an idea or motif are approached with the understanding that they are manifestations of a dynamic process of tradition and creation.

The planet Uranus and its satellites form one of the most mysterious systems in our Solar System. Geological traces of global resurfacing of the main satellites and the abnormally relatively high values of some of their orbital elements suggest a rich dynamical evolution. The orbits are expected to slowly drift away owing to tides raised on the planet. As a result, several mean motion resonances (MMR) between the satellites were likely encountered in the past. In this work, we address the dynamical and tidal evolution of the five major satellites of Uranus, namely, Miranda, Ariel, Umbriel, Titania, and Oberon.Resorting to an N-body model that takes into account the tidal evolution of the orbits and the spins of all bodies, we re-estimated the interval of the specific dissipation factor of Uranus to be 5800 < Q0 < 8000. We determined that, at present, there are no spin-orbit resonances within the Uranian satellites, invalidating them as a mechanism to decrease the inclinations of the satellites, as proposed in previous studies. We confirmed that the current eccentricities of the satellites are not forced, and estimated the tidal damping timescales of the satellites’ eccentricities and inclinations. By simulating the system from just after their formation, 4.5 Gyr ago, until the present days, we observed that it could have crossed a large number of MMR during the orbital evolution, deviating the final orbits from the currently observed. By adopting a step-by-step approach, we reconstructed the orbital evolution of the main satellites just after the 5/3 Ariel-Umbriel MMR, and have shown that the system has not been much disturbed since then. We also confirmed that, during capture within the 5/3 Ariel-Umbriel MMR, the orbits of the five satellites are strongly excited. Consequently, the 5/3 MMR must be shortly skipped.To study in detail the passage through the 5/3 Ariel-Umbriel MMR, we developed a secular two-satellite model, where we adopt the weak friction tidal model, using complex Cartesian coordinates. With the consideration of the conservation of the total angular momentum, we only need to perform one average over one fast angle. We also portray the chaotic nature of the system with Poincaré surface sections and stability maps.By performing a large number of numerical simulations, we studied the passage through the 5/3 Ariel-Umbriel in the circular, planar, and eccentric-inclined cases. We have shown that the eccentricity of Ariel is the key variable to evade the 5/3 MMR.