Impacts that leave the Earth-Moon system with a large excess in angular momentum have recently been advocated as a means of generating a protolunar disc with a composition that is nearly identical to that of the Earth's mantle. We here investigate the accretion of the Moon from discs generated by such 'non-canonical' impacts, which are typically more compact than discs produced by canonical imp...

The revolution and rotation of the Moon are well understood and there is little debate as to their mechanisms in the present day. However, it is generally unknown to the public that the Moon is responsible for the current length of our day. Research in the early part of the 20 th century found that the Moon was much closer in the past and is getting farther everyday (Street, 1917). More current...

Since ancient times, human has been fascinated by the changing lunar phases – a monthly cycle that takes 29.53 days to complete (Figure 1). Many cultures in the world hold the beliefs that the changing lunar phases affect human behaviour; in particular, full moon has been associated with madness. The word “lunatic” (previously used to mean mentally ill) came from Latin lunaticus which in turn w...

A decade-long campaign to test the lunar cataclysm hypothesis continues to support an intense period of bombardment several hundred million years after solar system formation. Geological, geochemical, and isotopic data imply that (i) basin-forming impacts occurred on the Moon ∼4 Ga and (ii) impacts occurred on asteroids ∼3.6–4.1 Ga, implying the lunar cataclysm is actually an inner solar system...

Foraging animals have several tools for managing the risk of predation, and the foraging games between them and their predators. Among these, time allocation is foremost, followed by vigilance and apprehension. Together, their use influences a forager's time allocation and giving-up density (GUD) in depletable resource patches. We examined Allenby's gerbils (Gerbilus andersoni allenbyi) exploit...