[dalke]

There's a quote attributed to Rutherford that “In science there is only physics; everything else is stamp collecting.” (See http://www.quotationspage.com/quote/26219.html for a citation.)

When I was in school we had to learn the organs of the body, the parts of a cell, and other seemingly arbitrary terms. This comes from an old tradition where "science" was roughly equivalent to "knowing names."

I also grew up in an area where evolution was a contentious topic. The teacher only covered it for one day. But it's evolution which tied together the individual fields of 'botany' and 'anatomy' and 'bacteriology' into 'biology.' Evolution is what makes Rutherford's views wrong.

Words like "supermoon" and also "blue moon" fall into that category of meaningless terms that sound scientific but are little more than numerology, and not backed by any deeper meaning.

I have no problems getting together for a 'fun celebratory event'. I celebrate on New Year's eve like many others. I've been at fun celebratory events for meteor showers, and for other eclipses.

What I have problems with is justifying it with essentially an arbitrary and meaningless definition. Why is a "supermoon" at the 90% size threshold? Why not 95% Or 99%? By comparison, the New Year is also arbitrary, but not meaningless, as the history of the calendar shows.

[furyofantares]

I don't understand your last comment. I agree that the New Year is arbitrary, but years themselves are quite meaningful and useful. But I don't think the New Year celebration has anything to do with celebrating the concept and understanding of a year. We have added extra non-scientific meaning to it by using it as cultural event of reflection on the past and planning for the future. I think that's in the same category as choosing to look at the moon together and feel a sense of awe.

[dalke]

I'll try again. I'm not concerned about the arbitrariness of the term 'supermoon'. I dislike the meaningless of it. A good term has meaning behind it. The choice of the new year is arbitrary, and has changed over the centuries. We can examine why there is a calendar system, and compare sun-based to moon-based calendar systems. We can understand that the turnover point of the Gregorian or Mayan calendar is arbitrary, and for the more recent calendar systems we know some of the reasons for why they exist.

Similarly, there's an intrinsic difference between a 'nova' and a 'supernova'.

But if you look at 'supermoon', all you get is a number pulled out of a hat.

> I think that's in the same category as choosing to look at the moon together and feel a sense of awe.

Does the awe really come from someone telling you the moon is near perigee? Or from other aspects?

It's a temporal coincidence that the perigee moon now is near the full moon. In another decade, the perigee moon will be around the new moon. Will we be having the same coverage of the topic then? I doubt it.

Perhaps an analogy might help. People choose to believe in a 'Saturn return'. But 'Saturn return' for arbitrary reasons includes the time +/- a couple of Earth years around a full Saturn year. I can still express my dislike for the term and concept even if you are in awe to know that you are one, or two, or even three Saturn years old.

[furyofantares]

Thanks, I understand what you mean about the term itself not conveying information now.

> Does the awe really come from someone telling you the moon is near perigee? Or from other aspects?

Oh, not from that information, no. It comes from going out and looking at the moon, taking pictures, and looking at all the pictures that populate my facebook feed.

[DanBC]

The other problem with the supermoon term is the ridiculous images used to illustrate the articles about supermoons.

In those images the moon is bigger than my fist, and all the features are very clear even though it's a full moon.

[mikeash]

It's no coincidence that the people I see making a big deal about "supermoon" and that are also the people talking about crossing the galactic plane, how you need to be prepared for emotional problems as Mercury goes retrograde, and similar nonsense.

To directly address the grandparent, there's nothing wrong with a fun celebratory event, but that's not what this is. If we could somehow turn it into one while retaining the term, I'd be fine with that.

[furyofantares]

Maybe we should just start celebrating Mercury retrograde ourselves.

It's Mercury retrograde, and it's time to celebrate math and science and reflect on the past! Long ago, humans looked up and it was pretty obvious everything revolved around the Earth. But then a few things go backwards at regular intervals, what's up with that? Explained by gods, by platonic solids, by complicated cosmic gears, it was a long standing puzzle. But after much puzzling, there was a realization that everything is much simpler and makes more sense if the sun is the center of the solar system, leading to the predictive physics that drives technology today! Quite the revolution -- and that's no accidental pun, it's the origin of this secondary meaning of the word "revolution".

How inspiring -- let's not let this inspiration go to waste, let's use it to reflect on our past relationships in our own lives, to revisit our past conclusions and see them in a new light, to have compassion for our past selves who had not yet not acquired the knowledge we have now.

And while we're at it, let's celebrate the discovery that gravity is a force that drops off extremely fast -- proportional to the square of the distance between two objects. Great news for us, because it means there is less gravitational attraction between me and Mercury when Mercury is closest than there is between me and the person sitting next to me, giving me plenty of opportunity to look at Mercury and be affected only by its light and the thoughts it inspires in me rather than hurled out of the solar system or into the Sun.