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The Big Myth About The Moon You Need To Stop Believing
By ELI SHAYOTOVICH
Myths about the moon, the Earth’s closest celestial neighbor, abound — for instance, some people believe man's one small step onto its surface was falsified, while others still buy into the notion that a full moon drives people crazy (and can turn them into a werewolf). Perhaps the biggest myth involves the dark side of the moon.
What people commonly refer to as "the dark side of the moon" is just the side they never actually see from Earth. According to NASA, the moon looks like it remains fixed and still in the sky because of a special effect known as synchronous rotation: the moon rotates on its axis (about every 27 days) at the same rate that it orbits around the Earth (every 27.322 days).
The term "dark side" is also technically inaccurate because that side of the moon gets just as much sunlight as the one seen from Earth, so maybe a better term would be “far side.” Former NASA scientist Dr. James O’Donoghue said in a 2019 Tweet that people can still say "dark side of the moon," but the term they use in astronomy is "night side."