The earth, as you may have noticed, has a single large moon that is very nearly the same apparent size as the sun.
The odds of such an arrangement strike me as being fairly slim (especially if there’s one moon…) It is a coincidence, no doubt… providing crowned eclipses, and, maybe (I wonder) paving the way for intelligent life to observe these eclipses.
Is there a mechanism by which a single moon, about the same size as the sun, could make intelligent life more likely to appear? So as a result, should we meet intelligent aliens, it is likely that they too come from a planet with similar solar eclipses?
What? The moon in nowhere near the size of Earth, let alone the Sun. Did I miss something or is that not what you mean? It’s hypothesized that the moon in fact was part of Earth at one time in the distant past (millions of years ago) so as such in order for it to be larger than the sun the earth would have to be X times larger than the sun.
No, he said the same apparent size, which is to say that they’re both about half a degree across. It seems to me this would be a completely negligible influence on evolution. I mean, you could also ask whether the fact that the Moon always shows the same side towards Earth had an influence.
The OP did say apparent size so I’m pretty sure he realizes they’re not similar in actual size. I doubt the coincidence of apparent size makes any difference though. I’d not be surprised to find out it’s even not much of a coincidence.
All it does is give people one more thing to speculate about, create stories from and such. For the curious minded, there is plenty around us to inspire thought that moon/sun ratios aren’t going to be required to create an intelligent lifeform.
Remember, the stars themselves figure greatly in mythology so even without a moon or total eclipses(?), we’d have something to say.
The moon’s tidal effects on the ocean no doubt greatly influenced the development of early land life. Might have saved a billion years evolutionwise. Note that Venus has no moons and Mars’ moons are far too tiny to exert an effect on (ancient) oceans. So I’d say it was a plus on this point.
Having something big and luminous to look at in the night sky, with phases and all no doubt gave a boost to proto-astronomy. Helped in telling time, etc. But note that risings of stars in the early morning was used in quite a few cultures, so perhaps not at all essential in terms of calendar dev. Also, the observations of heavenly bodies had no real use beyond time keeping until quite recently. So not much of an effect if any.