Let’s hear it for Asimov. A wee bit more intelligent than freshman stoners. I’d like to see that essay.
My user name, as you may have guessed, is borrowed…
The two holes in the casing of a 3.5" floppy disk are exactly the right distance apart that they fit on the rings of a ring binder/folder.
Both floppy disks and ring binders are designed objects, but the fact that one fits on the other is *still *a coincidence.
The moon and sun superficially appear the same size to a squinty-eyed observer, but actually vary quite a bit due to the elliptical orbit of the moon (and also the earth around the sun)
See annular eclipse for the very common case of the moon being smaller in appearance with the sun.
Yep, see my P.S. in the original post, up top. And thanks for the link!
sort of like an empty chair appears to contain a President?
Well, have you noticed how a partial moon kind of looks like a banana…
What about the the other planets in the solar system? Does the sun and one or more of their moons appear to be of similar size?
I vote for “B”. What is your response, and why?
There SHOULD be a certain incidence of surprising but meaningless coincidences in the physical world, for the same reason that experimenters using the arbitrary p=0.05 test for significance should find relationships that aren’t really there in 1 out of 20 results.
I have read somewhere (probably on the straight dope) that the moon size and position is unusual enough that extraterrestrial tourists would book vacations to earth specificialy to witness our unique and spectacular eclipses.
Ignoring the exact coincidence of its present size, the Earth’s large Moon may have played roles in Earth’s developing advanced life! (1) Doesn’t it deflect some asteroid/meteor collisions? (2) Tide pools, with their daily dry/wet cycle may have assisted the evolution of land life? (3) ???
[del]I wouldn’t rule out the size coincidence as having special meaning, but to develop the theme I’d be attacked as a mystic and gullible to teleology, so I’ll just erase this…[/del]
xkcd had a good comic on just that.
For the OP, I do find it interesting, and whether or not it has significance would be entirely based on your perspective. If you’re religious, maybe it plays a role, like how maybe God uses it as part of miracles or messages or maybe as just something akin to an artistic signature. If you’re an atheist, it’s just a coincidence.
Personally, it doesn’t really blow my mind, since it’s just always been that way and I’ve never really thought about it. It’s just like how mindblowing it should be that we’ve developed microscopic processors and manipulate electrons and light to communicate on the internet over great distances, but it’s just mundane. It would probably seem much more mindblowing if some random species of aliens showed up, who had some other type of moon configuration, then they’d probably marvel at it.
What a strange tangent. I don’t really get it though. I don’t have 3.5" floppy to look at, but I remember only one hole in the casing, the one used for write protection. Also, aren’t the rings on ring binders about five inches apart, or aren’t we talking about three-ring binders?
More likely you read it in a Chick comic. If you have a spaceship, all you have to do is look out the window to see the corona and stars around the sun.
Ah, thanks for that. I just couldn’t picture what your were talking about. I guess those disks did have a second hole to show they were high capacity. I had totally forgotten that. So those holes are 9cm apart, as are the rings in an A4 lever arch ring binder. Well, that is a coincidence. Maybe not of the same magnitude as the sun and full moon being the same apparent size from the Earth, but a coincidence all the same.
Chevrolet Blazer hubcaps had fake plastic bolt heads molded into them, and they fit the lug nut wrench supplied with the car. Is this a mystically significant coincidence? Or is it one of those bitter auto industry employee stories?
Indeed - even though both items are the end product of intelligent design, it’s still a coincidence.
They may be the right distance apart, but surely those holes are far too small to fit the rings of a binder through?
No - they actually fit quite well - it used to be a common trick to supply software and manuals in one binder - when software was small enough to fit on floppies.