Who Built the Moon?

Title: Who Built the Moon?
Author: Christopher Knight, Alan Butler
Publisher: Watkins Publishing 2007 (South Asian Edition)
ISBN: 978-1842-93132-5
Pages: 254

This book in fact does not deserve a place here to be reviewed, based on the ideals stated above in the title. The book is pseudo-science of the worst kind, with no real material and based on empty rhetoric and numerology! The authors assert that the moon is not a natural object and it was created artificially. We’d wonder who had made such a thing 4.6 billion years ago. Unable to pronounce any alien life, it says that humans of the future did this to facilitate life on earth early on. We’d ask how could people in the future can go to the past and create their own ancestors? There comes the obstinate reply that time travel is not discarded by laws of Physics! Of course it is not discarded, but what proof have you junkheads, to claim that it do exist? Several so called proofs are laid out in front of us, to ascertain that moon is a designed object. Many of them are comically ridiculous, but some of them are as follows.

1. The location of the moon with respect to the sun is strategic. The size of moon is 1/400th that of the sun and hence it is located at a distance of 1/400th from earth to the sun, so that eclipses can happen.

2. There are numerological significance between the sizes of earth and moon, if you express them in metric units. The metric units are revealed to mankind thousands of years ago by some external agency, which the authors call Unknown Creative Agency (UCA) first, then calls God and finally, people from the future.

3. The metric unit of length (metre) is linked to the size of barley, hence barley is a genetically engineered crop, given to mankind about 5000 years ago.

These nonsensical arguments go on and on. There is no need to replicate all of them here. With some more imagination, the authors could’ve converted this to a science fiction novel. The boisterous list of references given at the end of the book include FoxNews, CNN etc. There are also claims that the Book of Genesis in the Bible is literally true! To be fair to other religions too, they argue that the creation myths of these religions also are passable, with some suggested modifications.

I’d found this book in the Astronomy section of a university library. Of course, the library staff don’t read the books, but this one was rather way off the mark. The only good thing in the book is a reported comment from Magellan, the explorer during the renaissance era, regarding the conflict with the Church account of eclipses. He said, “The church says the earth is flat, but I know it is round for I have seen its shadow on the moon and I have more faith in a shadow than the church”.

Rating: 1 Star