title: Anthropic selection for the Moon's mass.
abstract: This paper investigates whether anthropic selection explains the unusually large size of our Moon. It is shown that obliquity stability of the Earth is possible across a wide range of different starting conditions for the Earth-Moon system. However, the lunar mass and angular momentum from the actual Earth-Moon system are remarkable in that they very nearly produce an unstable obliquity. This may be because the particular properties of our Earth-Moon system simultaneously allow a stable obliquity and a slow rotation rate. A slow rotation rate may have been anthropically selected because it minimizes the equator-pole temperature difference, thus minimizing climatic fluctuations. The great merit of this idea is that it can be tested using extrasolar planet search programs planned for the near future. If correct, such anthropic selection predicts that most extrasolar planetary systems will have significantly larger perturbation frequencies than our own Solar System.
authors.affiliation: Department of Geology, Royal Holloway University of London, Egham, Surrey, United Kingdom.
authors.forename: Dave
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Waltham
mesh_terms: D005075:Biological Evolution; D018534:Earth, Planet; D004777:Environment; D018559:Exobiology; D016081:Moon