Luna. In China we usually call the tutelary spirit Chang’e, a great goddess. Sometimes Yu Nu. In the Greek myths, Selene. And Selene’s mother was Theia—thus the scientists’ name for the impactor planetesimal. This lost planet is in fact not lost, but rather a part of all of us. Theia’s atoms are in every body of every human. In the four and a half billion years since that time, the moon’s and Earth’s gravitational influence on each other has caused Earth’s rotation to slow to twenty-four hours a day, while the moon is now tidally locked, and rotates on its axis in the same time it takes to
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