The moon was formed when it was washed out of the right eye of the god of the land while he was bathing. Tsukuyomi-no-Mikoto, the moon god of Japanese folklore, then lived forever in the heavens after climbing a giant celestial ladder from his father's bathroom.
What I love is how the whimsy of folklore is equalled, if not surpassed, by modern explanations for the origin of the moon.
For Natsuki Hosono of the Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology (JAMSTEC) in Yokohama, the origin of the moon is the most interesting topic in all of planetary science. And that's not just because his name contains the kanji for "tsuki," the word for "moon."
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