Franco De Nicola- whose videos I've been watching- tells me the Moon's an artificial satellite, placed in our sky by highly advanced ETs 10,000 years ago- and I wonder how you could ever prove or disprove it.
Franco says there are tribes with long memories who have stories about how things were in the old moonless days- and how she came into being.
I looked online- and found one from the Philippines about how this vain girl was pounding something in a mortar while wearing a silver comb in her hair- and her mother said you can't wear that comb while you're working- so she took it off and hung it in the sky- and carried on pounding- and the butt end of the long pestle hammered against the sky and punched it out of reach: so there was the comb, hanging above the girl's head and she couldn't retrieve it- and there it still is- millennia later- and we know it as the Moon.
It's weird that the Moon's hollow. I wonder if there are "people" living up there, underground, out of sight.
Selenites.
In Wells's story the Selenites are fragile, ant-like critters and our less than admirable hero (Wells's heroes are always less than admirable)- goes round smashing their heads in like the good imperialist he is.
Even the scientists think the Moon's a bit strange. For one thing it's much larger- relative to the size of its host planet- than any other satellite in the Solar System. They may blanch at the suggestion that it's artificial but they don't have a generally accepted theory to account for it being there. One school says it's the outcome of a collision between the Earth and a small planet that got in the way, another school says it was a wandering asteroid that was entrapped by the Earth's gravitational field.
Last night was the night of the full Moon. "Last of the Cold Moons" said Ailz. And as it was a passably clear night I went and stood on the lawn and looked at her. Or tried to look at her- only she was so bright I couldn't hold her gaze for long- and turned away and looked at Orion instead because he's much easier on the eye.