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Well right now the sun is 400 times farther away

from us than the moon.

But the sun is 400 times bigger.

So that's why you get a perfect solar eclipse.

And yes, it hasn't always been that way

because the moon was much closer.

The moon will be farther away.

God created us human beings at one moment

in the history of the earth where we can

witness total solar eclipses.

And because of that, we've been able to make

amazing scientific discoveries, some of which

actually give us substantial evidence

that there is a God behind it all.

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It's a big universe.

And there are a lot of coincidences.

So I think it's just a random happenstance.

But other people could have feelings

like there is a divine power to it.

that's people's personal thoughts and opinions.

But I just know the universe is huge.

There's a lot of different interesting things

that happen in it, just by random chance.

It just happens to be that the moon being

much smaller than the sun, of course, also is much closer.

And that alignment ends up being just perfect.

That's not going to last forever, actually.

The moon is moving further away from the Earth.

So over time-- long, long time periods--

eclipses will not be observable from here

on earth-- at least not total solar eclipses.

So we happen to live in a really good time

because the alignments are right, the distances are right,

the relative sizes are right.

So it's pretty exciting.

Well you have to have the right tilt.

So you have to have the right alignment between the objects.

And you have to have the right sizes and position.

So it is a pretty astounding thing

that everything lines up just right for us

to have this experience.

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And what's unique about our moon

compared to all other moons that we know of

is that it is a massive moon orbiting

a relatively small planet, and orbiting relatively close.

And so because our Earth has one gigantic moon not too far away,

the gravity of that moon stabilizes

the tilt of our rotation axis.

Right now we're at 23.5 degrees.

And it only varies by plus or minus one degree

over the history of the earth.

And that gives us stable climates.

And because of stable climates, we're

able to sustain human beings on the face of the earth,

even bring up a high population.

For example, if you look at the other planets

in our solar system, because they like this feature,

their tilt--

rotation axis tilt-- varies like this.

And therefore, they have climate instability that rules out

the possibility of life.

The moon also played a role in slowing down

the Earth's rotation rate.

The moon is close enough that it exerts tidal friction

on the earth.

And so when the earth was first formed,

it had a rotation rate of about two or three hours a day.

Now it's 24 hours a day.

24 hours a day is the optimal rotation rate

for advanced life.

If I had time, I could give you another dozen features

of the moon that must be fine tuned to make life

possible here on planet Earth.

Next time you look at the moon, thank God

for the way he designed it because otherwise you

wouldn't be able to enjoy life.