The full moon has long been associated with unnatural happenings and science has been pushed to prove why these things tend to occur. One such problem that occurs on full moon nights is that signals bounced off reflectors on the lunar surface return surprisingly faint echoes. These suitcases sized reflectors were placed on the moon by the crew of Apollo.

Scientists use them to reflect laser beams and when they return to earth they can calculate the distance of the moon from our planet highly accurately.  This process is known as lunar ranging. However on full moon nights things are different.The laser signals just do not get reflected back to earth the way they should.

At the University of California, San Diego, researchers found an explanation for this during an eclipse on the night of December 21, 2010 as Earth’s shadow passed over each reflector in turn. The scientists feel that this is the result of uneven heating of the reflective lenses.

This uneven heating would alter their refractive index, that in turn would begin dispersing the return beam causing the problem on full moon nights. So this science project study proves that science can explain one more full moon curse. Which is the next one that you would like to study?