• Question: Is the moon really made of cheese? If not why do people say it is?

    Asked by 1drawsome to Cathal, Daphne, Darren, Jon, Katherine on 10 Mar 2012.
    • Photo: Daphne Ng

      Daphne Ng answered on 10 Mar 2012:

      No. The moon isn’t made of cheese. It’s mostly made of rock (think of it as a ball of rock that is circling our planet).

      Many asteroids, comets and meteorites hit the moon. This creates pits in the moon surface, known as craters. If you observe the moon through a telescope on Earth (I have!), these craters make the moon look like a ball of “holey” cheese. People from ancient times probably observed this as well. At the time, they didn’t have the technology to find out exactly what the moon was made of. So it became a common saying that the moon is made of cheese because it looked like it was! And that saying stuck through the ages until scientists sent space probes to sample the moon surface.

    • Photo: Katherine Haxton

      Katherine Haxton answered on 10 Mar 2012:

      Wallace and Gromit think it’s made of cheese as well 🙂

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