“The dark side of the Moon is always dark”

Many people mistakenly believe that the far side of the Moon is perpetually shrouded in darkness. This common misconception likely stems from the fact that we on Earth only ever see one face of our lunar neighbor. For millennia, this hidden hemisphere remained a complete mystery to humanity, leading to the popular, albeit inaccurate, moniker of the "dark side."

However, scientific evidence clearly busts this myth. The Moon is tidally locked with Earth, meaning it takes roughly the same amount of time to rotate on its axis as it does to orbit our planet. This is why we always see the same side. Crucially, the Moon does rotate, and as it does, sunlight illuminates both its near and far sides equally over the course of its lunar day, which lasts about 29.5 Earth days. Just as Earth has day and night, so too does the entire Moon, regardless of which side is facing us.

The persistence of this myth is largely due to the misleading nature of the term "dark side." While it's true that the far side is "dark" in the sense that it is hidden from Earth's view, it is not dark due to a lack of sunlight. The term has unfortunately been misinterpreted to mean a perpetual absence of light, rather than simply being out of sight. Our inability to observe it directly until space missions like Luna 3 in 1959 reinforced the idea of it being an unknown, and therefore potentially unlit, realm.