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The Moon (Earth's Moon)

naitaka

Gone But Not Forgotten
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http://moon.google.com/

Welcome to Google Moon

In honor of the first manned Moon landing, which took place on July 20, 1969, we’ve added some NASA imagery to the Google Maps interface to help you pay your own visit to our celestial neighbor. Happy lunar surfing.

Zoom all the way in to find out the truth about the moon, and be sure to click on "More About Google Moon":

Google Copernicus Center is hiring

Google is interviewing candidates for engineering positions at our lunar hosting and research center, opening late in the spring of 2007. This unique opportunity is available only to highly-qualified individuals who are willing to relocate for an extended period of time, are in top physical condition and are capable of surviving with limited access to such modern conveniences as soy low-fat lattes, The Sopranos and a steady supply of oxygen.



Why a lunar location?

It's a logical question to ask. Google's current engineering facilities in the United States, India and Switzerland are all leaders in search technology development. However, by locating a research and technology center on the Moon, Google engineers will be able to experiment with an entirely different set of parameters. For example, imagine tapping unlimited solar energy to drive megawatt data centers and power innumerable arrays of massively parallel lava lamps, with ample no-cost cooling available to regulate the temperature of server farms sprawling over acres of land unblighted by sentient lifeforms or restrictive zoning ordinances.

Moreover, Google's Copernicus Center will provide a clear ear on the chatter of the universe, the vast web of electromagnetic pulses that may contain signals from intelligent life forms in other galaxies, as well as a complete record of every radio or television signal broadcast from our own planet. Google's goal is to extract information from that cacophonous web and make it available to anyone with a mouse and a modem. Imagine discovering not only alien attempts at communication with Earth, but also such heretofore unavailable cultural treasures as Pink Floyd's 1968 appearance on the BBC and the tragically lost first season of "Iron Chef."
 
naitaka said:
Zoom all the way in to find out the truth about the moon, and be sure to click on "More About Google Moon":

Its clearly a scam - its green not yellow!!

;)
 
Oooo, pretty.

It's lovely. Has anyone spotted anything odd yet? Pair of jeans? Dino skeleton? Yeti prints? Clangers? :spinning
 
No, but I did see a guy with a big quiff in a white, rhinestone-encrusted jumpsuit.



Driving a London Routemaster double decker.



Near a WW2 German Bomber.


With Nessie in it.
 
stupid moon. . .

You can't even tell where you are on the moon! You can't put in a moon feature to find it. you move the picture over just one frame, and it repeats again (although, I tested maps.google.com, and it does the same thing).


It's just so. . (wait for it). . . Cheesy!!
 
A Dry Moon After All?
By Richard A. Kerr
ScienceNOW Daily News
18 October 2006

Two new studies fail to find any sign of previously reported ice deposits cached in the deep chill of the moon's shadows. Much of NASA's planned scientific exploration is geared to the search for lunar ice, which astronauts could drink and convert to rocket fuel, but now it appears that nothing short of a dedicated rover mission--as yet unplanned--can settle the question.
Radar signals bounced off the moon in 1996 by the orbiting Clementine spacecraft hinted at massive ice deposits in craters near the moon's south pole, parts of which never see the sun. Presumably, water delivered by impacting comets over the eons could have made its way to these 80 degree kelvin (80K) cold traps and been preserved as ice just beneath the surface of the loose soil.

These ice signatures seemed to be confirmed by planetary scientist Donald Campbell of Cornell University, who--with colleagues--used two giant Earth-based radio dishes to bounce radar signals off the moon. But thanks to the 20-meter resolution of the new combination of instruments, the researchers could see that the "ice" signals were coming from all the wrong places. Instead of being in the permanently shaded wall of Shackleton crater, for example, they showed up in well-lit Schomberger crater and many smaller young craters, the team reports tomorrow in Nature. Such areas are roughened by crater ejecta and slumping rock. "Right now, the explanation for the [radar signals] has something to do with reflection between rocks and boulders rather than ice at the poles," says planetary scientist Bruce Hapke of the University of Pittsburgh in Pennsylvania.

Radar can't rule out a light frost in lunar soils, but another analysis, presented at the annual meeting of the Division for Planetary Sciences last week in Pasadena, California, raises questions about even a trace of lunar ice. Planetary scientist David Paige of the University of California, Los Angeles, and colleagues performed the first complete calculations of lunar temperatures, starting with the shadowing by topography and including heating by reflected sunlight and by adjacent sun-warmed rock.

There are indeed crater-hosted cold traps near the poles as cold as 50K, Paige and his colleagues found. But, again, the signs of water--in this case data from the orbiting Lunar Prospector--mostly do not come where the calculated cold spots are. "We can probably say with some confidence that not all cold traps are filled with ice," Paige says.

As new work weakens the case for lunar ice, NASA is mounting an ice-oriented first stage of scientific exploration meant to pave the way for humans' return to the moon. Most of the instruments on the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) to be launched in October 2008 can measure properties relevant to lunar ice. And the piggyback experiment to LRO--a crash landing into a shadowed crater intended to kick any ice into view--is all about water. Not everyone is optimistic. "I don't think you can" prove ice is there by remote means, says planetary scientist William Feldman of the Planetary Science Institute in Tucson, Arizona, who led the Lunar Prospector investigation. "You have to go there in a rover. That's hard, especially if it's 80K."

http://sciencenow.sciencemag.org/cgi/co ... 006/1018/1
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Published online: 2 February 2007; | doi:10.1038/news070129-16

Moon too static for astronauts?
Lunar settlements could face high-voltage sparks.
Philip Ball



Shocking: Charged Moon dust could short-circuit equipment.

NASA

Lunar colonists could be in for a nasty shock — literally. A team of US scientists has found that the Moon's surface can become charged with up to several thousand volts of static electricity1.

This charging could release sparks that disable electronic equipment — including monitors, space buggies or even the front door of a Moon base. And it could cause dust clouds that clogs up instruments. What's worse, it can be caused by bad weather in space: just when astronauts need their equipment to give them warning and allow them to shelter from the radiation.

But not everyone sees the news as bad. "I'm overjoyed this work was carried out," says Dale Ferguson, a scientist at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Alabama. "Data about the surface charging of the Moon was sorely lacking," he explains.

Jasper Halekas of the University of California, Berkeley and his co-workers knew that the Moon's surface could become charged when electrically charged particles in the solar wind plough into it. This process, they realised, could have left an imprint that the Lunar Prospector, which orbited the Moon in 1998-99, might have detected.

So Halekas and colleagues scanned through the data collected by the Lunar Prospector, and found that the surface charge can get as big as 4,500 volts. "That's more than enough to do some damage, if the electric field only extends over small distances," says Halekas. Any metal equipment would be vulnerable, though an astronaut might be protected by the insulation of his or her suit.

Halekas cautions that their observations were for charging over large areas, so the strength of local fields on the lunar surface is still unknown — if the charge is very spread out, then it might not cause a shock at all.

Blame it on the sunshine?

Two situations can lead to the lunar surface becoming highly charged. The first is when the Moon passes through the Earth's magnetotail — the magnetic wake left by the solar wind as it sweeps over our planet. The second is during 'solar storms', when streams of high-energy particles are hurled from the Sun out into space.

It's more than enough to do some damage.

Jasper Halekas
University of Californa at Berkeley



Sunlight can dissipate the charge by knocking electrons out of the surface, so most of the charge is seen on the night side of the Moon. But the researchers say they were surprised to find some shocking levels on the sunlit side too.

Could astronauts plan for this charging? The Moon's pass through the magnetotail is predictable. But outbursts of bad solar weather are not.

To detect or be alerted to the onset of a solar storm, astronauts need their electronic equipment. If the lunar surface became charged to thousands of volts, electrical sparks could burn out the equipment's circuits — just when they are needed most.

Fatal attraction

Solar storms can be disruptive on Earth. They interfere with radio telecommunication signals and disable satellites as the charged particles hit the upper atmosphere. In space, the effects can be even more alarming. The rain of particles can potentially damage living cells in much the same way as radioactivity, and so astronauts would need to take shelter behind protective screens. Staying out on the Moon's surface during a solar storm could be fatal.

Ferguson says, however, that the levels of charging seen on the Moon are similar to those found on satellites during solar storms. And there are already techniques to avoid spark damage, he says, for example by applying special surface coatings.

A bigger problem might be what the charging does to Moon dust. Charged dust particles would repel one another, and this could cause it to rise up in clouds.

"Levitated dust was seen on the Apollo missions," says Halekas — and the charging might now explain it. Moon dust is a big headache for exploration. "It sticks to everything and is very fine, so it gets past seals," Halekas says. It even clogged the vacuum cleaner that the Apollo astronauts took to keep their spacecraft clean.



References
Halekas J. S., et al. Geophys. Res. Lett., 34. L02111 (2007).


Story from [email protected]:
http://news.nature.com//news/2007/070129/070129-16.html
 
Does this mean that if Moon colonists rubbed an astronaut on their jumpers (remember the low gravity) then they could stick them to the walls of their domed city?
 
Blame it on the sunshine?
Well, they couldn't blame it the moonlight or the good times, so it's that or the boogie.
 
Changes in the brightness and color over small areas of the moon's surface, known as Transient Lunar Phenomena, or TLP, have been observed telescopically for hundreds of years.

The optical flashes have been seen by skywatchers but rarely photographed.

"People over the years have attributed TLPs to all sorts of effects: turbulence in Earth's atmosphere, visual physiological effects, atmospheric smearing of light like a prism, and even psychological effects like hysteria or planted suggestion," said Columbia University researcher Arlin Crotts.

Using data from decades-old observations, Crotts and colleagues have now found a strong correlation between TLP sightings and regions where lunar orbiting spacecraft have detected gas leaking out from beneath the lunar surface.

"The areas selected consistently by TLP are the craters Aristarchus (in about 50 percent of sampled reports), Plato (about 15 percent) with Kepler, Copernicus, Tycho and Grimaldi all at the few percent level apiece," Crotts said.

"This data ties in with observations made by the Apollo 15 and Lunar Prospector spacecraft which detected the gas radon-222 twice at Aristarchus and also once at Kepler and Grimaldi.

Moonquakes to blame?

Now Crotts and collaborators hope to achieve a larger sample of TLP sightings by using a robotic camera to keep watch on the moon in an effort to photograph any TLP events that may occur.

The camera, located at the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in northern Chile, will remove the gruesome task of continuously observing from the astronomer and provide observations free from the bias and inaccuracy that human eyes can introduce.

"It [the camera] will be more sensitive than the human eye/telescope combination, and more objective and persistent," Crotts said. "Hopefully it will give a better map of the TLP geographical distribution, as well as their timing and internal structure."

It is likely that the ghostly and fleeting TLP could be a manifestation of inert gases such as radon and argon being released from within the moon due to radioactive decay of uranium-238 and potassium K-40.

Moonquakes would seem a likely candidate for triggering the release of these gases but no correlation between TLP and moonquakes was found by Crotts.

"There is some small tendency for TLP to correlate with perigee (the moon's closest point to the Earth in its orbit). Maybe there is a significant delay between moonquakes and resulting TLP. We don't know," Crotts told SPACE.com.

The findings have been submitted to the journal Icarus.

Source

If lunar outgassing is a source of CO, CO2 or H2O, this could prove useful to future lunar colonies, supplying drinking water and fuel for example and saving billions of dollars in transportation costs. Hauling freight from Earth now costs about $10,000 per pound just to get from the launch pad to space.

Which makes it all the more interesting if true.
 
*Burp*!

Just passing gas... :D
 
The moon is supposed to be geologically inactive, so where is the gas coming from? Has it been trapped since it was formed by the big splash? If so, it could be interesting to look at.

Actually, whatever the source, it's interesting.
 
Anome_ said:
The moon is supposed to be geologically inactive, so where is the gas coming from?
The moon suffers tidal stresses from the Earth's gravitational field.

Although it is gravitationally 'locked' (the moon always shows us the same face as it revolves about the Earth), the ellipticity of its orbit means that in fact it does appear to rock slightly from side to side, and this will vary the tidal stresses.

In addition, the moon (unprotected by an atmosphere), receives regular meteorite impacts, which send shock waves through it.

Both these mechanisms could open pathways for the escape of trapped gases.

(More on Lunar seismology here:
http://www.lpi.usra.edu/expmoon/Apollo1 ... s_PSE.html )
 
That might explain how the gas escapes, but it doesn't explain where it came from.
 
OP:
It is likely that the ghostly and fleeting TLP could be a manifestation of inert gases such as radon and argon being released from within the moon due to radioactive decay of uranium-238 and potassium K-40.

So it's not necessarily trapped gas, but created gas.
 
Anome_ said:
The moon is supposed to be geologically inactive, so where is the gas coming from? Has it been trapped since it was formed by the big splash?

The theory seems to be that the gas continues to be produced by natural radioactivity deep inside the Moon.


But if that's the case, why doesn't the Earth belch similar radioactive gases? Or does it?

And what exactly is the half-life of the radioactive elements involved? How long will they remain radioactive?
 
OldTimeRadio said:
The theory seems to be that the gas continues to be produced by natural radioactivity deep inside the Moon.

But if that's the case, why doesn't the Earth belch similar radioactive gases? Or does it?
Oh yes it does! Here in Cornwall, the radioactive decay of stuff in the granite bedrock produces a lot of radon. It's a recognized potential health problem.

About a year ago, when I moved house, I was halfway though testing radon levels in the old place, with special sensors that had been sent to me.

I'm sure you can find plenty of info on this if you google Cornwall and 'Radon Testing'. (Too busy to do it myself, right now...)

(There was a mine in St Stephens that produced radium ores, I believe, used - amazingly - for colouring ceramics!)
 
rynner said:
(There was a mine in St Stephens that produced radium ores, I believe, used - amazingly - for colouring ceramics!)

Some people claim that what killed artist Andy Warhol was collecting all that old RED Fiesta Ware. There's apparently some very remote danger from as little as a single plate or two but Warhol had stacks and stacks and stacks and stacks of the stuff.
 
just an odd thought,but why is the moons surface covered in craters?

since it always faces its primary how did the said meteors impact the moon ?

the obvious one it that in the past it dint face its primary but how then has it ended up in a stable orbit ,or should i say what caused such a large body to change its orbit?

:D
 
... And there's also the fact that the moon's period of rotation is equal to its period of orbiting the earth. As such, the moon *does* face 'in all directions' even though one hemisphere remains aimed toward its primary.

It's likely the moon once rotated relative to the primary before settling into constantly facing earth. As a result, there was lots of opportunity for the moon's surface to get bombarded from all angles ...
 
EnolaGaia said:
...

It's likely the moon once rotated relative to the primary before settling into constantly facing earth. As a result, there was lots of opportunity for the moon's surface to get bombarded from all angles ...
Plus, the moon and the Earth's speed of rotation have changed quite a lot, in four billion years.

Both the Earth and the moon are constantly being bombarded by meteors, although not quite as many as when the Earth and the Moon were being formed. It's just that the Earth's atmosphere, plate tectonics and general wet, weathery eco-system, have expunged most of the signs of meteor impacts and craters, while the Moon has no atmosphere, or plate tectonics, to rub out the evidence of impacts, over its long history. Occasionally, in the past, the flows of molten rock, whether from vulcanism, or huge impacts, were so vast that huge flat areas formed, that looked like 'seas,' from Earth.

What we see on the Moon is a record of what happened on both the Earth and the Moon, not to mention the other planets of the Solar System, which stretches back four billion years.
 
Pietro_Mercurios said:
... which stretches back four billion years.


You said that in a 'Dr. Evil' voice, didn't you? ;) :lol:
 
in fact they can approach from any angle

wouldnt they(the craters) be eliptical if they wernt almost straight on?that is the gravity of the earth hasnt attracted the said body

and is there any definative age to the range of craters?
just saying they are old is an assumptioum,sorry but im just fishing with this....
 
TinFinger said:
in fact they can approach from any angle

wouldnt they(the craters) be eliptical if they wernt almost straight on?that is the gravity of the earth hasnt attracted the said body

Take a look at the images in the links below. The trajectories must have been from many angles.
http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap990419.html and
http://www.unm.edu/~abqtom/images/Moon/2004-03-30-Plato.jpg

TinFinger said:
and is there any definative age to the range of craters?
just saying they are old is an assumptioum,sorry but im just fishing with this....

The web page at http://www.unm.edu/~abqtom/observing_the_moon.htm does a nice job of explaining the craters and their ages.
 
Most craters are nearly circular because the energy of impact is converted into a burst of energy as soon as the object hits the ground; like an atomic explosion, this burst expands almost completely the same in all directions. Only a very few craters on the moon are noticably elliptical, and those were probably created by objects coming in at very oblique angles.
Like this one. which might have been a double object...
http://www.unm.edu/~abqtom/images/Moon/ ... biter2.jpg
 
Water on the moon: lunar secret revealed
James Randerson, science correspondent
The Guardian, Thursday July 10, 2008

An analysis of moon rocks collected during the Apollo missions has found much higher levels of water than scientists had expected. The study increases the possibility that there are significant deposits of water trapped in rocks at the moon's poles, which would be invaluable for astronauts setting up a future permanent base.

Finding water was a surprise because scientists believe the moon formed when a Mars-sized planet collided with the infant Earth.

The impact threw up huge amounts of molten rock that formed the moon, but in the process volatile substances such as water would have been lost into space.

"Most people believed that the moon was dry," said Alberto Saal at Brown University in Rhode Island, who was part of the team that did the research. "People had tried to measure for 40 years and couldn't see any evidence for water ... they were not convinced we were doing something worthwhile."

He and his colleagues used a new and extremely sensitive technique to analyse rocks collected during the Apollo 15 mission in 1971 and the last visit by people to the moon, Apollo 17 in 1972. Since being brought back to Earth the rocks have been kept in nitrogen gas at the Johnson Space Centre in Houston, Texas.

Saal's analysis involved polishing tiny grains of volcanic glass in the rocks to get to the chemical composition inside. Any chemicals on the outside could have been deposited after the minerals cooled in eruptions on the moon around 2bn years ago.

Crucially, the concentration of water was highest in the centre of the samples and became progressively lower towards the outside, proving that the water was in the original rocks and not deposited later by contamination from asteroids or during the samples' return to Earth.

The research is published in today's issue of the journal Nature.

The finding will give new impetus to two Nasa missions seeking water deposits on the moon. The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, due to launch later this year, is hunting for water at the poles, while the Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite's primary objective is to look for water ice. It is due to launch next year.

Finding water is crucial to Nasa's plans for moon exploration. "This could be really important if you want to put a base [on the moon]," said Saal. The extracted water could be used for thirsty astronauts and to create hydrogen to use as fuel.

Professor John Zarnecki, a space scientist at the Open University, said the analysis would also provide crucial evidence about the formation of the early solar system. "It's like a sort of detective story in which the crime happened 4.5bn years ago. On Earth all the evidence has gone, but on the moon there is evidence of what went on," he said. "Because the moon has been relatively inert and not much has happened we can actually use it as an indicator of what happened in the early history of the solar system, and of course that means what happened to us."

The action of tectonic plates on Earth means that rocks from Earth's early history have mostly been drawn down into the mantle at geological faults.

Zarnecki also said the research was an example of the impressive ongoing scientific legacy of the Apollo missions. "Most people would imagine that you bring the stuff back, do the analysis over a couple of years then that's it," he said, "[but] we are still getting great science from stuff collected 35 years ago."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2008/ ... ration.usa
 
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