Toxic Moondust Bounces Like A Cannonball

Jotii writes "A new NASA article says that moondust fetched to Earth by Apollo 17 is now being studied. From the article: 'Zen-like, he studies the a single mote of dust suspended inside a basketball-sized vacuum chamber for as long as 10 to 12 days.' Moondust is apparently very static, and bounces like cannonballs. Another article from NASA emphasizes the dust's toxicity: 'In some ways, lunar dust resembles the silica dust on Earth that causes silicosis, a serious disease.'"

Comments

Re:Watch out NBA

[sweetnjguy29]

If everyone would RTFA, the actual quote is Eventually, the repulsive charges become so strong that grains are launched off the surface "like cannonballs" not "Moondust bounces like cannonballs" as the slashdot summary states.

However, as the previous poster mentioned, cannonballs do in fact bounce. However, I doubt that it would be possible to actually see the bouncing cannon ball itself, as it is probably moving at least 300 m/s or so. (I imagine that most of the collisions were highly elastic...allowing a bounce) especially since archeologically recovered canonballs dont have too much damage to them. However, you could probably see the dust rising from where the canon ball is skipping...as well as the effect on any troops in the way. I remember watching a show on the Military Channel where they filmed different types of cannon shot...in slow motion...so you could see how the ball skipped/bounced and lost energy.