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Explosion on Moon Spreads Moondust
Jotii writes "NASA scientists have observed an explosion on the moon. The blast, equal in energy to about 70 kg of TNT, occurred near the edge of Marethe Sea of Rains on Nov. 7, 2005, when a 12-centimeter-wide meteoroid slammed into the ground. The main danger of such explosions is the static and toxic moondust, which is thrown around."
The main danger of such explosions is the static and toxic moondust, which is thrown around.
Danger to whom exactly? Should I be hitting the bunker to dodge that toxic moondust?
Oh no... it's the future.
"Moondust is electrostatically charged and notoriously clingy." --Dr. Tony Phillips, 2005
"But moondust will cover you. Cover you." --David Bowie, 1996
Obviously they can calculate the objects kinetic energy from the intensity of the flash. This will give them mass or speed, but not both. Perhaps the speed came from their assumption about the origin of the meteoroid, but that could still be wrong, of course.
BTW if anybody is interested in exactly what it was like to be walking on the moon in the 60's and 70's I recommend they have a look at the Apollo Lunar Surface Journal
http://michaelsmith.id.au
Congress extends PAT RIOT act to include the moon.
Timo's Audio Software http://www.esseraudio.com
In the "real" universe, it is Praxis that explodes, and we receive the Klingons for a peace treaty.
I guess now this means we'll have to take the iniative and go meet Chancellor Gorkon.
> Explosion on Moon Spreads Moondust But there, they just call it "dust" :p
I suppose one might have to be careful when opening an airlock, lest moondust enter the airlock and then spread to the inside of the ship, but without an atmosphere, any dust blown up will settle quickly, so a simple rule of not opening an airlock right after anything nearby explodes should be sufficient.
Or is the risk that it will get on the outside of suits, and be hard to clean off, and so will be carried in?
Looks like santa missed earth ;_;
Yes it does. The force of the impact is great enough that it vaporizes the ground around it. This molten rock cloud then expands and rapidly cools releasing a huge flash of light as it does so. In short an explosion, albeit one without sound.
Tesla was a genius. Edison however was a overrated hack who liked to torture puppies.
There is other information available.
i ds.html. Since the Taurids are very well characterized, their orbital velocity is extremely well known, and thus the net impact velocity would be known with great precision, too. If it's one of the Taurids. Which is not so bad an assumption.
- 947.pdf
d -3-6063.pdf
For example, the date of the observation (7 November), and commentary in the article leads to the reasonable supposition that the observation was from a meteor in the Taurid stream http://comets.amsmeteors.org/meteors/showers/taur
Even without the Taurid assumption, you can look at other data to put some bounds on the meteor velocities. For example, there are excellent "head echo" observations by some big radars:
Arecibo http://www.copernicus.org/EGU/acp/acp/4/947/acp-4
Jicamarca http://www.copernicus.org/EGU/acp/acpd/3/6063/acp
and there have been several PhD dissertations in recent years exploring a variety of aspects of meteors, just from the plasma physics side (let alone the "meteor astronomy" side); check out Close and Dyrud from 2004 at BU, http://www.bu.edu/astronomy/alumni/phd.html.
The past decade has been a remarkably active time for meteor studies. There will be presentations about meteors at the URSI meeting in Boulder CO 4-7 Jan 2006, http://cires.colorado.edu/ursi/