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Moon's Bulge Explained
anthemaniac writes "The moon has an unexplained bulge that astronomers have been trying to find a source for since 1799. Finally, an apparent answer: The equatorial bulge developed back when the developing moon was like molasses (and you thought it was cheese!) and, rather than today's nearly circular orbit, it 'moved in an eccentric oval-shaped orbit 100 million years after its violent formation.'"
It's just happy to see you.
I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
Hey, way to suck the fun out of this with 'the cheese' joke in the description.
Its nothing more than a little baby fat.
""The moon has an unexplained bulge that astronomers have been trying to find a source for since 1799."
Well there goes the middle-age spread excuse.
---
It's been 20 minutes since you last successfully posted a comment-and that hasn't stopped me yet, Taco.
Don't all circular/spherical objects bulge around the middle? take this o for example. The middle part of it is wide at the middle, and short at the top and bottom.
Everyone knows your metabolism slows down after a certain age. Still though, a half hour a day on the treadmill probably wouldn't hurt either.
Bulge at the equator, violent formation, clearly the Moon is American.
EOF
That's no moon...
I remember in High School the only theory they had was that something "very large" had impacted the moon while it was in development.
[Insert 'mooning' your girlfriend joke here]
Well... perhaps the man in the moon was thinkin about some of them women from Venus....
Now when I have to explain the bulge in my pants, I'll say it's because I'm eccentric! /Badump bump
I'll form my OWN solar system! With blackjack! And hookers!
Yeh and our ancestors are monkeys.
It's a codpiece.
Other than this text, there is no discernible information contained in this sig.
Just look at the Google map (zoom all the way in).
There wouldn't happen to be a strong magnetic field at the bulge would there....? How about a black monolith buried beneath the surface causing the bulge....?
So how did the eccentric orbit become so nearly circular? That takes a lot of energy ( and a little coincidence )
...then where did Wallace and Gromit go? What am I going to tell my children?!
The trouble with Karma is: it always gets worse.
...maybe they can explain Brandon Routh's bulge in his Superman outfit. Scientifically that is.
All the time I was thinking it was due to eating too much Double Quarter Pounders at McDonalds
My Aurora : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o91ZsGwJYyg
FB : https://www.facebook.com/TanveersPhotography
It's thin at one end, much much thicker in the middle, and thin again at the other end.
I have another theory, you know...
Why would anyone engrave "Elbereth"?
It's where they covered up the "CHA" that Chairface Chippendale put there. They used a little too much moondust.
I can sleep in peace tonight...
----------- Cut here ----------
Every joke posted above this line are what flashed through your mind as you read the headline.
Gravity is an amazing thing. On Earth we feel the pull of gravity constantly from the moon (tides). When the moon was more viscous it only goes to show that the Earth or other celestial bodies had some influence on the final shape of the moon.
-- "Mathematics is music for the mind, and Music is Mathematics for the Soul. - J.S. Bach"
I wish the bulge around my middle had as good an explanation... adam0@247msg.com
http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/moon_mechani cs_0303018.html
Well, here in a good amount of years, won't that bulge possibly be a base?
"I'm a well-wisher, in that I don't wish you any specific harm."
Duh! After it slamed into the earth. Remember?
http://moon.google.com/ and zoom very very very close, if you don't believe me
Isn't that enough of the "Because it's fat!" and "Because it's horny!" comments? If I knew how to mod all of you "Redundant", make no mistake, I would!
Space Beer.
Leben Sie jetzt die Fragen.
The moon is actually a spaceship. http://www.theforbiddenknowledge.com/hardtruth/moo n_spaceship.htm
Frickin' Viagra - if your bulge lasts more than 4 hours you are supposed to contact a physician immediately!!!
I wonder how fast you'd have to spin the Moon and how much you would have to hollow it to get a 1G environment on the inside of it?
I wonder how they explain this one.
Hey, if space coke worked for Cheech & Chong, why not?
When I grow up, I want to have Christopher Walken hair.
+1 Crapping In Our Cocoa Crispies
No sig for you!!
What does it say about a person who notices the title of this article and immediately says "The moon has a penis?"
"MOONING" da HOEs (Humans on Earth)
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
We here at Moon-Soft (tm) have warped the very shape of reality...er...this semi-spherical body. We can now provide longer vistas. Of course to fully take advantage of the improved horizons you'll need to upgrade your ship's thrust capacity, your visor's light filters... In fact, let me refer you to our friends over at Intele-spatial rockets. I'm sure they can outfit you with all the hardware you need to fully appreciate our development.
What's that? You prefer to keep your existing modest ship? Go where? Open-Orbit's space station? You say it is closer at hand, more affordable, and they even let you work on it if you'd like? What a preposterous idea! I'm sure they can't possibly offer you the same experience we have. Why, nearly everyone is going to the moon these days... Who'd want to stay in a closer, faster orbit?
--- Just another Code-Monkey
I know where the bulge came from. The moon has been consuming massive amounts of cosmic beer. It's nothing more than a big beer belly folks!
I reserve the right to think for myself. Others' opinions are optional. Puppy on lap = typos...not illiteracy.
While you have a very interesting theory, I think it is more likely due to the fact that circular orbits are the lowest energy state. Thus, tidal forces cause the system to gradually lose energy until it settles into a circular orbit. When you add up the 1/r potential of gravity and the repulsive 1/r^2 centrifugal potential, you get a function with a nice minimum which is the radius of a circular orbit. The reason that elliptical orbits occur is because the period of the orbit exactly matches the period of oscillations around the minimum potential. Thus when you go around once, you end up right back where you started and get a closed, elliptical orbit. (Note that this is true only for Newtonian mechanics. Once you take General Relativity into account, the periods aren't the same and orbits precess. We can directly observe this in the orbit of Mercury as a perhelion shift of 43 arcseconds/century.) . . . more or less.
How did Laplace determine the existence of the bulge?
Was it a "simple" measurement of the shape of the Moon or something more sophisticated via his favorite mathematic tricks? Considering it is Laplace, he must have measured its eccentricity fairly accurately. I wonder what he used to do that in 1799.
Mollases is more of a textural camparsion, but it must be remembered that this occured as the moon cooled, cooling from molten to solid cheese, so perhaps a better explanation would be that the bulge occured during cooling while the moon was like Fondue.
...I like bulges!
-muppet
Mmmmm.... Moon-Bulge...
(got nothing - pants/fat/aliens/etc were already done)
sic transit gloria mundi
The bulge exists because the moon just saw Uranus.
It's a space station!
No, it's a really a moon. And it is reminding me about some the rotund bitches I've dated in my life... sad. Let's get the hyper-hell outta here.
=(
Development notes at http://devscribbles.blogspot.com
we think that timespan is a load of crap? evolution still isn't proven you silly way-thinkers!
that's a space station!
Well there goes the middle-age spread excuse.
Acutally it's still digesting Earth's former "other" moon.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
what if it were made of BBQ spare ribs?
Would you eat it then?
Maybe next they'll be able to explain this...
Holy crap, how in the fuck did the parent get modded as +4 Informative!??
How about +4 Funny or +4 Raving Lunatic? Or better yet +0 Utterly Wrong?
Hello? Moderators? That's right, the moon is not a spaceship. Everything the linked article talked about ranged from bizarre to mind-bogglingly naive, to simply completely wrong. The parent comment is not informative. Please fix...thank you.
Explorers from the Japanese Moon base, excavating the "bulge", have uncovered a large, black, granite slab of some sort. Asked about the possibility of un-earthing other pieces (so to speak), a researcher was quoted as saying, "no, it looks farily monothlic". We hope to have film at 11 pm.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
I'm glad we got that out of the way. Damn thing kept me awake at night.
it's attracted to the earth.
ba-dum chhhhh......
thanks folks, I'll be here all week... try the veal...
I know this may stir a lot of anger around here, but as everyone else had pointed their point of view, I'd like to state mine, as well.
:: { * }
The Holy Quran (the book of Islam) mentions the moon's bulge, or rather what caused the bulge. The moon had split, by God, roughly 1426 years ago; That is, before Prophet Mohammad had left Mekka for the first time.
The reason God split the moon is that the heathens of Mekka (Quraish) had asked the Prophet to prove that God existed by asking God to split the moon. When the moon split, a man called Abu Jahel said to wait and ask people coming from far long if it did or not. If yes, then it is true otherwise Mohammad had played magic on our eyes.
People who came from far long did confirm the story, but the heathens said that it was a great magic and still refused to believe in God.
This is mere translation to two verses of the Holy Quran. I don't know where to find an english translation of the Holy Quran and I hope someone does find one and post it.
Here're the versus in Arabic
Surat Al-Qamar -- versus (1) & (2)
Mod points are a dangerous tool. Abuse them wisely.
Seems like Arabic characters are filtered... :: http://www.islampedia.com/MIE2/tafsir/54kamar.html
Here's the link to page I got it from (including the explanation & story)
Mod points are a dangerous tool. Abuse them wisely.
The right term is elliptical.
Slashdot - news for
--- Eat my sig.
Warren Moon, he was a black football player. 'Nuff said Sun Myung Moon, Asian, small but a faux demigod. Nobody dare stare. Moon Zappa, daddy was a very tall rock star. Her bulge are bulges. Ah-nold, his bulge may be a 'brain tumor' after all.
"save a cow, eat a vegetarian"
The article doesn't really explain how we "know" what the moon's orbit was 100 million years ago. Also, we don't really know exactly how the moon formed. The theory that it was formed out of an immense object striking earth and tearing a chunk out of it is perhaps the currently prevailing theory, but it's not something that we know for absolutely certain.
Also, 100 million years ago wasn't really that long ago. The earth's age is estimated at about 4 billion years. I'd expect that the moon formed way earlier than this. Orbits don't just change by themselves, so we need an explanation for what would have changed the orbit.
In short, there's still a lot of unanswered questions.
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
I thought crashing into the bottom of the gravity well was the lowest energy state.
Why do you assume that the earth and the moon are that old? There is not a shred of hard evidence that shows the age of anything to be that old. You believe that propaganda just as much as theologists believe everything was created. It's not different. If we are just going on propaganda/belief and not on hard evidence, then I say the bulge in the moon is actually a slow forming pimple, ready to pop and spew molten moon pimple juices all over the earth. GAG.
Are you sure it was the chair-throwing incident?
I thought it was actually where the moon was deformed due to the whole "Developers, Developers, Developers" music video
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Is it just me, or is "it used to be liquid" the absolute first guess that everyone though of about .3 seconds after learning the mood had a bulge. It seems the article is simply saying that some very bored astronomer finally got around to doing the math behind the assumption.
My analysis of the situation after carefully skipping all of the Informative posts and Reading all the '0' mod comments: The moon is adversely affecting the orbit of the earth and must be destroyed with a large nuclear payload.
I guess "The Moon is a Bulgy Mistress" just wasn't a good enough title for Heinlien.
"Eye halve a spelling chequer, It came with my pea sea, It plainly marques four my revue, Miss steaks eye kin knot sea"
What if the moon, on a planetary scale, had a very very low viscosity?
http://www.kirchersociety.org/blog/?p=541?
Just and idea. But sometimes you have to think big.
That's no moon!
It's a space station.
It's too big to be a space station.
Turn around Chewie
I have nothing else to add.
...and caught a glimpse of Uranus!
;-)
sorry - I couldn't resist
Libertas in infinitum