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Birth of the Moon: a Runaway Nuclear Reaction?
An anonymous reader writes "How the Moon arose has long stumped scientists. Now Dutch geophysicists argue that it was created not by a massive collision 4.5 billion years ago, but by a runaway nuclear reaction deep inside the young Earth."
Wouldn't there be evidence of this on the surface somewhere? I know the crust has shifted considerably, but that's a *lot* of material to suddenly vacate.
the moon is made of cheese
clearly, the young earth was lactose intolerant, and ejected it for that reason
the problem is all infants can digest lactose, and lose the lactase enzyme ability later in life if they don't have the right genes
but all theories have holes in them
like swiss cheese!
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Check. Dutch Scientists, Check. Thought that the moon was caused by a Cosmic Dutch Oven, Priceless.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
So Earth basically got a bad case of gas, had an accident and now has its own turd in orbit.
While it's certainly an interesting idea I can't see it being right (but I've only read the first page, the site seems to have collapsed). My problem with it is simple that the impactor idea seems to fit all the data so well I think it's unlikley to be wrong.
I wonder though if this could perhaps be tested. The huge explosion theory could well have left old rocks away from the explosion site untouched. The impactor would have melted the whole planet. If we find even one rock old than the impact date we have our answer.
I used to have a better sig but it broke.
I thought that a number of scientists had run simulations explaining the earth/moon systems creation via a collision. I even saw it on TV on a special narrated by Tony Robbins, so it MUST be true!
The Moon is a secret Italian conspiracy to spy on, undermine, infiltrate, and subvert America. That's why it is always in OUR sky -- ever wondered about that? How come Mexicans and Chinese don't get the Moon? Because they are in league with the nefarious Italians against our Great Fatherland.
We all know that if there were a nuclear catastrophe of this magnitude, then the whole planet would be hurled through space at such speed that each week we would encounter a new alien race, group of outcasts, or supernatural being. Seeing as the earth is still in its stable orbit around the sun, we can conclude that this must not have happened.
I'm on page three. I had to look up a couple of things of wikipedia so far. I hadn't heard the word Petrology before; it's the study of rocks.
The term "georeactor" seemed self-explanatory but I looked it up anyway, and was glad I did.
As Mr. Spock would say, "fascinating." My thanks to the story submitter.
Free Martian Whores!
That's just a deranged fantasy. Now, if you were talking about DC-10s...
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
...but not completely. The nuclear waste that caused the moon to be torn away were stored HERE! A cautionary tale?
If the moon were real, it would have been created by God. Clearly a large ball of rock is the sign of an intelligent Creator, if it were there.
Actually they used DC-8. The 737 didn't come out til like 10 million years later!
Can't get to the article, but - if you haven't heard of this before, it's pretty cool: the Oklo Natural Fission Reactor in Gabon. And while you're at it, you can read about how this natural reactor has scientists rethinking how constant the fine structure constant really is.
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version 0.9 ?
I know you're joking, but
Free Martian Whores!
I can't get to TFA, but it seems mighty unlikely to have that much fissile material just so happen to gather together, and not be poisoned by cadmium, boron, lead, or other neutron absorbers, and have it stay together and not have a negative temperature coefficient slowing it down, and not form bubbles and geysers and other instabilities, and have it push asymmetrically in one direction, for many hours (cf: speed of sound). Wayaaay too many things to believe before breakfast.
As noted, the site is Slashdotted so I can't read it straight up. That said, this doesn't make sense to me. A large explosion on the Earth's surface wouldn't launch material into Earth orbit unless it were launched at a very precise angle (probably nearly horizontal). The authors (based on previous comments) complain that the Giant Impact hypothesis requires a finely-tuned impact angle, but what about their model? I'd expect an explosion to blow material almost radially outward. To posit that you'd get the finely-tuned launch angle from their model seems much more of a stretch than that an impact should strike a glancing blow (especially when we don't know how many similarly-sized impactors hit with the wrong conditions and were simply absorbed).
Also, note that you need to loft a lot more material than just the Moon's mass to make the Moon. it's not an efficient process, a lot (most?) of the material rains back down on the Earth. It has to, it starts out in an orbit that intersects the Earth after all.
Oh, wait... it is. Nevermind.
Nothing to see here. Move along.
Slashdotted due to runaway nuclear reaction. Mirror here: Birth of the Moon: a Runaway Nuclear Reaction?
(Or should that be a runaway Slashdot reaction?)
It's the mother of all core dumps!
Just how much crust there is is often misunderstood.
Example: imagine a model of the earth where 1 mm = 1 mile. (or you can use 1mm = 1 km, if you like)
The earth is 7926.28 miles (12756.1 km) in diameter.
At this scale, you can make out significant mountain ranges, etc. The Atmosphere would be 4 or 5 inches deep. The crust is an inch or 2 thick.
And the Earth itself is more than 8 yards across. That inch or two of crust is sitting on a chewy molten insides. (check volcano flows, etc.)
The Earth is really a molten droplet spinning in space with the thinnest external layer where life has happened to accumulate, like the layer of tarnish on a coin.
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
So, as soon Yucca Mountain gets tanked up, the Earth might get another moon?
That would be cool!
Less so, if you live in what used to be Nevada.
Ah, the joys of Space 1999 Physics! Truly worthy of an Ig Nobel!
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
It's really not the same at all, but the article did call this story immediately to mind.
"Blowups Happen" is a classic 1940s SF story about a future in which society is total dependent on nuclear power plants. The engineering theory behind them shows that they are intrinsically safe and cannot blow up like a bomb. Then someone discovers that there is a false assumption in the equations and that, in fact they can blow up like bombs.
Meanwhile, an expert in the theory of lunar formation has concluded the lunar craters cannot have been formed by meteor impact, because of the "rays." There had to have been enough energy to "crack an entire planet." The only possible explanation, he says, is that the Moon was once an inhabited planet with an atmosphere and that "Here at Tycho was located their main power plant, and here at Copernicus and Kepler, on islands of the middle of the great oceans, were secondary power stations."
In other words, not only can they blow up like bombs, but that is what reduced the Moon to its present airless, lifeless, cratered and cracked state.
As I say, that's a completely different theory from the one being discussed. Nevertheless, I would bet a nickel that at least one of the authors of that article had read "Blowups Happen."
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!