5 facts about the moon that will impress anyone
Miscellaneous / / October 20, 2023
Where did the satellite come from, what will happen to it next and how it was almost turned into a large billboard.
1. The moon is gradually flying away from us
This hefty piece of rock in the night sky seems like something permanent and unchanging, but it’s not. 4.5 billion years ago, when the Moon first formed, its orbit was located at a distance of only about 22,500 km from Earth. For comparison: today there are approximately 384,400 km between these bodies.
The proximity of the Moon to the then Earth led to extremely high tides on our planet. Due to the effect of the so-called tidal acceleration, our satellite began to gradually move away - and this process continues to this day.
Every year the Moon moves away from us by 3.8 cm. Your nails grow at about the same rate.
In theory, this process could continue 50 billion years, until the period of rotation of the Earth would be equal to the period of revolution of the Moon around it. After this, the satellite would always be above one point on the surface of our planet. Days on Earth would become longer, since the Moon, with its gravity, would gradually slow down the rotation of the planet around its axis, and it would begin to look noticeably smaller in the sky than it does now.
Approximately the same thing has already happened with the dwarf planet Pluto - it and its satellite Charon have completed the tidal evolution of their orbits and now always turn the same side towards each other.
But don’t worry, the Moon won’t have time to fly that far from us. In just 4.5 billion years, the Sun will turn into a red giant and destroy both it and our planet.
2. Played golf on the moon
Kick a ball on the Moon during Apollo 14 in 1971 decided astronauts Alan Shepard and Edgar Mitchell. The latter filmed how his friend made several fitting swings with a club, and then sent the ball into some kind of crater.
The second ball flew a greater distance. According to Alan, he was "many miles away." This was facilitated by the airless environment and lower gravity.
However, like many golfers, Shepard overestimated his swing. Half a century after the game, image specialist Andy Saunders analyzed archival footage taken by astronauts and the lunar module, and established the place where that same ball hit. The result is a modest 120 feet, or just 36.5 meters.
3. A man is buried on the moon
Typically, the ashes of cremated people are either placed in columbariums or given to relatives for safekeeping. However, some bequeath that it be dispelled after their of death in some place that was dear to them during their lifetime. Well, or which they were passionate about visiting.
NASA geologist Eugene Shoemaker was known for his studies of craters and for co-discovering Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 with astronomer David Levy. The man dreamed of flying to the moon, but could not do it due to health problems. Shortly before his death in 1997 in a car accident, he uttered phrase: “Not going to the moon and not hitting it with a hammer was the biggest disappointment of my life.”
And Shoemaker’s colleagues from NASA did not forget about this.
The geologist's ashes were placed in a metal capsule, and it was attached to the Lunar Prospector probe. On July 31, 1999, after a year spent in orbit of the Moon, the device fell to the surface of the satellite along with the remains of Eugene Shoemaker. And to date, this is the only person buried on another celestial body.
4. The first ever space pizza ad nearly appeared on the Moon.
In 1999, the well-known Pizza Hut company decided to conduct an original advertising campaign. She bought the right to place her advertisement on the fairing of the Proton rocket.
But, according to Chief Executive Officer Mike Rawlings, it wasn't the company's most ambitious plan to space. Initially, Pizza Hut marketers considered the possibility of projecting their logo using high-powered color lasers... onto the surface of the Moon.
However, there was a catch. When doing the calculations, it turned out that for the logo to be seen from Earth, it had to be about the size of Texas.
Top management of Pizza Hut figured it out, how much money should be spent on building and powering projectors for such advertising, and they wisely decided to limit themselves to buying space on the head fairing of the next launched rockets. Not as cool as the most expensive laser show in history, but still not bad.
By the way, as part of the same advertising campaign, Pizza Hut also launched the shuttle to the ISS pizza, which the astronauts then baked in their onboard oven.
5. The Moon is a broken piece of the Earth
When our Earth was still completely new, just formed, a certain planet crashed into it, which astronomers called Theia. This happened approximately 4.51 billion years ago. The collision was so powerful that it ejected 1.2% of the Earth's mass into space.
The debris entered the orbit of our planet and, under the influence of gravity, gathered there into a spherical body, forming the Moon. Take a look at the video below to get an idea of what it looked like. The process was very fast: By cosmic standards, this took only a few hours.
At first, the Moon was hot and covered with a magma ocean. But gradually, over about 200 million years, it cooled down, and a hard crust formed on its surface.
This theory explains well why the Moon and Earth have almost identical mineral compositions.
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