Lunar pic, review

Easily explainable, like most everything we observe in the Universe, as electrical scarring from an electric discharge.

www.electric-spark-scars.com...

The same scar can be seen on Ganymede:
www.cybertrails.com...

And an image from electric discharge experiments: www.cybertrails.com...

reply to post by amitheone


I don't think that wind can roll any rock and leave its tracks, even in soggy ground under a dry surface.

From what I have seen on the beach (where it is common to have strong North winds) the first thing that happens with stronger winds is that the sand is taken away from the surface (and usually ends on the backs of the people that are on the beach, with the result that most people have to stand up or leave the beach ) but it does not make anything (except objects with a low weight and large surfaces like plastic bags and parasols) besides the sand itself move from their places.

It would probably could happen in a place with a denser atmosphere (to make higher energy winds) and a lower gravity (to make things move easier, although the inertia would be the same).

When I said that I could not see any indications of soggy ground I was thinking that on an area like that (the central peak of a crater) there would be some signs of soggy ground in the rest of the image, having soggy ground on the top of a mountain and not on the lower areas is an even stranger thing than a rolling rock.

I think that the most probable reason for the movement of those rocks is seismic activity, moving a 23 metres rock would need a very strong wind.

[350] [PICTURE MISSING] Lunar Orbiter V photographed an area in the Vitello crater (south of Mare Humorum at 30.61° S latitude, 37.57° W longitude) on August 17, 1967. The enlarged portion of that high-resolution telephoto picture reveals two large "rolling stones," whose paths are clearly visible. The larger one near the center of the picture is about 23 meters across and has rolled or bounced some 274 meters. The smaller rock is 4.6 meters across and has traveled 365 meters. Numerous boulder tracks in Orbiter pictures have told scientists much about the soil mechanics of the lunar surface, its cohesiveness and bearing strength, and the possibility of quakes as one cause of rock movement on the Moon.

Source

From what I have seen, extremely fine and dry dust, like Portland cement, behaves almost in the same way as mud.

And on that page you posted about the dust storms on the Moon they are talking about electrostatic dust storms, not wind storms.
To show better what I mean, here are some images.

Vitello crater with a yellow rectangle showing more or less the area of the higher resolution photo.

Central peak of Vitello crater from the higher resolution photo with a yellow rectangle marking the are where the "rolling rocks" are.

Area with the famous "rolling rocks"

As I have said in a previous discussion about these rocks, I don't think that the rock moved up-hill (if it really moved up-hill) more than it would be normal because of the energy it gathered during the first part of its movement, down-hill. One of the reasons I think that it was a common down-hill movement is because there are more rocks that rolled from the area more to the top of the image.

They are visible in the following image, a little higher and more to the right than the other two rocks.

Here is a version with all the tracks highlighted.

PS: sorry about the time it took for me to answer, but Imageshack did not wanted to work.

reply to post by jedimiller


The image is not fake, unless NASA faked it.

And the height of any object can not be measured by the length of its shadow if we do not know the angle between the light projected on the object and the surface where the shadow is cast.

To try to make it clearer, if we have a vertical pole making a 90º angle with the surrounding ground, when we have a light source directly above it the pole will not cast a shadow because the shadow would be on the ground that the pole occupies.

If we use a light source projection its light in the same angle as the ground, the shadow will be infinite (theoretically, not in reality) because it is project with the same angle as the surface in which it is projected.

If the surface is not flat but makes a up or down curve then the length of the shadow will change accordingly.

I know absoloutly nothing about this situation how ever, i am a full qualified and for many years now, working photographer, i use things such as photoshop everyday and shockingly i know shaddows and things as such when i see them. What is being displayed here in this photograph as someone has already mensionned is the fact that some time ago, a boulder/ rock what ever you want to be calling it has fallen, carried on travelling until stopping here So unfortunately, not an antenna "/

Sorry to piss on your fire there but SO TRUE