The paper is interesting, though. Over time, this could become a much more significant effect... especially in 89 billion years, when it causes the moon to come crashing down on the earth.
Originally posted by boncho
reply to post by CLPrime
The paper is interesting, though. Over time, this could become a much more significant effect... especially in 89 billion years, when it causes the moon to come crashing down on the earth.
Deep down I knew those 2012 nutbars were right all along. The world is going to end in 2012 but it will be in the year 89,000,002,012.
Originally posted by CLPrime
reply to post by minniesoda
Hm...you've got me thinking... I wonder what sort of effect the landings and liftoffs of the Apollo landers had on the angular momentum of the moon, and if that could account for the increase in eccentricity (plus the long-term nature of that increase).
Originally posted by CLPrime
reply to post by Trublbrwing
...where's "here"?
Originally posted by SirKnightE
reply to post by Trublbrwing
What? No pictures?
Cliff notes? Anyone
Garrick-Bethell and colleagues now think that the strange bulge can be accounted for if the Moon moved along a very different orbit than it does now (see figure). Based on simple classical mechanics, rather than computer simulations, the MIT team suggest that when the Moon was just 100--200 million years old it was less than 30 Earth radii away, compared to about 60 Earth radii now. As well as being much closer to Earth, they also believe the Moon had a much more elliptical orbit at that time. They calculate that its "eccentricity" -- a measure of how much an ellipse differs from a circle -- was 0.61, compared to just 0.05 today. (A circle, in contrast, has an eccentricity of zero.) Moreover, they believe that the Moon may have been spinning much faster than it is today and behaved a bit like Mercury does today -- rotating three times about its own axis for every two revolutions about the Sun (a so-called 3:2 resonance). Now, of course, the Moon spins just once for every revolution around the Earth, which is why we can never see its far side. The team also showed that the bulge can be explained by a 1:1 resonance with an eccentricity of 0.49 and semimajor axis of 22.9 Earth radii.
They support that theory with the earthquake and killer tsunami of Dec. 26, 2004 (a Super Moon happened two weeks later) and a devastating cyclone which hit Darwin, Australia, in the 1970s. Scientists dismiss the talk, saying the moon's gravitational pull is nowhere near strong enough to cause disasters on earth. Now, with Super Moon a week away, we have this morning's devastating quake and tsunami in Japan. And an earthquake with a 4.2 magnitude hit Hawaii overnight. You want more? How about the eruption of a volcano in the Philippines? Read more: obsweatherguy.blogspot.com...
2011
* 04.01.2011 Solar eclipse may again trigger a major earthquake somewhere
* 19.01.2011 21:21 UTC Full moon; Afghanistan force 7.4
* 18.02.2011 08:35 UTC Full moon; New Zealand 2011 Christchurch earthquake 21.02.2011 23:51 UTC force 6,3
* 04.03.2011 20:48 UTC New moon; Japan earthquake 09.03.2011 force 7.3; 11.03. 05:46 UTC Japan Sendai earthquake and tsunami force 8.9
Significant data to correlate earthquakes in Japan to solar eclipses exist, if we look a few hours before or a few days after a solar eclipse. On March 18 1988 6 hours before the total solar eclipse a 5.4 earth quake occurred in the Setagaya ward of Japan. In 1998 an earthquake of the same magnitude 5.4 took place in the same region a few days after the August solar eclipse. The interesting thing to note is that there does seem to be a significant correlation between Total Solar Eclipses and Earthquakes in this region over the past decade. A magnitude 6+ earthquake occurred 6 hours before the total solar eclipse in China, October 1995. A magnitude 5+ earthquake occurred 1 hour before the total solar eclipse in China, August 2008....................
