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Originally posted by PGRacer
By how much is it becoming eliptical? Are we talking a few cm per day or a few miles?
Are there fears that the moon could break its orbit or is it just becoming an eliptical orbit?
Surely over that period of time the accuracy of measurements has improved?
Thus, in conclusion, the issue of finding a satisfactorily explanation of the observed orbital anomaly of the Moon still remains open. Our analysis should have effectively restricted the field of possible explanations, indirectly pointing towards either nongravitational, mundane effects or some artifacts in the data processing. Further data analyses, hopefully performed by independent teams, should help in shedding further light on such an astrometric anomaly.
Originally posted by weedwhacker
reply to post by Blaine91555
Bears repeating:
Surely over that period of time the accuracy of measurements has improved?
Yes, I mentioned that some pages back. In fact, the introduction/abstract of the paper featured in the OP says that it is based on the last ~37 years (or so) of measurements. 'Co-incidentally', the same amount of time that has elapsed since the Apollo missions placed the laser retro-reflectors on the Lunar surface.
IF we were still only limited to visual observations and measurements, I doubt these VERY minor orbital perturbations would even have been noticed.
This is an arcane and "nerdy" discovery, and so minor in the over-all scheme of things....BUT, to those who 'demand' precision, and 'answers' to even the slightest of variances....a potential Nobel Prize (or some other accolade) that will only be understood, and appreciated, by peers in their respective fields of expertise.
Sad that the lay public mis-interpret it, so readily, and to such an extent.....
3.6. A distant massive object: Planet X/Nemesis/Tyche
A promising candidate for explaining the anomalous increase of the lunar eccentricity may be, at least in principle, a trans-Plutonian massive body of planetary size located in the remote peripheries of the solar system: Planet X/Nemesis/Tyche (Lykawka & Mukai 2008; Melott & Bambach 2010; Fern ́andez 2011; Matese & Whitmire 2011).
Indeed, as we will see, the perturbation induced by it would actually cause a non-vanishing long-term variation of e. Moreover, since it depends on the spatial position of X in the sky and on its tidal parameter KX
.
= GmX
d3
X ,
where mX and dX are the mass and the distance of X, respectively, it may happen that a suitable combination of them is able to reproduce the empirical result of eq. (1)...
Originally posted by woghd
I find it interesting that they mentioned Planet X and Nemesis...or was it Nibiru? Whatever, to see that such things are seriously considered by top scientists says volumes!
We must conclude that not even the hypothesis of Planet X is a viable one to explain the anomalous increase of the lunar eccentricity of eq.