Underground Knowledge — A discussion group discussion
MISCELLANEOUS TOPICS
>
What's on the dark side of the Moon?
date
newest »
newest »
Great stuff. I've been wanting to re-read some of these old theories. I remembered coming across them a long while ago as a kid (probably in those Frank Edwards collections) but these fancies have dropped out of fashion for some yrs now. Nevertheless, random 'lunar info' is always fascinating to me--we look up at the moon so many nights of the yr... the moon moves the tides; squids mate to it; some say it even tugs at the flow of blood in our veins. The Chinese calendar and astrology is based on it.
It is an empirical fact that in big cities a 'full moon weekend' (especially a full moon holiday weekend) always results in far more 911 calls than any other time of the month. Passions erupt; people go crazy.
It is our constant companion--even visible in daylight at times--yet most of us know so little about it!
I don't think that's actually an empirical fact. It's a case of confirmation bias. There have been studies that show emergency calls don't actually deviate from the norm when looked at as a longer term average.That said, there's no question in my mind that moon affects us on some level.
I'll accept the swap-in of the more appropriate term. I agree its better. Thanks.If you recall where you saw the studies mentioned though, please post the link. Was this a book or a www site? Seems like the statisticians would have to eliminate a lot of extenuating factors in order to rule out the moon completely.
For example, any hot summr weekend is naturally more volatile than a weekend in wintr when less people are outside and less tempers flaring.
Then again, everyone in NY knows that the 7/4 weekend is always hairy no matter what the temperature. People are setting off firewrks as part of the normal festivities.
And for instance, its not an anomaly (anomaly which might disappear under statistical normalization) that daytime disturbance calls are usually 'mental'; and night-time calls are usually 'drunks'.
But then there are some strange yrs where something unpredictable happens, such as 'civic unrest' or 'influx of street guns'--and in a single weekend, 68 citizens get shot. I forget what year that was. Was there a full moon that weekend? I don't recall that either.
Anyway, I'm just saying that statisticians might not collect all these factors but the first-responders sure know to 'watch out' for weekends which are 'historically bad'. Sometimes its a breeze, a snap--sure. Sometimes things can be surprisingly calm. But I think the ER rooms see the pattern firsthand, better than the number-crunchers do.
And then there's the people who will moon you!
For a long time I assumed--and I kinda want to continue to assume-- that the moon rotates just like the earth does. Anyone care to explain why it doesn't? Why does one side of the moon always face away? Why does it not spin on an axis like other heavenly bodies?
Feliks wrote: "For a long time I assumed--and I kinda want to continue to assume-- that the moon rotates just like the earth does. Anyone care to explain why it doesn't? Why does one side of the moon always face ..."Feliks, the Moon DOES rotate. It rotates with exactly the same period as its orbital period, so the same side always faces us. If you have difficulty seeing this, get a sheet of paper with a centre, and a ball with one side different to the other, and let the ball move around the centre with one side always facing the centre. Compared with the rest of the room, you will see the ball has to rotate once.
Hurrah! I'm glad to get the skinny at last. Thanks. Astrology is not my strong suit. No wait--I'm just kidding!
Astronomy
is not my strong suit!Anyway its pretty whacked that it always rotates to keep the same side away from us. It doesn't seem as if it should be that way. It makes one think that at some point in the far past, the two spheres were set spinning at the same time; and have simply stayed in sync ever since? But I don't think it happened that way. The moon is not as old as the earth, I seem to recall. But the moon comes from the earth, I always imagined. It split off during the planet formation stage. Maybe I'm mis-remembering.
But what it also suggests is that at no time down throughout millions of years, was the dark side ever turned to face us? That's so surprising to consider. When I think 'the moon rotates' I naturally want to assume that its rotating in a way that will allow the hidden side to be seen by someone, somewhere.
So let's say there's a crater on the far side of the moon. You're telling me that at no time the moon has ever spun around to expose it to earth? Sunlight has always only shown us the same set of craters?
Or, (another way to ask this) the far side of the moon does get a normal 'lunar day' but we never see it? Its not as if: it constantly stays dark year in/year out. Rather, (what you're stating) is that it's just that 'we never see it' when it is light. I get it.
So when we see 'no moon' or a 1/4 moon, does that mean the far side is getting light?
Feliks wrote: "Hurrah! I'm glad to get the skinny at last. Thanks. Astrology is not my strong suit. No wait--I'm just kidding! Astronomy
is not my strong suit!
Anyway its pretty whacked that it always rotate..."
Many questions. The usual theory is that the Moon was formed when a body called Theia collided with Earth, and the moon formed. It was much closer to the Earth then, and was probably spinning quite fast. A day on Earth was probably about 4 hours long. Being mushy closer, the Moon exerted very strong tidal forces on Earth, withe the net result there would be huge tidal waves running around. This causes friction (water and ground below, or wave hitting land, causing the land to absorb the energy) which gradually slowed down the Earth's rotation, and the Moon's, and to conserve angular momentum, the Moon started moving away. It is still doing that now, but because it is further away the forces are less, and the movement is something like centimetre a year. The Moon is now tidally locked to the Earth (i.e. it rotational period equals its orbital period) so there are no net tidal forces on the Moon, and it will always keep that face facing us, but it will move further away, and our rotation will slow down.
The far side is not dark - it is day when the near side is night. We don't see the far side because it is always facing away, but it gets days and night just like the near side because day/night is determined by the sun. Yes, when the near side is 1/4 moon, the far side would have about 3/4 of it in daylight.
Feliks wrote: "For a long time I assumed--and I kinda want to continue to assume-- that the moon rotates just like the earth does. Anyone care to explain why it doesn't? Why does one side of the moon always face ..."The moon orbits the Earth once every 27 and a bit days. It also takes approximately 27 days for the moon to rotate once on its axis. As a result, the moon doesn't seem to be spinning but appears to us on Earth to be keeping still. Astronomers call this synchronous rotation.As for that unseen side, it is to be visited for the first time in 2019 by a Chinese mission, Chang'e 4. So not long before all the alien bases will be able to get sweet & sour.
Great stuff, thanks you guise!
Once upon a time there was Underground Knowledge conspiracy theories that the moon landings were faked. Or at least Apollo 11's landing. There were doubts put forward regarding the film content beamed back to earth. Questions about the background vistas while Armstrong & Aldrin bounced around the lunar surface, and who filmed the take off?In fact it was claimed that Stanley Kubric filmed the whole thing, a la Capricorn One movie. Wasn't that why Armstrong remained somewhat reclusive & reticent for the rest of his life?
We can't see the landing site with the Hubble Space telescope because the resolution isn't able to produce the fine detail. My own 8 inch scope on it's highest mag will not give me proof.
But fortunately, this conspiracy theory has been shot down by the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter whose cameras have shown the lander and the footprints left on the Sea of Tranquility by Armstrong and Aldrin in 1969.
"If you believe they put a man on the moon, man on the moon.
If you believe there's nothin' up their sleeve, nothin' is cool."
The far side of the Moon is the hemisphere of the Moon that always faces away from Earth. The far side's terrain is rugged, with a multitude of impact craters and relatively few flat lunar maria. It has one of the largest craters in the Solar System, the South Pole–Aitken basin. Although both sides of the moon experience two weeks of sunlight followed by two weeks of night, the far side is also referred to as the dark side of the Moon,[1][2][3] originally in the sense of "unknown" rather than lack of light.
About 18 percent of the far side is occasionally visible from Earth due to libration. The remaining 82 percent remained unobserved until 1959, when the Soviet Union's Luna 3 space probe photographed it. The Soviet Academy of Sciences published the first atlas of the far side in 1960. In 1968, the Apollo 8 mission's astronauts were the first humans to view this region directly when they orbited the Moon. To date, no human being has ever stood on the surface of the far side of the Moon.
Astronomers have suggested installing a large radio telescope on the far side, where the Moon would shield it from possible radio interference from Earth.
Alleged UFO sightings and conspiracies:
Some conspiracy theorists, notably Milton William Cooper, have alleged that some Apollo astronauts had seen UFOs on the far side of the Moon but were told to keep quiet about them.[26][27] Some have allegedly reported seeing an alien base (code named "Luna") and even encountered aliens who told them to stay off the Moon. Some photographs circulated on the Internet purport to show a large "castle" on the Moon. NASA states that these claims are hoaxes.[28]
The late Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara stated that several unspecified officials ("Chiefs") within The Pentagon were opposed to a Nuclear Test Ban Treaty between the United States and the Soviet Union, on the premise that the Soviets would continue nuclear weapons testing on the far side of the Moon, far from the observations of American observers. McNamara considered this premise "...absurd" and that “…[they were] out of [their] minds”, but he believed that it was an example of the state of mind of some Pentagon officials during the Cold War.[29]
Ironically, it was later revealed that the Pentagon had their own plan to detonate a nuclear weapon as part of the experiment Project A119. The project was created not only to help in answering some of the mysteries in planetary astronomy and astrogeology, but also as a show of force intended to boost domestic confidence in the astro-capabilities of the United States, a boost that was needed after the Soviet Union took an early lead in the Space Race and who were thought by some to be working on a similar project.