Moon is shrinking, say astronomers

AFP on Yahoo ^ | 8/19/10 | AFP

[NormsRevenge]

WASHINGTON (AFP) – The Man in the Moon has become the latest victim of contraction in the housing market.

Astronomers reporting on Thursday in the US journal Science said they had found previous undetected landforms which indicate that Earth's satellite has been shrinking... albeit by only a tiny amount.

The intriguing features, called lobate scarps, are faults created when the Moon's once-molten interior began to cool, causing the lunar surface to contract and then crinkle, they said.

Relative to the Moon's age, estimated at around 4.5 billion years, the contraction is recent, occurring less than a billion years ago, and is measured at about 100 metees (325 feet).

Lobate scarps were first spotted near the lunar equator in the 1970s by panoramic cameras aboard the Apollo 15, 16 and 17 missions.

Fourteen new faults have been been spotted in high-resolution images taken by NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter.

[SunkenCiv]

[something I’d planned to do at the time, four months ago:]

http://www.varchive.org/lec/aaas/challenge.htm

[snip] ...on the historic night of July 21, 1969, when Man stepped on the Moon, I made a series of claims in an article written at the invitation of the New York Times, and spelled out earlier as well in memos to the Space Science Board of the National Academy of Sciences. Strong magnetic remanence, I claimed, would be discovered in lunar rocks and lavas, though the Moon itself hardly possesses any magnetic field whatsoever. A steep thermal gradient would be found already a few feet under the surface. Thermoluminescence would disclose that the Moon was heated considerably only thousands of years ago. Hydrocarbons, preferably of aromatic structure, would be found in small quantities, but carbides, into which hydrocarbons would transform when heated, in substantial quantities; expressed radioactivity would be detected in lunar soil and rocks; and several more claims. Already following Apollo XI and XII the score was complete. But each of the discoveries — steep thermal gradient, strong remanent magnetism, recent heating of the lunar surface, carbides and traces of aromatic hydrocarbons, and rich radioactivity of the rocks and dust — evoked exclamations of surprise and at best some far fetched, ad hoc hypotheses. Magnetic anomalies, especially where interplanetary bolts fell, and huge enclaves of neon and argon 40 in lunar rocks, were also claimed by me in advance of the findings. [unsnip]

[Fred Nerks]

Another fault cut across and deformed several small diameter (~40-m diameter) impact craters (arrows) on the flanks of Mandel’shtam crater (6.5°N, 161°E). The fault carried near-surface crustal materials up and over the craters, burying parts of their floors and rims. About half of the rim and floor of a 20 m-in-diameter crater shown in the box has been lost. Since small craters only have a limited lifetime before they are destroyed by newer impacts, their deformation by the fault shows the fault to be relatively young. Credit: NASA/Goddard/Arizona State University/Smithsonian

[dfwgator]

"And Leon's getting laaaaarger!"

[sport]

Global Warming.

[EternalVigilance]

The Moon is also moving two inches further away from the Earth each year.

It's fleeing humankind, obviously.