MOON SHRINKING FAST - shock NASA discovery Imagery from a NASA spacecraft has revealed that the Moon has shrunk significantly in recent times: indeed, instruments placed by the Apollo astronauts are thought to have recorded the rumbling, crunching sounds of lunar shrinkage carrying on in just the last few decades. NASA LRO image showing lobate scarp cutting across …
Micro Black Holes that will dissipate via Hawking radiation in nanoseconds. Micro Black Holes with the gravitic pull of less than an electron.
Did anybody take seriously that bovine byproduct?
If anyone believes that black holes keep getting bigger and bigger through accretion of nearby matter, they clearly have not read the mechanism that makes them work.
Accreting matter actually shrinks black holes.
The black hole itself is by definition a point object (at least in our physics - this may not actually apply inside a black hole, but there's no better explanation at present...).
The event horizon of a black hole (ie the Schwarzchild radius for a non-rotating black hole) *will* grow according to the mass of the object - but it's only a mathematical definition, there's nothing physical at that distance - for supermassive black holes (centre of galaxy type stuff) it would be possible for a human to cross the event horizon with no ill effects (no turning to spagetti, etc). You'd never get out again, and wouldn't be able to tell anyone about it though...
I used New Scientist as I suspect it is pitched at a level which the original poster might understand.
I presume you get all your knowledge directly from PhysRev or MonRAS? I do love it when IT people spout it large about physics - there seems to be something inherent in them that makes them think they're experts on anything to do with physics, or military hardware.
Anyway, the weekend is here so I'll get my coat - mine's the one with a PhD in Astrophysics in the coat pocket.
He's s partially right, though probably through no fault of his own. Black holes do grow by accreting matter, and do shrink as a result of Hawking radiation; the rate at which the black hole loses mass to Hawking radiation is inversely proportional to that mass, so a black hole with the mass of a star is going to stick around for a while, whereas a black hole with the mass of, say, a pencil is going to disappear in a violent explosion (whose energy is probably something like the mass of the pencil multiplied by a famous number squared, since the energy of its gravitational field is negligible) and a black hole with the mass of a proton will disappear into a tiny shower of energetic particles quite faster than you can say "femtosecond".
I never thought the gravitational pull of a micro black hole would stabalize i presumed it would keep on pulling in matter till it then slowly dives into the depths of our atmosphere and then kills us all.
Even if it had the same mass as our moon woulndt it be reppeled via magnetic waves etc differently ???
maybe i should stfu
'has done so noticeably since the Apollo landers set down on it in the 1960s and 70s. '
..and I think you will find that the size of the average American has increased noticeably in the same period. Coincidence? I think not!
It should be clear to all now that what I have been saying for years is true- The Apollo 11 mission was actually an elaborate front which the Americans used to set up a cheese-mining operation on the dark side of the moon and they have been secretly extracting and consuming all that lovely pure lunar cheese for years now without sharing any with us. Bastards.
So the estimates put it that the radius has shrunk by ~100M in the last billion years. So you think that a rate of 0.005% every billion years is FAST?
Tell you what, why don't you lend me some money? A million quid should do. I'll pay you a HIGH interest rate of 0.005% every billion years.
Now, where is the nearest bar........
They heard that we were planning on using the moon as a launch pad to send people to Mars.
So they figured if they got rid of the moon that they would stop our invasion.
So they set up a small black hole that would slowly destroy the moon.
Them Martians are a patient breed and figure that they'll give us a fighting chance by making the decay slow.
Either that or they're really cruel bastids who wanted us to recognize our fate and watch us scramble and panic ...
Things only disappear smoothly into a black hole if they have no angular momentum. The moon is rotating about once a month so it would spin up into a very hot fiery disk well before it got down to pea size and we'd have a super-bright accretion disk thingy to look at in the sky and probably get fried by hard radiation.
Many of us warned what would happen when NASA attempted to blow up the moon. Fortunately they failed in bursting it immediately, but now, instead, we all get to watch as it slowly shrivels up, leaking out all the water inside bit by bit, causing floods across the world as it enters our atmosphere.
And what kind of nut job honestly believes that the hadron thing will make mini black holes?
I've done a small calculation to show how serious this is:
Volume of Moon = 21.9 billion cubic km.
Radius of Earth = 6400 km.
Volume of sphere = (4/3) Pi r^3
Assuming most of the Volume of the moon is water which will end up falling to Earth, the Volume of the Earth will increase by 21.9 billion cubic km which corresponds to an increase in radius of around 42 km.... or 138,000 feet.
We're doomed.
Actually, the mice would be able leave the Moon, so to speak, after death. It goes like this: Mice eat the cheese and use it to produce muscle, bone, brains and more mice. When the mice dies, decay turns their bodies partly into gas. As Moon's gravity is not big enough to keep an atmosphere, said gas goes straight into space.
For those of you thinking that decay doesn't occur in vacuum, consider this: mice have to breathe somehow, and the only possible explanation is that the Moon is a giant PRESSURIZED cheese. Its inhabitants sometimes can´t cope with the stench -a mixture of really ancient cheese, mouse droppings and living and dead mice *- and open the airlocks to allow some of that smell to escape the Moon.
Finally, if some stubborn denialist argues that there wouldn't be any oxygen in the Moon, as there are no plants there to perform photosynthesis, the explanation is that the mice outsourced their oxygen production to China.
You're welcome! ^_^
While based on an inadequate understanding of the slingshot effect, wouldn't the moon be a sight more useful for interplanetary travel as a black hole? If the accelerations/decelerations possible do increase the closer to a body's center of mass you can come then voilà we will have made the moon into a roundabout to the solar system!
All this discussion of what can we do with the moon (with being deficient in water, metals, beaches, etc.) is resolved. Make it near nothing and you've made it quite something!
The only problem I can see is that with such a small area for action and with the boost towards private space efforts, we're going to have to have a central body to do traffic control. Otherwise we'll have the entertainment of hobby airshows and planes colliding, with the added cute sparkly effects as pieces fall into the black hole.
The idea of a black hole orbiting Earth as a moon reminded me of a short story by Larry Niven called "There is a Tide" which has a planet with this feature.
As for why the Moon is shrinking, it is obviously caused by collapse of the Selenite tunnels after they made too much Cavorite. :-)
On the Moon, 'recent' means anything after the formation of the Mare (the dark areas seen from Earth) which ended around 1 billion years ago.
The Moon is still seismically active as there are regular moonquakes which come in a variety of flavours. There are deep quakes which can go down to about 700km which seem to be associated with lunar tides, then there are the very shallow weak thermal 'quakes which are kicked off when at lunar dawn when temperatures skyrocket and rocks expand. In between there are shallow 'quakes down to about 30km which are caused by crustal movements. These tend to be bigger - IIRC the biggest measured by Apollo sensors was Richter 5.something. So rocks are definitely moving - why, well that's an interesting question. But it is only creating a tiny fraction of the seismic activity found here on Earth.
There's also some suggestion of intermittent volcanic activity or outgassing. Astronomers regularly report seeing glowing patches of light around certain craters which go by the name of Transient Lunar Phenomena:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transient_lunar_phenomenon
Finally there are similar scarps on Mercury known as rupes. The accepted explanation is that Maercury's surface cooled relatively quickly and became rigid before the underlying Mantle and Core solidified. As the Core and Mantle cooled and contracted, the crust buckled along the rupes.
Nice image here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Rupes_discovery.jpg
The scarp is the dark line running almost vertically through the middle of the image cutting through the large crater. It's 2km high.
"MOON SHRINKING FAST - shock NASA discovery
LHC-spawned black hole gobbling it from within?*"
That was the best RSS summary I have ever read - for real.
I think it's worth mentioning that I too sometimes experience shrinkage. Imagine swimming in -153°C water, a little shrinkage is to be expected.
You've clearly not seen the document then.
The whole *reason* for the large black hole is to take the piss. Think about it -- with a massive black hole above our heads, we won't even be able to urinate downwards. Our hydrogen and oxygen will be slowly stolen, one toilet break at a time, until we have NONE LEFT!!!
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Could it be that scientists are unable to make any long term measurements that *DON'T* somehow trend in some type of terribly worrisome direction?
And yes, I'm referring to anything/everything global warming with that question.
/Anonymous because these fuckers are watching and taking down names for their enemies list: http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=SourceWatch
Can't everyone see it? The problem is climate change, the moon is shrinking because of climate change on earth.
After all, every other single damn problem that exists is because of climate change or the politicians next gravy train.
Anyhow, it's POETS day. Jog On.
Cheese technology is the way forward here, mine always shrinks in the fridge. Also applying a partial vacuum on cheese crumbs with the hoover causes a marked reduction in apparent cheese mess, sorry read mass.
Of course it is possible that the rest of the universe is expanding, as many scientistas claim, fine; but maybe the moon isnt expanding, there-by causing a relativity problem.
@eternal: The cheese in your fridge shrinks, and at the same time your room mate's tummy expands and his/her breath (and various other emissions) smells like cheese?
The real story here is that man-made CO2 is slightly lighter than natural CO2, thus it sometimes escapes our atmosphere and regularly sandblasts the moon into submission.
We have to stop burning fossil fuels NOW while we still have a moon that is visible. Heck, most of the time it is already hidden!
I'm certainly doing my part, next month I'll be back on the E85 wagon (actually it is a 2011 9-5 sedan, which is quite something as we are still in 2010) and also do my part to keep the population growth in check. You can all thank me later when, thanks to my efforts, the moon is still visible in the sky once a month or so.
"Admittedly, romantic hand-in-hand evening strolls may become a trifle less satisfying for some, but on the other hand the werewolf menace will be appreciably reduced."
Bugger me, Lewis! Were you having a liquid lunch with Lester when you wrote this? I'm still chuckling about it 1/2 an hour later.
We all know that EVERY stinking apollo mission was faked and broadcast from some undisclosed soundstage. Who's to say NASA hasn't developed a time machine AND faked the whole existence of the moon?
I know my government and I sure as hell wouldn’t put it past them.
over a billion (or so) years the moon has contracted by 0.005% (if I'm to beleive the previous posters)... could this not be simply explained by the moon cooling down? that is simple thermal shrinkage - no black holes, no clangers, no NASA conspiracy, just simple GCSE level physics
just a thought.
some scientists have been reflecting a laser off a mirror some of the Apollo astronauts left on the moon, and they determined the moon has been moving away from the earth at about 2.5 inches a year -- well, the distance between the ground-based laser and the reflect I suppose. I would assume they would have noticed the ground dropping out from under it.
Worryingly, though, funding has been terminated for this as of 2009 -- MAYBE THE MOON DID ALL IT'S SHRINKING JUST SINCE LAST YEAR!! Nobody would be the wiser! 8-)
> Our hydrogen and oxygen will be slowly stolen, one toilet break at a time, until we have NONE LEFT!!!
It's already happening, although the black hole appears to be a little unstable:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/08/20/google_street_view_magic_toilets/
Grab a pitchfork and join me!
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