'G-WIZ like' object doing 40,000 MPH CRASHES on the MOON

An unidentified object roughly the size of a G-Wiz car smashed into the Moon last September going at 61,000km/h, causing a devastating, record-breaking explosion clearly visible to the naked eye, astronomers say. Youtube Video The Royal Astronomical Society sets the scene: On 11 September 2013, Prof Jose M Madiedo was …

[tony2heads]

G-Wiz

I for one welcome our new G-Wiz driving overlords

Even if they can't steer

[TRT]

Re: G-Wiz

I was going flat out and this thing just strolled past, stardrive hardly ticking over. Ten seconds later it smashed straight into the only moon of Sol 3. Looks like a fish, moves like a fish. Steers like a cow.

[dogged]

Re: G-Wiz

It's the iCar. And clearly, they're driving it wrong.

(This would explain the shape of the Cupertino HQ nicely...)

[Mark 85]

Must have been impressive....

... to get a second article from El Reg. Even with the logo painted on the moon.

Here's the first: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/02/24/moon_flashes_earth_after_getting_pounding_from_massive_meteorite/

[diodesign]

Re: Must have been impressive....

We couldn't help ourselves.

C.

(Sometimes, these things happen.)

[Lord Elpuss]

Wow

That video was really informative. What exactly were we looking at again?

[Destroy All Monsters]

Re: Wow

Dunno it doesn't work me LOL.

[ratfox]

Re: Wow

Unless you remove the mouse cursor from the video, the play controls cover the interesting part. Maybe this is why you did not see anything interesting. I watched the whole video twice before figuring it out.

[Spiracle]

Re: Wow

Look for the little blue arrow in the bottom left hand corner. You'll need to remove your mouse from the video window to avoid the control bar covering the action.

[Paul_Murphy]

Re: Wow

The bright light - just where the arrow is pointing in the lower left.

The moon isn't know for producing these on it's own (whereas the sun does it on a boringly consistent basis) so it's pretty noteworthy.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Wow

The moon.

[BlinkenLights]

Re: Wow

A bright flash in the bottom left of the picture. The framing means it will be obscured by the video progress bar.

[Tom_]

Re: Wow

The explosion that happens behind the progress bar.

[MacroRodent]

Use fullscreen

I didn't see it until I watched it in full-screen mode. Must have been quite a puddle of molten rock to glow for so long after the impact.

[ravenviz]

Re: Use fullscreen

My guess is the ejecta being illumiated by sunlight until it finished raining back down onto the surface.

[MJI]

Top Gear at work?

Looks like a good use of a GWizz.

We all know

Tesla > Hammerhead Eagle i-Thrust >>>>>>>>>>>>>>Milk float>>>>>>>>>>>>>> >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> >>>>>>>>>>>>> >>>>>>>>>>>>>>> G-Wizz

[TRT]

Re: Top Gear at work?

Eagle 1, you are cleared for lift off. Carter, I want a complete photo survey of the impact site within one hour. Keonig out.

[ravenviz]

Re: Top Gear at work?

Supplemental. Kill any aliens before asking questions. Keonig out.

[Andy The Hat]

Sometimes you just have to love the eononomic drivers behind science ...

We've witnessed a number of small impacts but we saw one, "1", ONE, uno evento (is that spanish enough?) involving an object between 0.6 and 1.4m across. The conclusion therefore is that impacts involving objects of about 1m in size happens 10 times as often as we thought ... I would really like to see the statistical error bars on that single item graph ...

Oh no, such a thing may hit the Earth! Doomed doomed! We must try to spot them ... "Gimme gimme gimme that funding baybeee ..."

[Anonymous Vulture]

When the attention span of your average politician....

...is about four sentences of a written report long, including statistical error bars is something best left for the end of the report.

Various special interests use this to their advantage, its a good thing that the scientific community is finally catching on.

We do need to have a El Reg conversion from G-Wiz for our American cousins. I propose a Harley-Davidson Wide Glide(r) [683 lbs] ridden by a pair of joy riding intoxicated Greys [about 100 lbs each].

[Grease Monkey]

Re: When the attention span of your average politician....

"We do need to have a El Reg conversion from G-Wiz for our American cousins. I propose a Harley-Davidson Wide Glide(r) [683 lbs] ridden by a pair of joy riding intoxicated Greys [about 100 lbs each]."

How about a conversion for those of us Brits who have never seen a G-Wiz? I mean has one ever been sighted outside London?

[Trainee grumpy old ****]

60,000 MPH

I bet there is a "safety camera partnership" operative who wishes he was there.

[VinceH]

"Having crunched the numbers, Madiedo and his colleagues have determined that what he saw was an object massing about 400kg (which the RAS describes as "the mass of a small car"*) crashing into the lunar surface at a tad more than 60,000mph."

I don't know about anyone else, but I am really looking forward to that particular episode of Top Gear. I can't wait to see what their challenge was.

[Steven Raith]

Given how utterly, devestatingly broken the damping is on the G-wizz (I've been in a couple, both exhibited this) I genuienly wouldn't be surprised if this impact was caused by someone hitting a speedbump too fast, the car launched into space of its own accord from poor bound/rebound control, and the moon just happened to be in the way.

Seriously, I've been in 350hp Exiges, 400hp Porsches, and all sorts of fast metal over the years (I am lucky to have some well heeled friends who are only to happy to have passengers on trackdays!), but nothing terrified me more than a G-wizz around Islington. They are abominations against nature and logic.

And I don't mind electric cars (or even quadricycles as city cars) as a concept - it's just that G-wizz's are that bad.

[BoldMan]

That is a truly awful video - the player controls cover the bit that we are interested in so that all you see are the bloody logos painted on the moon surface. Could this have been presented any more ineptly?

[Ralphe Neill]

Move your mouse cursor from the player area and the progress/control bar will (should) disappear!

[TheOtherHobbes]

Shouldn't this be 'Giant science foundation logos crash into Moon, causing permanent damage'?

[DropBear]

Minor targeting error...

...on behalf of Superman's dad. Now the poor kid is stranded up there until he learns to fly through space. And I have to say an infant lifting a lunar rover in 1/6g is going to look a lot less impressive than lifting a pick-up truck on Earth would have... ;)

[WonkoTheSane]

To state the obvious...

We now know where the next lunar lander should be targeted.

Training videos: Apollo 18, Moontrap.

[emmanuel goldstein]

only 15 tonnes of TNT? I find that hard to believe for 400kg @ 60,000 mph

[Jonathan Richards 1]

Units problem...

The estimate is 61,000 kilometres per hour, not miles. I can do the maths for the kinetic energy (m.v^2) = 1.15 x 10^11 joules, but I have no idea what the energy released by TNT is, and I'm not going to get any search for it into my browser history.

[J.G.Harston]

Surely that's the Ice Warriors blowing up the Moonbase?

[AkodoGilador]

Moonbase

How common are impacts this size? How much of a hazard would they be for any moonbase?

[Alistair]

Caves.....

Daneel?

Is that you?

[noominy.noom]

Re: Caves.....

@Alistair

Kudos for the Asimov reference. A pint on me.

[Schick]

Re: Caves.....

Good to know he is still remembered (Asimov).

[Stoneshop]

The Royal Astronomical Society

needs to be introduced to Vulture Central's Approved Units.

Weight of the object was 95.2381 jubs, and speed was 0.8947% of the maximum speed of sheep in a vacuum.

[Kevin McMurtrie]

You-screwed

Porn spammers have posted a lot of videos with the same title to YouTube. There are lots of NSFW recommendations at the end.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: You-screwed

> There are lots of NSFW recommendations at the end.

Thank you for the heads-up, I'll go check them out.

[VeganVegan]

I need to set up a factory to manufacture gob

more boffins need smacking.

[Anonymous Coward]

"...object massing about 400kg ('the mass of a small car')..."

Or two Americans.