Earth is getting fatter

You try keeping your waist size for ~4.5 gigayears...
 
cecilia said:
Earth is getting fatter
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Data from GRACE, the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment -- twin satellites launched in 2002 that make exacting measurements of Earth's gravity field to monitor changes in ice mass, the amount of water in the ocean and losses in continental water
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A Volcano on the Moon — Where None Should Be
Greater insight could come later this year when NASA launches the GRAIL mission (an acronym for gravity recovery and interior laboratory), in which a pair of satellites will orbit the moon in tandem and study lunar gravity by measuring tiny fluctuations in the distance between the two craft.
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It seems NASA is doing something similar to the moon as well with the same idea of using two satellites that measures the "gravity recovery".
 
The article says fairly recent but that is still millions of years old. Makes sense during formation the moon, like other objects, would be hot. Volcanoes would happen. Though they appear to not be now as the moon is cool. Plus we have seismographs on the moon which would pick up moon shaking activities such as a volcano or moonquake.
 
faethor said:
The article says fairly recent but that is still millions of years old. Makes sense during formation the moon, like other objects, would be hot. Volcanoes would happen. Though they appear to not be now as the moon is cool. Plus we have seismographs on the moon which would pick up moon shaking activities such as a volcano or moonquake.
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It is recent when viewed in context. Volcanic activity on the Moon should have ended over 3 billion years ago. Compared to the Earth, the Moon is tiny. It masses ~1/80th of the Earth and has a diameter of ~1/4th that the Earth (and therefore an approximate surface area of 1/16th that of the Earth). The mass to surface area ratio of the Moon is thus ~1/5th that of the Earth. Since the total "heat" it could ever contain at any given temperature is ultimately a function of the mass (and heat capacity of the material) and the rate at which that heat could be radiated into space is ultimately a function of the surface area, it's intuitive that it would cool down much faster, giving rise to a very inert body.

Therefore, finding evidence of volcanic activity from as recently ago as one billion years is unusual and raises some interesting questions about our ideas about the internal structure of the Moon.
 
LOL, I just read a few comments on that lunar volcano article. This guy has to be trolling:

How could there possibly be volcanos on the moon. There is no air for the ash clouds. Here we go, wasting money on spaceships to study gravity on the moon. There is almost no gravity on the moon, probably none at all by the time you get to orbit height. So it can't possibly affect us. Why would we even care.
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After it's explained to him that lunar gravity is quite significant, for one thing being responsible for pulling at the hydrosphere and giving rise to the tides, he replies:

So, if the moon is sucking water from our oceans, why is the moon so dry.
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I really did laugh out loud at that one!
 
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