Earlier quoted context omitted.
Even with a magnetic field, would the moon's gravity be sufficient to retain an atmosphere?
No, for that matter Mars doesn't have the gravity to retain an atmosphere either. I can't cite a source on this because I don't remember where I read it but I believe having a magnetic field surrounding a celestial body is a relatively minor factor in atmosphere retention compared to mass. If someone who specializes in planetary atmosphere retention knows better feel free to eviscerate me.
A newly discovered moon tunnel
171–180 of 188 posts
Re: A newly discovered moon tunnel
#172Earlier quoted context omitted.
I've been in planetary science and never encountered this theory. I have a default position of skepticism towards it for that reason, but I don't have a reason to object on the face of it. The question is not where the oceans came from (that's settled -- it came out of the mantle as the Earth cooled, and ultimately before that from cometary impact), but how the oceans did not boil or evaporate off like they did every…
but how the oceans did not boil or evaporate off like they did everywhere else. You forgot freeze.
Re: A newly discovered moon tunnel
#173> It might even contain ice or water As a boy in the early seventies, reading Tintin: Destination Moon , I was always put off by the episode with the underground cave full of slippery ice. That was clearly an outdated view of lunar conditions, which somewhat dented my suspense of disbelief. Maybe I needn't have worried.
the rocket looked silly too, but it turns out that's how we'll do it. elon musk may we bald with a goatee too by then.
Re: A newly discovered moon tunnel
#174Earlier quoted context omitted.
>feel free to eviscerate me Off topic but I’d like it quite a lot if people could be informative without being eviscerating lol. I suppose this doesn’t usually happen, but it should happen more. That’d be so much better, so much more tolerable and happier. It’d be good for all of us probably lol.
I think eviscerating comes when people present false statements as facts. Qualifying it with uncertainty as the OP did probably won't anger anybody. But telling lies because you don't know what you're talking about justifiably does.
What Would Feynman Do?
In this case, I'm imagining he'd say these are some of the things we think might explain bodies' keeping or losing atmosphere, but we have to remember that almost everything we think we know about planets and moons comes from looking at the light that bounces off of them and making guesses about the underlying rules, but we still don't know do much about the underlying rules of physics, so there's probably more that we don't know than what we do know about atmosphere retention.
Re: A newly discovered moon tunnel
#175Re: A newly discovered moon tunnel
#176Earlier quoted context omitted.
No, for that matter Mars doesn't have the gravity to retain an atmosphere either. I can't cite a source on this because I don't remember where I read it but I believe having a magnetic field surrounding a celestial body is a relatively minor factor in atmosphere retention compared to mass. If someone who specializes in planetary atmosphere retention knows better feel free to eviscerate me.
Someone replied mentioning that Titan has a denser atmosphere than Earth, despite being lighter than the Moon: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15531798
PV=nRT. T is temperature.
Titan is not only protected by Saturn's magnetic field, but it is also very cold. Some of the molecules that are gaseous on Earth are liquids on Titan. Cold gases have lower pressure, and less likelihood of bouncing a light molecule high enough up in the atmosphere that the solar wind can grab it and blow it away.
Earth has a hard time holding on to light molecules like H2 and He, but its He is replenished somewhat by alpha decay, and it takes a long time to get from the inside of a rock to the upper reaches of the atmosphere. Most of the hydrogen is attached to heavier molecules. But it happens eventually, and even the Earth's magnetic field and gravity can't keep them. Venus is almost as massive as Earth, but it is hotter than Mercury and has no core-generated magnetic field. So most of its water has already thermally dissociated (which happens slowly starting at around 800 degC) and the H, H2, He, and monoatomic O bounces high up into the atmosphere, ionizes, and blows away. So now Venus has about 90 bar of CO2 and barely any water left.
One of the terraforming proposals for Venus is to transport a large quantity of hydrogen from Jupiter to Venus, and use Fe catalyst to react it with the CO2, to get graphite C, H2O, and O2. That would strip off much of the greenhouse blanket, but the planet would still have to be cooled off and protected from the solar wind to keep all that hydrogen around on a geologic time scale.
Re: A newly discovered moon tunnel
#177Earlier quoted context omitted.
The same place that water came from on Earth... comet impacts and residual moisture from the impact that split the Earth-Moon system. Really the same place all planetary water and gas has come from. There's not much left because it mostly boils off due to low pressure, but in dark crevasses it's likely to stay cold enough to remain condensed. It's been measured spectroscopically.
Where did the comets get the water they impacted on earth?
So in a stellar accretion disc, much of the water will end up inside the new star, and dissociate, but quite a lot of it will gather in the planets, moons, and comets. Europa, for example, has about 2 or 3 Earth-oceans worth of water. Uranus and Neptune likely have solid cores composed mainly of ices that include water ice.
Re: A newly discovered moon tunnel
#178Earlier quoted context omitted.
The moon's core isn't made of the swirling molten iron dynamo like Earth's is. No swirling molten iron, no magnetic field. No magnetic field, nothing deflects the solar wind that then, literally, blows away any fledgling atmosphere. It's believed that Mars' atmosphere was considerably more dense than it is today, but along the way, its core cooled, and it lost its protective magnetic shield, allowing the solar wind t…
Then we have no hope of ever engineering Mars to have enough air for us to breath?
Someday though we may be able to breathe on Mars
Re: A newly discovered moon tunnel
#179Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you think getting to the Moon is hard, where many resources are surface extractable, look into what it takes to mine certain ores on Earth kilometers below ground in remote regions.
One of the things it takes is piracy being severely restricted, but by the usual interpretations of the space traty, thatsfine in space.