41–50 of 50 posts
To capture our attention obviously. What nobody is mentioning is that the moon is actually unnaturally round .
There's a line of rocks on the ground that the martians always pause at, then step over quickly. The astronaut is about to ask them why when a puff of sand and dirt shoots out of a faraway cliff, then something shoots by just above ground level too fast to see. The Martians say see, that's the third moon.
(the third moon was a tiny black hole orbiting mars just a foot off the ground)
What I find unsettling is that our Moon rotates at a the precise perfect speed to make us "see always the same side". From all the possible speed values in the universe, why precisely that one?!
As others have already said, it's tidal locking. But to be more precise on what that means, on a long time scale, the rotation speed of one object orbiting another tends to either speed up or slow down until one side is always facing the larger object. Many other moons in the solar system do this with their parent planet, and Mercury does this with the sun. It's happening to Earth as well, albeit too slowly to matter…
Edit: Google says it’s not.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's a good comment because it summarizes the article better than the title does. Every article with a misleading title should have a top comment like that.
Ok, we've replaced the title with a substring of the subtitle that is presumably less misleading. (in keeping with " Please use the original title, unless it is misleading or linkbait " - https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html )
This is a whole lotta words and graphics to explain something that literally takes two sentences: Phobos orbits Mars faster than Mars rotates itself, while Deimos rotates slower than Mars. Thus from the ground their apparent motion is opposing in the sky; Deimos rises in the east and sets in the west, while Phobos does the opposite. Done.
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chances are if weren’t in that phase, there would be some other phenomena we’d be observing in awe and feeling special about it
Exactly :) https://numbergenerator.org/randomnumbergenerator/1-10000000... Wow! 197100522! (what i got on my first hit) Out of all the possible numbers, what are the odds? 1 in a billion! Two consecutive 0's! And two consecutive twos! What do you think they mean? And 5 in between? Well 5 times 2 is 10 which ends in a 0. But it starts with 1971, which is only 1 year off from the start of Unix time, which can't be a co…
What I find unsettling is that our Moon rotates at a the precise perfect speed to make us "see always the same side". From all the possible speed values in the universe, why precisely that one?!
That’s actually fairly common. The really unsettling question is “why is the moon exactly the same size in the sky as the sun?”. A little bit smaller and we wouldn’t see full solar eclipses, a little bit bigger and we wouldn’t see the suns corona during an eclipse. Another unsettling feature is that the moon is moving further away from the earth so in a few million years’ time, we won’t even have full solar eclipses.…
What I find unsettling is that our Moon rotates at a the precise perfect speed to make us "see always the same side". From all the possible speed values in the universe, why precisely that one?!
That’s actually fairly common. The really unsettling question is “why is the moon exactly the same size in the sky as the sun?”. A little bit smaller and we wouldn’t see full solar eclipses, a little bit bigger and we wouldn’t see the suns corona during an eclipse. Another unsettling feature is that the moon is moving further away from the earth so in a few million years’ time, we won’t even have full solar eclipses.…
If it's common, then what commonality causes that outcome?
Fun fact.. we could slow down phobos, sending it crashing into mars.. it would be human possible, with todays technologies right now.. we even could pick a spot.. and start with this smash a terraforming program.
1. We have human technologies to impact 625m/s of delta-V to a moon that weighs 10,000,000,000,000 tonnes? [1] 2. What exactly would that accomplish? [1] Should 'only' take 2 * 10^21 joules of energy[2]. [2] Humanity's annual energy consumption is 5.8 * 10^20 joules.
2. At that scale, it guess reignite volcanic activity, freeze frozen water and atmosphere. Or create a snowball event, although one could argue that mars already experienced that.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
That’s actually fairly common. The really unsettling question is “why is the moon exactly the same size in the sky as the sun?”. A little bit smaller and we wouldn’t see full solar eclipses, a little bit bigger and we wouldn’t see the suns corona during an eclipse. Another unsettling feature is that the moon is moving further away from the earth so in a few million years’ time, we won’t even have full solar eclipses.…
Do you have a source to reference for that "fairly common"? If it's common, then what commonality causes that outcome?