Riddle of odd bulge found on moon is solved An analysis of the shape of the Moon has shown it is not actually a sphere – but is in fact slightly lemon-shaped. This has revealed important clues as to how the Earth's satellite body formed (and no, it still doesn't involve any cheese). A paper published in the July 30 issue of Nature by Ian Garrick-Bethell – an assistant …
Cheese, lemon...please, all this is rather trivial.
There is an ancient tale...archaeologists, astronomers and other experts, sifting through the remains of ancient libraries are said to have unearthed evidence that once upon a time the moon was much closer to Earth, and much smaller than it is today.
It is said that a species of bovine is known to have, at least on one occasion, 'jumped over' it, under suspicious circumstances - with certain animals of the feline family acting rather unusually in respect of specific musical instruments, and cutlery behaving in a rather unbecoming manner with items of crockery, all suggesting a kind of primordial situation, with much lower gravity, but higher magnetic forces and far greater concentrations of nitrous oxide in the atmosphere.
Before any pedantic and well informed commentards pull me up on this, I hasten to add that there were other symptoms of this general disruption in the conditions we take for granted these days, but they appear to have slipped out of my mind.
Some people believe that at least part of the text is symbolic, and not meant to be taken literally, but there are many, especially among the young, who consider that this is a true story. Therefore it deserves to be treated more seriously and maybe even analyzed by boffins.
full on volcanic activity long gone, yes, but evidence from moon glints in some craters suggests outgassing still occurs. Suggestions the Moon has a layer of hot rock/magma from its orbital variation around the Earth to act as a source of volatiles. OTOH, I thought the mares were massive impact sites, not flood volcanic basalt, hence the mascons under them. Odd bit about moon is that Earth side has big flat basalt plains with older highlands and the other is merely heavily cratered, suggesting different histories. It would have been informative to launch the remaining Saturn Vs as one flight was scheduled to go into the highlands. However, Nixon had to fund the war de-juere somehow,
The problem with settlements on Luna is that no one has built 'self sustaining settlements' models. Several have tried, but the 14-day 'sun is up' followed by the 14-day 'sun is down' diurnal-cycle has been problematic. It creates very large temperature swings.
The interesting discussion about polar settlements (where this 28-day cycle MIGHT be less severe) haven't borne fruit, either.
There is quite a lively discussion about water+mineral availability, but 99%+ of Luna is drier than Atacama.
So we should abandon the science labs in Antarctica, because they are only political statements, and because robots can do the job so much better?
If we really want science labs to explore the moon properly, they need to be on the moon, and staffed with people (and, yes, robots).
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