🚀 go-pugleaf

What grade are you in little man?


In article <7cffa2b0.0109090718.495d80d0@posting.google.com>, Fabrikant says...
>
>I have heard an interview with one scientist from a Research Institute
>in Boulder.  She claimed to have discovered the origin of the Moon. 
>According to her, a huge asteroid of the size of Mars has collided
>with our Earth several billion years ago.  An explosion followed, huge
>cloud of matter was thrown very far away from Earth.  This cloud then
>condensed into the Moon, and this is how the Moon was created.
>
>She also claimed that right after the collision, the Earth spin was so
>fast, that one revolution took 5 hours instead of 24.  The moon was
>originally much closer to Earth, and the distance is increasing by 3
>cm. per year.  The reporter, regretfully, did not know what question
>to ask.  Here are some questions, which I would like to ask.  First,
>how can she measure the distance between the Earth and the Moon with
>the accuracy of 3 cm?  Neither Earth, nor Moon are perfect spheres. 
>The distance between the Earth mountain to the Moon mountain is
>different from the distance between the Earth ocean to the same place
>on the Moon.  The Moon's orbit is not a perfect circle either, so I
>would ask her whether she was talking about the distance at a certain
>point in the orbit or whether she claimed the distance to be
>increasing all over the trajectory.  If it is all over, I would
>inquire, what forces produce such a change, and where does the
>necessary energy come from.
>
>There are no planets between the Earth and the Moon.  The planets from
>the outside can not possibly increase the distance between the Earth
>and the Moon, unless they attract the Moon and repulse the Earth, and
>such bodies just do not exist.  The woman explained the slowing of the
>Earth rotation by the fact that distance between the Moon and the
>Earth was increasing.  My little brain can not find any law of
>Mechanics, which would relate these two phenomena.  Common sense tells
>us that the greater the distance between any 2 bodies, the less is
>their mutual influence.  I would have understood the argument that the
>tides, influenced by the Moon, can somewhat slow down its rotation,
>but again, with increase of the distance between them, this influence
>will decrease, not increase.
>
>There is one more little detail, which the woman did not address.  The
>Moon rotates in such a way, that we always see only one side of it.  I
>just wonder, how "accurate" must be the blow to the Earth, which would
>not only create the Moon, but also make it rotate with such a
>remarkably accurate speed.
>
>Fabrikant