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Post by Orac on Aug 29, 2023 21:59:35 GMT
Meant to provoke discussion  I have taken to listening in the evenings to a Youtube channel called the Why files. It seems to be a single man operation with nothing fancy but his imagination and good video editing and presentation skills. His approach is to find a myth, legend or outlandish theory ,and then present the argument for it, followed by arguments against. His comedic relief is his pet goldfish (Heckle-fish) who interrupts and regularly wears a foil hat on his bowl. Lightweight stuff? maybe. However, i find it quite entertaining and surprisngly informative. I have known for while that the list of things are unnervingly odd about the moon is quite long - they do not have a cohesive model for how we ended up with it or why it is the way it is. However, i didn't know it was quite as odd as it seems to be. There are also regular observations of , to date, unexplained phenomena around or near the moon - some of these phenomena are confirmed enough to have names. Something that has niggled at the back of mind from the first time I observed the moon through reasonably powerful telescope, is how oddly consistent the depth of the craters are. Meet the goldfish |
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Post by wapentake on Aug 29, 2023 22:03:08 GMT
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Post by Orac on Aug 29, 2023 22:21:22 GMT
lol
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Post by Steve on Aug 29, 2023 22:39:50 GMT
is our moon an ancient artificial satellite? Where did they get that much cheese from  |
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Post by Red Rackham on Aug 30, 2023 2:18:38 GMT
Orac, the vid was interesting, annoyingly. After a few minutes my hand was creeping closer to the off switch and as I was about to kill it, I realised, I was interested, bugger. But there's one big and I mean mahoosive problem for me, I don't understand gravity. Yes I know scientists say gravity is a 'force' but that means nothing to me and if I don't understand gravity how can I hope to understand why the moon is so important to life on earth?
Btw, I've had a look at other WF vids and for me they're not so interesting although I've only had a briefest of looks so far. The vid you posted had me from about the 5 minute point.
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Post by Orac on Aug 30, 2023 13:34:19 GMT
Red,
You could be a tough audience given your disinterest in science fiction
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Post by seniorcitizen007 on Sept 3, 2023 23:59:35 GMT
He's bombarding viewers with a maze of totally fictitious facts.
Examples:
"The Moon is only 1% of the Earth's density" (therefore it must be be hollow).
The Moon's density is actually 60% of that of the Earth.
Uranium 236 is found on the Moon but not on Earth.
Not true ... though there is more on the Moon's surface due to the effect of Solar flares and very little found naturally on Earth ... but Uranium 236 is a common fission product of nuclear fuels. It is a radioactive waste. Therefore his logic is that the Uranium 236 on the Moon's surface is radioactive waste (probably dumped there by the aliens inside the Moon).
... and so on.
I have my own pet theory about how Aliens created "life as we know it". They invented water .. designed it so that ice is lighter than liquid water (hardly any other substances have this property ... with their solid state being lighter than their liquid state). This property of water allowed Earth to become a habitable planet.
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Post by Orac on Sept 4, 2023 7:48:33 GMT
Senior,
Your accusations are correct. He said density when he should have said mass. The related comparison he implies with relative size of the earth and moon is therefore fallacious. The moon is not a quarter of the volume of earth but has something like a quarter of the radius
The 236 thing is not so clear - U236 is not found naturally on earth (my understanding is you could make an argument that some atoms may be there, but it would be a theoretical argument rather than a mining discovery) His crime was not to mention that there is a plausible, naturalistic explanation for its presence on the moon - though i believe it is still a bit of an open matter as to 'how plausible' that explanation is. The same with neptunium which he mentions in combination with U236
This is a style issue. The entertainment is in him building up the theory in the first part of the video - getting buy in. These videos should not be used to get technical information, but to inspire questions.
To my mind the best evidence for this contention is our inability to find a roughly satisfactory explanation for the moons formation and the list of moony oddnesses - circular orbit, large size. Also, the regularity of crater depth is something that has bothered me in the past.
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Post by johnofgwent on Sept 4, 2023 10:40:04 GMT
Orac, the vid was interesting, annoyingly. After a few minutes my hand was creeping closer to the off switch and as I was about to kill it, I realised, I was interested, bugger. But there's one big and I mean mahoosive problem for me, I don't understand gravity. Yes I know scientists say gravity is a 'force' but that means nothing to me and if I don't understand gravity how can I hope to understand why the moon is so important to life on earth? Btw, I've had a look at other WF vids and for me they're not so interesting although I've only had a briefest of looks so far. The vid you posted had me from about the 5 minute point. Red, read this spaceplace.nasa.gov/what-is-gravity/en/#:~:text=Gravity%20is%20the%20force%20by,in%20orbit%20around%20the%20sun. In short, any object that has any degree of mass is subjected to an invisible force that pulls it towards any other object that has mass. The size of the force is determined by the product of the two masses divided by the square of the distance between them. So two rocks in space are pulled towards each other, the pull getting stronger in a non linear fashion as they approach each other. You’ve seen two magnets attract ? You’ve seen two magnets on opposite sides of a room fail to jump towards each other because they sit on a shelf and suffer the friction that prevents them moving towards each other … well those are handy starting points to get your head round it. As stated elsewhere, the moon is held in an orbit round the earth by an attraction between the two objects. The moon falls towards the earth but ‘misses’. It has been proven that the attraction between these two objects is insufficient to keep them at the same distance and the moon is actually measurably more distant from earth today than it was when i shone a laser at it in the 70’s to measure the distance. The distance, and speed, at which the moon orbits the earth gives us a way to (roughly) calculate the mass of the moon. Arthur C Clark did the calculations in his 1946 (?) article in ‘Wireless World’ where he predicted geostationary satellites, a magazine dad bought s copy of as a teenager and which remains to this day in a bank vault with the deeds to this house. From those calculations i strongly suspect a hollow moon to be rather less than possible or the structure to be of a material so dense as to be beyond plausibility. Sorry |
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Post by Orac on Sept 4, 2023 10:52:25 GMT
Fortunately for us believers, an extraterrestrial explanation doesn't have to conform to primitive earth-man notions of plausible engineering.  |
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Post by Red Rackham on Sept 4, 2023 11:11:37 GMT
I understand what gravity is insomuch as I know a ball will roll down hill because of gravity. However, I don't understand why the moon circles the earth, I'm told it's because of gravity but the effects of gravity are far less in space than here on earth and besides, the moon isn't rolling downhill. Why are two rocks in space pulled towards each other? Gravity, oh boy. I remember watching Voyager 1 who used the gravitational pull of Jupiter as a 'slingshot'! I understand that gravity isn't magnetism, I just don't understand what gravity 'litterally' is. As you may have guessed, my grasp of astronomy would test the patience of the most understanding astrophysicist. |
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Post by Orac on Sept 4, 2023 11:29:49 GMT
Red
Imagine a ball falling towards the earth but also moving forward at (say) mach 10. If you increase the forward speed of the ball, at some point the earth's curvature becomes an issue. The ball falls, but the curved surface of the earth is also 'moving away' from the ball because it is curved. When the fall rate matches how quickly the earth's surface is 'retreating', then the ball is still (theoretically) falling but it never gets closer to the earth's surface because that surface is curved and the ball is moving forward. That's an orbit. The ball falls but perpetually misses the Earth.
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Post by Montegriffo on Sept 4, 2023 11:45:27 GMT
I understand what gravity is insomuch as I know a ball will roll down hill because of gravity. However, I don't understand why the moon circles the earth, I'm told it's because of gravity but the effects of gravity are far less in space than here on earth and besides, the moon isn't rolling downhill. Why are two rocks in space pulled towards each other? Gravity, oh boy. I remember watching Voyager 1 who used the gravitational pull of Jupiter as a 'slingshot'! I understand that gravity isn't magnetism, I just don't understand what gravity 'litterally' is. As you may have guessed, my grasp of astronomy would test the patience of the most understanding astrophysicist. Wait until you hear about gravitational time dilation. Time travels slower at sea level than it does at altitude because of gravity. If you spend 100 years on the top of Everest you will be 0.003 seconds older than a person who spent that time at sea level. It's one of the reasons I live in Suffolk. Time literally moves slower. |
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Post by Orac on Sept 4, 2023 11:50:59 GMT
I understand what gravity is insomuch as I know a ball will roll down hill because of gravity. However, I don't understand why the moon circles the earth, I'm told it's because of gravity but the effects of gravity are far less in space than here on earth and besides, the moon isn't rolling downhill. Why are two rocks in space pulled towards each other? Gravity, oh boy. I remember watching Voyager 1 who used the gravitational pull of Jupiter as a 'slingshot'! I understand that gravity isn't magnetism, I just don't understand what gravity 'litterally' is. As you may have guessed, my grasp of astronomy would test the patience of the most understanding astrophysicist. Wait until you hear about gravitational time dilation. Time travels slower at sea level than it does at altitude because of gravity. If you spend 100 years on the top of Everest you will be 0.003 seconds older than a person who spent that time at sea level. It's one of the reasons I live in Suffolk. Time literally moves slower. Sadly, you only reap the benefits when you leave Suffolk and everyone else remarks on how youthful you look - those three missing femtosecond can make all the odds in a beauty contest held outside Suffolk. |
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Post by Red Rackham on Sept 4, 2023 12:02:56 GMT
I understand what gravity is insomuch as I know a ball will roll down hill because of gravity. However, I don't understand why the moon circles the earth, I'm told it's because of gravity but the effects of gravity are far less in space than here on earth and besides, the moon isn't rolling downhill. Why are two rocks in space pulled towards each other? Gravity, oh boy. I remember watching Voyager 1 who used the gravitational pull of Jupiter as a 'slingshot'! I understand that gravity isn't magnetism, I just don't understand what gravity 'litterally' is. As you may have guessed, my grasp of astronomy would test the patience of the most understanding astrophysicist. Wait until you hear about gravitational time dilation. Time travels slower at sea level than it does at altitude because of gravity. If you spend 100 years on the top of Everest you will be 0.003 seconds older than a person who spent that time at sea level. It's one of the reasons I live in Suffolk. Time literally moves slower. LOL. |
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