moon tagged posts

During its flight to Jupiter in 1992, NASA’s Galileo spacecraft returned images of the Earth and Moon. Separate images were combined to generate this view. NASA/JPL/USGS

For anyone who has ever wished there were more hours in the day, geoscientists have some good news: Days on Earth are getting longer. A new study that reconstructs the deep history of our planet’s relationship to the moon shows that 1.4 billion years ago, a day on Earth lasted just over 18 hours. This is at least in part because the moon was closer and changed the way Earth spun around its axis.

“As the moon moves away, the Earth is like a spinning figure skater who slows down as they stretch their arms out,” explains Stephen Meyers, professor of geoscience at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and co-author of the stud...

The Marius Hills Skylight, as observed by the Japanese SELENE/Kaguya research team. Credit: NASA/Goddard/Arizona State University

A study published in Geophysical Research Letters confirms the existence of a large open lava tube in the Marius Hills region of the moon, which could be used to protect astronauts from hazardous conditions on the surface. No one has ever been on the moon longer than 3 days, largely because space suits alone can’t shield astronauts from its elements: extreme temperature variation, radiation, and meteorite impacts. Unlike Earth, the moon has no atmosphere or magnetic field to protects its inhabitants.

The safest place to seek shelter is the inside of an intact lava tube, according to the study...

The gravitational effects associated with the presence of the Moon and Sun cause cyclical deformation of the Earth’s mantle and wobbles in its rotation axis. This mechanical forcing applied to the whole planet causes strong currents in the outer core, which is made up of a liquid iron alloy of very low viscosity. Such currents are enough to generate the Earth’s magnetic field. Credit: © Julien Monteux and Denis Andrault

The Earth’s magnetic field permanently protects us from the charged particles and radiation that originate in the Sun. This shield is produced by the geodynamo, the rapid motion of huge quantities of liquid iron alloy in the Earth’s outer core...

Satellite data over the tropics, between 10 degrees S and 10 degrees N, shows a slight dip in rainfall when the moon is directly overhead or underfoot. The top panel shows the air pressure, the middle shows the rate of change in air pressure, and the bottom shows the rainfall difference from the average. The change is 0.78 micrometers, or less than one ten thousandth of an inch, per hour. Credit: Tsubasa Kohyama/University of Washington Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2016-01-phase-moon-affects-amount-rainfall.html#jCp

When the moon is high in the sky, it creates bulges in the planet’s atmosphere that creates imperceptible changes in the amount of rain that falls below...