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Space Moon Science

Astronomer Offers Theory Into 400-Year-Old Lunar Mystery 66

Posted by Zonk from the flash-from-above dept.
webdoodle writes "An astronomer at Columbia University thinks he has solved a 400-year-old mystery: the origin of strange optical flashes seen on the moon's surface. These spots, called 'Transient Lunar Phenomenon' (TLP) by the astronomy community, have confused moon-gazers since the time of ancient scientists. Arlin Crotts now thinks that TLPs are something called 'outgassing', a process where trapped gasses escape to the lunar atmosphere. 'To arrive at his theory, Crotts correlated TLPs with known gas outbursts from the lunar surface as seen by several spacecraft, particularly NASA's Apollo 15 mission in 1971 and the robotic Lunar Prospector in 1998. What he discovered was a remarkable similarity in the pattern of outgassing event locations recorded by spacecraft across the face of the moon and reported TLP sites.'"
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Astronomer Offers Theory Into 400-Year-Old Lunar Mystery More

Astronomer Offers Theory Into 400-Year-Old Lunar Mystery

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  • I'm more curious ... (Score:5, Funny)

    by ScrewMaster ( 602015 ) on Friday August 03, 2007 @11:51PM (#20110641)
    if that pepperoni pizza I just consumed can cause outgassing events. My girlfriend says so, but I believe she is mistaken.

  • It's UFO's (Score:2, Insightful)

    by guruevi ( 827432 )
    the origin of strange optical flashes seen on the moon's surface

    Nothing for you to see here, please move along...

    Apparently the moon is gaseous. And now that I exhausted all the gas and nothing to see jokes, please continue with euhm... more intelligent conversation.
  • The man in the moon is not only farting in our general direction, he's flashing us at the same time, too!
  • The moon did say 'Excuse me'!

  • Why do you overlook the obvious answer? (Score:5, Funny)

    by jollyreaper ( 513215 ) on Friday August 03, 2007 @11:59PM (#20110685)
    It's an alien space traveler. He crashed on the moon, lost just about everything, no subspace radio, no towel, all he's got is a shiny bit of the craft he's been using as a signal mirror for the past 400 years and we're too damn busy to answer him back! Better hope this doesn't get back to the Guide, our description might be revised to "mostly oblivious."
    • Sometimes the visible isn't so?
    • "A teaser? Teasers are usually rich kids with nothing to do. They cruise around looking for planets which haven't made interstellar contact yet and buzz them."

      "Buzz them?" Arthur began to feel that Ford was enjoying making life difficult for him.

      "Yeah", said Ford, "they buzz them. They find some isolated spot with very few people around, then land right by some poor soul whom no one's ever going to believe and then strut up and down in front of him wearing silly antennae on their heads and making beep beep

    • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

      by tehshen ( 794722 )
      I guess Itchy had the right idea...
  • ...if the poster were serious. Excuse me while I thing an outgassing... Hmm, Ahhhhhh

  • Radon? (Score:4, Informative)

    by calidoscope ( 312571 ) on Saturday August 04, 2007 @12:28AM (#20110849)
    Problem with blaming the outgassing on Radon is that the half life is only a couple of days. OTOH, all the helium emitted as alpha particles as part of the decay chain doesn't decay and may make up a good portion of the gas.

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by Mothinator ( 1103295 )
      Yes, but radon is a decay product of uranium, which is much longer lived. I don't know if there is a lot of uranium on the moon, but I know the earth produces a lot of radon.

      It tends to collect in basements and give people cancer.

      • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

        by vigmeister ( 1112659 )

        ATI produces a lot of radeon.
        It tends to collect in parents' basements
        There. Fixed that for you :)

        Cheers!
      • AIUI, the moon is seriously deficient in the heavier elements - one of the side effects of being formed from the Earth's crust.

        • Re: (Score:1)

          by yada21 ( 1042762 )
          Uranium is a heavy element, and the Earth's crust has plenty of it. Or perhaps Uranium mines are much deeper than I thought.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Whiteox ( 919863 )
      That's interesting, cause if the moon is full of Helium, then that's why it's so light!

      Hey! It makes sense to me!......

  • Step 2 (Score:2, Funny)

    by Tablizer ( 95088 )
    Now astronomers are looking for the Burrito Cluster Nebula predicted by these events.
           

  • Tags (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Umbral Blot ( 737704 ) on Saturday August 04, 2007 @12:40AM (#20110907) Homepage
    Currently this article is tagged "things" (or at least it was when I viewed it). That may be the tag that conveys the least possible amount of information. Sorry to be off-topic, but the absurdity of the tag seems to be saying something either about the tagging system or the people who use it. (Of course I wouldn't say that the tag "science" on an article in the science section is much more useful.)
  • I outgas through a crack in MY moon!
  • Maybe they should prospect for lunar uranium locations that have a lot of out-gassings. It wouldn't solve the water problem, but it would provide basically unlimited electrical or thermal power.
    • Why would there be uranium there?

      Besides, getting uranium to the moon isnt the most difficult part of nuclear power on the moon...
      • Radon is a product of Uranium 238 decay:

        238U (4.5 x 109 yr), 234Th (24.1 days), 234Pa (1.18 min), 234U (250,000 yr), 230Th (75,000 yr), 226Ra (1,600 yr), 222Rn (3.82 days), 218Po (3.1 min), 214Pb (26.8 min), 214Bi (19.7 min), 214Po (164 µs), 210Pb (22.3 yr), 210Bi (5.01 days), 210Po (138 days), 206Pb (stable)

        Radon is a noble gas, unlike all the other elements in this decay sequence. Since there is no groundwater on the moon to move things around, the evolution of radon gas indicates the presence o

  • solved a 400-year-old mystery

    have confused moon-gazers since the time of ancient scientists

    I'm not sure I'd consider 400 "ancient".

    • I dunno, I'm getting upwards of 50 and most days I get to be feeling "ancient".

      400 years sounds really old. YMMV

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by 808140 ( 808140 )
        His point, probably, is that people have been looking at the sky -- and making very detailed, scientific observations about celestial bodies -- for many millennia, not just a few centuries. The ancient Egyptians, for example, had a sophisticated understanding of all sorts of relatively complex phenomena that Europeans only figured out comparatively recently -- stuff like the precession of the equinoxes, etc. Given that, it is surprising that something that is apparently fairly easy to observe, on the larg
  • I can't help but laugh at the idea. The moon...gas...Metaphor for buttocks, especially exposed buttocks...gas...

  • Or (Score:2)

    by Instine ( 963303 )
    Its landing craft. Is an obvious second conclusion.
  • "That's nothing. Outgassing, don't worry about it. Say, you seen that new BT-16?"
  • Moon Glass.

    formed by meteor impacts.

    the flashes are just a reflection of the sun.

    mystery solved.

    give me the medal.
    • NEGATIVE on that Houston. Someone email Gore and let him know *I* have discovered the cause of global warming.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by pln2bz ( 449850 ) *
      Spoken like a true pseudoskeptic -- as if there is nothing of any interest in the entire world that has not already been fully explained by science. Pseudoskepticism has become a religion of sorts in the scientific community lately, and it's starting to have a noticeable effect on the way that we treat anomalous data. It's causing people to look the other way when we should be investigating. So long as general relativity and quantum mechanics don't agree with one another, and so long as there are still s
  • He refers to "lunar atmosphere" - but the moon has no atmosphere. Shouldn't that be "lunar surface"?
    • but the moon has no atmosphere.

      Might want to tell that to the folks that have been there. They seem to believe the following [nasa.gov]:

      Lunar Atmosphere

      Diurnal temperature range: >100 K to <400 K (roughly -250 F to +250 F)
      Total mass of atmosphere: ~25,000 kg
      Surface pressure (night): 3 x 10-15 bar (2 x 10-12 torr)
      Abundance at surface: 2 x 105 particles/cm3
      Estimated Composition (particles per cubic cm):
      Helium 4 (4He) - 40,000 ; Neon 20 (20Ne) - 40,000 ; Hydrogen (H2) - 35,000 Argon 40 (40

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by MisterE ( 147118 )
        I see. The total mass of the atmosphere for the moon is about 55 thousand pounds or to put it in terms I can relate to... it would be the maximum load of approximately 18 Ford F-350 pick-up trucks.

        For comparison, the Lunar Excursion Module weighed 15,264 Kg (about one quarter of the entire moon "atmosphere".)

        The "surface pressure" is freakin' close to a vacuum as well.

        NASA can call it what they want and so can Wallace and Gromit.... those conditions are the equivalent of "no atmosphere"
  • the cheese cuts itself?

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