Entire Moon Added To Google Earth

CNETNate writes "Complete with Street View-like panoramas, 3D models of spacecraft now left abandoned on the moon's surface, and guided tours from the voices of Apollo astronauts, Google's recent update to Google Earth marks the 40th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing with an enormous update. It's a collaboration with NASA and other agencies, and follows the launch of Google Earth 5.0 which, amongst other things, added the ability to explore our planet's oceans. There are a number of original creations — such as the 3D mock-up of the Apollo 11 spacecraft and its astronauts — and you can download the new version from Google now."

Re:Too lazy to check myself.

[doti]

Just checked it now, and it was removed.
Now that there's nothing to spoil: when you zoomed close enough, it showed the moon surface made of cheese.

Re:so the next step then...

[slaughts]

Mars is already in there...

Re:So Fake

[Anonymous Coward]

"I looked all over and could not find the dark side either."

There is nodark side of the moon really, matter of fact its all dark.

Re:So Fake

[iknowcss]

The likelihood of the moon forming with the same rotational period as its revolution period is very slim. The moon had a much shorter rotational period originally, but tidal forces dragged at it and slowed it down. Now the two are in lock-step. I remember hearing that eventually the earth will do the same thing, so anyone standing on the moon would always see the same side of the earth.

Re:So Fake

[ls671]

I think the term existed before the music album ;-)

Now with street view

[Anonymous Coward]

http://maps.google.co.uk/moon/

Great stuff for space jocks

[JockTroll]

Can't wait until they put some good LRO imagery on GE, it's going to be fuckin' awesome. I'm going to download the landing sites' pics, engrave them on a marble slab and then use it to bash in the skull of the first moon hoaxer I run across.
Then I'll shit on his face, take a picture, upload it on Panoramio and file it under "contemporary art".

Does so

[NotQuiteReal]

The moon doesn't have a dark side

Yes it does. It is the side that is not light (at the moment).

Re:So Fake

[ls671]

> I have no idea what this is called but I am sure
> someone who is more gifted in physics can explain better.

Well the poster just above your post explained it quite well, I also found this link which tends to confirm the other poster explanation ;-)

http://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?t=289183 [physicsforums.com]

Basically, tidal forces leading to a lock-step. The periods would not have to be the same in the beginning.

I hope that you will forgive me, but I haven't had time to try your marble experience, thanks anyway ;-)

Cheers ;-)

Re:Moon "added to Earth"?

[K. S. Kyosuke]

I doubt. The moon is indeed slowly moving away, but this is due to energy and angular momentum transfers between Earth and Moon. Moon can't suddenly get twice the kinetic energy it has now and fly away. It has been calculated that the Moon's orbital period would stabilize at approximately 47 days, after enough energy will have been transfered that the rotation of Earth will match the movement of the Moon, thereby effectively stopping all the tidal interactions. I said "would stabilize" because this is supposed to happen well after Sun's red giant phase which has the potential to throw these calculations off a bit (i.e., Moon is likely to experience some drag at that time). (I don't know whether this factor has been included into the calculations, Wikipedia references dead tree materials I don't have handy, but these numbers seem trustworthy.)

Google Moon

[T.E.D.]

Shouldn't that be "Google Moon" instead? Go ahead and try it: http://moon.google.com/ [google.com] . It works.

Re:Moon "added to Earth"?

[Anonymous Coward]

I thought the sun's red giant phase was supposed to envelope the Earth? Seems like such a thing would certainly throw off those calculations.