Scientists Discover Previously Unidentified Mass Beneath Surface of the Moon (cbsnews.com) 139
pgmrdlm shares a report from CBS News: A previously unknown deposit of an unidentified physical substance larger than the size of Hawaii has been discovered beneath the surface of the moon. Scientists at Baylor University published a study detailing their findings of this "anomaly" beneath the moon's largest crater, at its South Pole. They believe the mass may contain metal carried over from an earlier asteroid crash. According to the study -- "Deep Structure of the Lunar South Pole-Aitken Basin" -- which was published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters in April, the large mass of material was discovered beneath the South Pole-Aitken crater, an oval-shaped crater that is 2,000 kilometers (about 1,243 miles) wide and roughly 4 billion years old. According to Baylor University, the unidentified mass was discovered "hundreds of miles" beneath the basin and is "weighing the basin floor downward by more than half a mile." The scientists discovered the mass by analyzing data taken from a spacecraft used during NASA's Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory (GRAIL) mission, which was a lunar gravity mapping exploration to study the moon's interior and thermal history.
According to the published study, "Plausible sources for this anomaly include metal from the core of a differentiated impactor or oxides from the last stage of magma ocean crystallization," which hypothesizes the moon's surface was once a molten liquid ocean of magma. They also believe the mass could be suspended iron-nickel core from an asteroid that previously impacted the moon's surface.
According to the published study, "Plausible sources for this anomaly include metal from the core of a differentiated impactor or oxides from the last stage of magma ocean crystallization," which hypothesizes the moon's surface was once a molten liquid ocean of magma. They also believe the mass could be suspended iron-nickel core from an asteroid that previously impacted the moon's surface.
It's the Nazi UFO, DUH! (Score:2, Funny)
Haven't these guys seen Iron Sky?
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There's almost zero chance this is anything other than the space Nazi moon base.
Re:It's the Nazi UFO, DUH! (Score:4, Funny)
Further measurements will probably indicate the mass [wikipedia.org] is rectangular ... "11 feet high, and 1¼ by 5 feet in cross-section. When its dimensions were checked with great care, they were found to be in the exact ratio 1 to 4 to 9 — the squares of the first three integers.”
Isn't this (Score:5, Funny)
How Transformers started?? Do you want giant robots terrorising the Earth, because sending a crew to check this out is how you get giant robots terrorising the Earth!
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Furthermore, what't the size of Hawaii in relation to a 3D body beneath the surface of the Moon?
Re:Isn't this (Score:5, Informative)
Furthermore, what't the size of Hawaii in relation to a 3D body beneath the surface of the Moon?
About half the size of Wales.
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TL:DR:about 234,239 Libraries of Congress.
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No, no, I was trying to find this number yesterday! There are 4 buildings, 3 on the main campus and another one. It isn't as easy as that. They're not even all the same size.
Re: Isn't this (Score:2)
Hawaii is an archipelago, what is even its 2D size?
Re: Isn't this (Score:2)
Re: Isn't this (Score:2)
When talking about the big island specifically, people use Hawai'i.
Hawaii usually refers to the whole state.
Re: Isn't this (Score:4, Informative)
When talking about the big island specifically, people use Hawai'i. Hawaii usually refers to the whole state.
Actually, as kama`aina, we use the `okina in the name of the island, the state, and the whole island chain. Since the US keyboard doesn't have the `okina key (and the English alphabet doesn't include the `okina) it is often omitted when writing in English.
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Eh, brah, why fo you say you no have da kine `okina key on yoa keyboard? My keyboard have dat key on top lef, undaneat da kine tilde, wassamata yoa keyboard?
``````````````
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When talking about the big island specifically, people use Hawai'i. Hawaii usually refers to the whole state.
Partially correct... when most normal people in general talk about the island of Hawaii they usually say, 'The Island of Hawaii'. or 'Hawaii, the island'. Any other island, they will just use the name, like Oahi, or Maui.
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Hawaii can refer to just the island of Hawaii (the Big Island), the state of Hawaii (8 main islands plus a few uninhabited ones), or the entire archipelago (over 1000 islands). I would also mention Hawaii County, but I believe that is the same thing as the island of Hawaii.
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I like to read Hawaii News Now and journalists definitely throw in a "Hawaii County" as an alternate way of specifying the big island. But most of the time, Hawaii means the island of Hawaii, and the State is referred to as "the State." Usually when talking about the State they're actually talking about a department of the State government, and they'll say the name of the department on the first use, and then "the State" on subsequent mentions.
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It's been demonstrated via the coastline paradox (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coastline_paradox) that Hawaii has an infinitely long perimeter so I think you can say it's 3D size is, "Pretty big, possibly larger".
Re:Isn't this (Score:5, Interesting)
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No, if you want to understand the Jupiter event you'll have to read Galileo's Dream by Kim Stanley Robinson.
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How Transformers started?? Do you want giant robots terrorising the Earth, because sending a crew to check this out is how you get giant robots terrorising the Earth!
Or they found the hidden Nazi moon base.
Re: Isn't this (Score:2)
I watched a documentary about that a while back: https://m.imdb.com/title/tt103... [imdb.com]
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I just came here for the comments and you did not fail to "roll out" the entertainment.
nah (Score:5, Funny)
clearly it's aliens.
Re:nah (Score:5, Funny)
clearly it's aliens.
No, I think it is a bunch of Helium-3 toking Nazis:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Re: nah (Score:2)
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It turns out, Helium-3 is somewhat lighter than than this stuff.
The Transformers fans have way better stories than the nazi fans. No surprise there.
We knew of the presence of such lunar anomalies (Score:5, Informative)
Re:We knew of the presence of such lunar anomalies (Score:4, Interesting)
Their existance is known since at least 50 years, and they are called mass concentrations (mascons) [wikipedia.org].
What is new is that astronomers discovered a mascon below the South Pole of the Moon.
Are we sure these mascons aren't connected such that they form a ring inside the Moon [wikipedia.org]?
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Are we sure these mascons aren't connected such that they form a ring inside the Moon [wikipedia.org]?
Well, I am sure not investigating if that is true because I will just be blamed when things go wrong and they will take it out of my pay.
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The correct spelling of "existence" has also been known for at least 50 years.
Time to put the monkey suit on (Score:4, Funny)
I know I am about 4 million years late, but since they discovered the monolith on the Moon, there must be one on Earth as well.
So I can dress up like a monkey and start the fight at the watering hole.
Re:Time to put the monkey suit on (Score:5, Insightful)
That fight has been going on for 10000's of years. Same aggressive stupidity, different waterholes.
Re:Time to put the monkey suit on (Score:5, Funny)
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"YOU BLEW IT UP! AH, DAMN YOU! GOD DAMN YOU ALL TO HELL!! "
(Fun with Filters: asdkjh fhjkjwink kjfhfih kalh dklhjf agakjdh hjkkasd hfkjh ahk jas hkfj hdkja akksjdj.)
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Same aggressive stupidity, different waterholes.
Same aggressive stupidity, different trade deals.
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That fight has been going on for 10000's of years. Same aggressive stupidity, different waterholes.
It's unfortunate that the more aggressive, stupid actors are the ones that obtained the waterhole, and passed their genes along.
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It's also "unfortunate" that to the victor go the spoils, that the fittest survive, that evolution requires success, that the best man often wins, and that every broken whiny beta-male doesn't breed...at least from a "certain point of view".
All of that "misfortune" keeps us from realizing our true potential - which is apparently to be infintely agreeable, but extinct.
CAPTCHA: evolve
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and so they targets of retribution from the vanquished,
is a tautology,
whatever that means,
and often loses,
with just their own, but are busy cuckolding the uncivilized whiny alpha males.
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That fight has been going on for 10000's of years. Same aggressive stupidity, different waterholes.
It's unfortunate that the more aggressive, stupid actors are the ones that obtained the waterhole, and passed their genes along.
Where I live, ~110 years ago there was a bunch of bickering over the waterhole, and people died. Of typhoid fever. The engineers and the owners of the company that controlled the water hole were given a second chance: Sell the waterhole to the local People to be run as part of the government, and you'll be allowed to leave town. They agreed enthusiastically. It was decided to make its own government entity, run by an elected board.
Now our water is clean, healthy, plentiful, and cheap. For 110 years. No typh
Re: Time to put the monkey suit on (Score:2)
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Oh come on, the summary doesn't even distinguish between being weighed down, and being weighed up, how are they going to understand magnetism?
It is like trying to explain a geodetic datum to somebody who can't even read a topo map.
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TMA-1 (Score:1)
So, they found it. When excavated, it turns out to be a black monolith. Pay attention to radio signals when the sunlight hits it for the first time.
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Its not when the Sun hits it, its when the Humans, or Apes, touch it. It enlightens them and they move up in the Evolutionary chain.
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Unless of course, the mass is actually the Gotterdammerung!!
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They're all the same one.
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Its not when the Sun hits it, its when the Humans, or Apes, touch it. It enlightens them and they move up in the Evolutionary chain.
The TMA-1 monolith transmitted a signal toward Jupiter when it was hit by the sun. It's mentioned somewhere in the film or the book that the monolith hasn't seen the sun yet. This signal is why the Discovery One is heading to Jupiter. Haywood Floyd had instructed HAL to NOT tell Poole and Bowman about the signal and the true purpose of the mission. These instructions are what caused HAL to have his psychotic break and try to kill all the astronauts.
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If they weren't enlightened, then how do you explain HAL, because it's way past 2001 and we are no where near making a real AI HAL (Heuristically programmed ALgorithmic computer).
Today it would be more like NAL (Neuro ALgorithmic computer).
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What we wanted was HAL. What we got was Microsoft Bob.
It's an egg (Score:5, Funny)
GODZILLA (Score:2)
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Communism isn't based on greed. And its only the 18th centrury economic system based on divisive greed, corruption, and victimization which could make Communism look attractive..
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Uh, no.
The idea behind communism is only that all of the earned wealth is distributed equally. It is founded on the premise that people should *NOT* be greedy, and would want to put the needs of the community ahead of their own personal desires for greater wealth.
But it often doesn't work in real life because people are greedy, and may often want much more than what they necessarily need. If a self-minded individual happens to possess the power to control the wealth distribution in a communist soc
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There are a surprising number of quite successful communist communities around, many of them in the US. Communism has been demonstrated to work quite well in groups from the size of a family to a few hundred people.
Communism hasn't worked so well at the nation-state level, although the examples we have tend to have been born out of violent revolution. Many communist thinkers believed violent revolution was a more or less necessary precursor, followed by an authoritarian period, then actual communism. None o
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None of the examples I can think of got past the authoritarian stage.
That's a problem with violent revolutions, in general.
Not that there aren't exceptions
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You're right. There may be others, but I can only think of one example of a successful, long-term stable government system established as a result of a violent revolution, authoritarian or not.
China gets a maybe in that category. The current system in China isn't really very old, but it has survived succession. It hasn't progressed beyond authoritarianism though.
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Weren't there a whole slew of small utopian communities like that in the US, back in the 1800s? Most of them lasted a year or two, some for decades. A few (Arden Delaware, for example) are still in existence. If a few is a surprising number, then I guess that's true.
What about this? (Score:3)
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I suppose it would if you could compress the electrons so that the protons would absorb them. There seem to be some of those wandering around the universe, and I do vaguely recall a science fiction story that featured very small dense masses of that sort scattered around the edges of the solar system. The plot device used such a mass at one end of a very long space ship to create a local gravitational pull sufficient to counteract the effects of high acceleration, allowing the space ship to accelerate to
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When they talk about something hundreds of miles below the crater weighing the crater floor "down" by half a mile. That's actually, up, not down; the thing making the crater floor heavier is below it, not above it. Weighing up.
That means it is a lot denser than the stuff above it. Rock doesn't condense in that way, it would be pulverized and also heated by the impact, and it would solidify near the normal density for the materials.
This is like when the news talks about scientists finding the spot on Earth w
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and having dimensions 1 x 4 x 9 !
How naive, to believe that sequence ends in only three dimensions.
Finally (Score:4, Insightful)
A justification to go back to the Moon and establish a sustainable human presence (rather than going straight to Mars). The Moon has to be a lot easier destination than an asteroid to mine for materials. But if man still can't drill down for miles to reach the mass, there's no point in spending hundreds of billions to put a semi-permanent US presence there.
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As I understand it, one of the biggest problems with deep drilling on earth is heat. This should be much less of an issue on the moon. I do not think a
What has happened to /. (Score:2)
I can't believe nobody has suggested yet that it might be Dahak...
OK, OK... (Score:2)
So somebody has. My bad.
Huh? (Score:2)
They also believe the mass could be suspended iron-nickel core from an asteroid
Was there some part of "metal from the core of a differentiated impactor" you didn't understand?
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They also believe the mass could be suspended iron-nickel core from an asteroid
Was there some part of "metal from the core of a differentiated impactor" you didn't understand?
Y'all don't go confusifcating us with that fancy book talk now, yahear?
Water .... minerals .... war! (Score:3)
The question is whether it would be actual people in combat or robotically controlled drones and fighting vehicles. And, of course, who would win?
Lol, I knew this is what would happen (Score:2)
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A real nerd would think of the Tycho Magnetic Anomaly from 2001. (yes, we are way behind schedule)
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A real nerd would think of the Tycho Magnetic Anomaly from 2001. (yes, we are way behind schedule)
Bah - I know this is related to the Mayan Calendar somehow.
in furlongs (Score:1)
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Size of Hawaii? (Score:2)
Are we talking the island of Hawaii, the state of Hawaii, or the entire island chain?
Has to be a meteorite core? (Score:2)
TMA1? (Score:2)
Tycho Magnetic Anomaly 1?
Re: Girl (Score:2, Funny)
You sly beast, you know that we're all smart enough not to be catfished yet you post here because you also know we're all neckbeards.
That's a bold strategy and I think it will produce results
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I like hot boy:) too. I'll send you a message.
Re:anybody really believe... (Score:5, Interesting)
Er... to within a million years or so, quite possibly.
There's a reason that forensics is a science.
If the crater-splash goes over the top of older rocks, and those rocks were believed molten at a particular time, then it must have come *after* they solidified. If you have enough overlaying layers / craters / dust that you can identify, then you can date it to within a range (maybe the range is +/- 10 million years, but it's still a range).
Much like *every* archaeologist on the planet can date an object of interest in the soil by looking at the style of the pottery, how deep it was in the ground, what pottery was in the layer above it, and what was in the layer below in.
To a sufficient accuracy that almost the entirety of archaeology is based on such dates, and they are self-consistent across the world to within reasonable margins of error, and which when revised because of new information are revised around the world too (much like carbon dating has been revised several times as new information on world-scale events that might affect it are discovered).
Welcome to science. Where the answer is "Yes, you can", but the long answer needs ten years in the field and a degree/doctorate to prove you're right enough to say that.
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Proof happens in math, not in science. So your request for a proof is a non-starter. (Or as Dr. Jones, Jr. said, "Archaeology is the search for fact ... not truth. If it's truth you're interested in, Dr. Tyree's philosophy class is right down the hall.")
Anyway, to get to your questions, at least some of which make sense:
>> If the crater-splash goes over the top of older rocks...
> How do they know they're older rocks?
Because a layer that lays on top pretty much has to be older, in the absence of p
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Look at a lunar map. There are lots of craters on the poles, this just happens to be a very large one.