Talk:Moon/Archive 4

This is an archive of past discussions about Moon. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.

Archive 1

Archive 2

Archive 3

Archive 4

Archive 5

Archive 6

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Archive 10

The Wikipedia:WikiProject Moon main page has just been created.

The goals of WikiProject Moon are to improve the quality of existing articles related to The Moon, to create articles to cover a broader range of lunar topics, and to categorize and link them in appropriate ways. The result of this work should be articles that are accessible to the lay reader and yet also useful to the professional working in the field. Some articles will be of interest to grade-school students, others only to advanced graduate students and post-docs: all such communities should be served.

Cheers! Lunokhod 14:55, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

Surely there should be a moon portal? Mars has one and the moon will have as much related information, if not more. What do people think? - CharlesC 19:57, 23 August 2006 (UTC)

Shouldnt' something be posted about the sattelite that crashed into it?

So, if the majority of the maria are on the near side of the moon, how could they be caused by a bombardment of meteors? Wouldn't meteors be more likely to hit the far side of the moon, since it has a larger range of angles that they could plausibly impact at? It just seems strange that almost all of the impacts occured on one side of the moon. The Prophet Wizard of the Crayon Cake ^{Prophesize) 02:16, 9 June 2006 (UTC)

Doesn't strike me as particularly strange. If you look at the physics of a meteor entering the Earth-moon system you'll get a lot of ones that'd be miss the Earth and catch the Moon on the way out. Check out this [link] for a scholarly article on the subject - Peripitus (Talk) 03:37, 9 June 2006 (UTC)

Hm, a serious oversight. The relationship between maria and the bombardment is not mentioned at all in the article. Until now. --Tauʻolunga 06:14, 9 June 2006 (UTC)

The Maria formed before the moon became tidaly locked towards the Earth. The reason that that face is tidaly locked to us is because the maria are heavier and exert a stronger pull ont he Earth than any other face of it. Got it? The QBasicJedi 03:33, 22 June 2006 (UTC)

The above statement concerning tideal locking is a common misconception. The majority of the dated mare samples are between 4 and 3 billion years old, whereas physical models predict that the Moon would have tidally despun rapidly (on the order to 10 million years). Furthermore, the only parameter that affects the tidal despinning is the degree-2 gravity field (i.e., that portion that resembles a triaxial ellipsoid.), and it can be shown that the lunar mare contribute very little to this. It should also be mentioned that the Moon is just as stable (in a rotational sense) in its current configuration as in one where it is rotated by 180 degrees about its rotational axis. Thus, if you were to "spin up" the Moon somehow (such as by a very large impact), it could despin to a final configuration with mare located on either the near or farside. The reason for why the mare basalts all erupted on the nearside is still being debated in the scientific community. It is now known that most of the Moon's heat producing elements are located on the nearside where the mare basalts erruped, and this led to this region being volcanically active. However, it is currently unknown as to HOW the heat producing elements became concentrated in this region (commonly referred to as the Procellarum KREEP terrane).

Concerning the original question of asymmetric meteorite impacts, in fact, more should occur on the western hemisphere than the eastern hemisphere. This is simply a result of the Moon "driving into the rain". Mark Wieczorek Oct. 29, 2006

This looks pretty good! I wonder if it could be a good candidate to become a featured article, or is a 'good' article just right for this one at the moment? CoolGuy 05:16, 11 June 2006 (UTC)

I think it is far too technical at the moment to be a featured article. The layreader is not going to get past the intro paragraph before they lose interest. This needs a serious rewrite of a lot of the sections with the appropriate audience in mind. Peyna 02:15, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

Today's Commons:Picture of the Day (Image:Lunar libration with phase2.gif) and another featured picture (Image:NASA Apollo 17 Lunar Roving Vehicle.jpg) are notably missing from the article page. Cacophony 04:03, 9 August 2006 (UTC)

Does anyone know where a graph of earth-moon distance over geological time could be found to add to the page? I've been doing edits on the Timeline of evolution and find it relevant for mentioning such things as historical tidal patterns. For example, apparently tides were 1000 feet high three billion years ago, but I don't have a good citation for that. Also, tangentially related, I see no reference to the moon as an influencer of earthquakes and volcanic eruptions--especially when the moon and sun line up for an eclipse (these would have been more extreme in the distant past). Kaimiddleton 08:29, 26 August 2006 (UTC)

As far as I know, to date, there has only been speculation regarding the moon effecting earthquakes on the earth. There's no evidence of it.[1] Peyna 14:08, 26 August 2006 (UTC)

There is no graph. Models of tidal evolution, fed current observations, result in a evolution time of only 2 billion years or so, which is markedly less than the expected minimum of 4 billion years (age of the Earth). The issue is primarily that the Earth has oceans of water. The thinking is that the tidal forces in the Earth-Moon today are currently resonant, giving rise to an anomalously high rate, and that over geologic time, dependent on continental drift etc, this changes, invalidating these models (see Murray&Dermott Solar System Dynamics, pg. 181). One is left, then, with only data, and of that there is very little, but agrees that todays rate is higher than it "should" be. A nice jumping off point is http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/moonrec.html; apparently this is/was pry-bar used by the creationists. mdf 13:38, 5 September 2006 (UTC)

This would be an interesting thing to add. http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/051207_moon_storms.html , Also, there is a picture of the instrument being used. The crews of Apollo 8, 10, 12, and 17 seen the storm. Thanks, CarpD 9/11/06

Note: This article has a small number of in-line citations for an article of its size and currently would not pass criteria 2b.
Members of the Wikipedia:WikiProject Good articles are in the process of doing a re-review of current Good Article listings to ensure compliance with the standards of the Good Article Criteria. (Discussion of the changes and re-review can be found here). A significant change to the GA criteria is the mandatory use of some sort of in-line citation (In accordance to WP:CITE) to be used in order for an article to pass the verification and reference criteria. It is recommended that the article's editors take a look at the inclusion of in-line citations as well as how the article stacks up against the rest of the Good Article criteria. GA reviewers will give you at least a week's time from the date of this notice to work on the in-line citations before doing a full re-review and deciding if the article still merits being considered a Good Article or would need to be de-listed. If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to contact us on the Good Article project talk page or you may contact me personally. On behalf of the Good Articles Project, I want to thank you for all the time and effort that you have put into working on this article and improving the overall quality of the Wikipedia project. Agne 00:58, 26 September 2006 (UTC)

This article is deficient in several of the good article criteria, as partially outlined below:

It is seriously deficient in the use of inline citations (criteria 2(b)). Particularly barren sections include:

• Origin and History - 6 paragraphs, 2 citations.
• Selenography - 6 paragraphs, zero citations until 2 for last sentence (which doesn't even belong in the Selenography section).
• Observation of the Moon - 7 paragraphs, zero citations.
• Exploration of the Moon - 6 paragraphs, zero citations.
• Human Understanding of the Moon - 12 paragraph, zero citatons.

The overall lack of inline citations makes it difficult to distinguish where verifiable fact ends and original research begins (criteria 2(d)). However a few items seem particularly dubious:

• "In the lunar terrae, it is indeed impossible to add a crater of any size without obliterating another; this is termed saturation."
• "Some water molecules, however, may have literally hopped along the surface and become trapped inside craters at the lunar poles."
• We can use the Moon to visualize Earth's trajectory: When the Moon is its third quarter, it is moving in its orbit in front of the Earth. As the distance from the Earth to the moon is about 384,404 km and the Earth's orbital speed is about 107,000 km/h, the Moon is at a point where the Earth will be about three and a half hours later. And when the Moon is in its first quarter, it is "where we were" about three and a half hours ago. (If this isn't original research, I'd love to know where it came from.)

It is not particularly well written (criteria 1).

• Wikipedia Manual of Style issues:

1. Improper capitalization, most egregiously regarding Moon vs. moon.
2. Peppered with irrelevant wikilinks: e.g. Nazism, Cold War, Pacific Ocean, Middle Ages, Johns Hopkins University, Ireland, X-Rays, George W Bush… Nazism?
3. Excessive use of quotation marks around various one, two, and three word phrases.
4. Use of 1st and 2nd person perspectives in Occultation of stars and Observation of the Moon sections

• The article is rife with oddly phrased sentences. For example:

1. "In 1990 Japan visited the moon [sic] with the Hiten spacecraft, becoming the third country to orbit the Moon." (Did Japan actually orbit the Moon, or was it a Japanese spacecraft?)
2. "Indeed, a long-standing question in planetary science is whether an airless solar system body, such as the Moon, can obtain magnetism from impact processes such as comets and asteroids." (Comets and asteroids = impact processes ???)
3. "From any location on Earth, the highest altitude of the Moon on a day varies between the same limits as the Sun, and depends on season and lunar phase." (...What?)

Opelio 09:46, 7 October 2006 (UTC)

As this is now the GA collaboration I believe that our first task would be to bring this article back to GA status by adressing the above concerns. Would anyone else like to suggest how we may help improve this article? Tarret 18:04, 8 October 2006 (UTC)

Wait a minute, how exactly did this happen? :/ Homestarmy 01:55, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

Well, anyway, as the person who delisted points out, this article has some rather annoying problems, it seems the list above is the best in terms of suggestions at the moment. Homestarmy 01:59, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

I think I got all the capitalization of "Moon" fixed... Homestarmy 02:37, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

The caption on this image strikes me as non-NPOV and entirely subjective:

I don't find it surprisingly remote; on the contrary, it looks a bit closer than I had imagined. The caption should be changed to something more objective. -- Moondigger 21:27, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

I changed the caption to «The Moon is more distant than shown in many simplified drawings.»Tó campos 15:39, 19 October 2006 (UTC)

Sounds good. -- Moondigger 17:14, 19 October 2006 (UTC)

I enjoyed this article, but I don't think it's at GA standard right now. My main objections:

• The organization doesn'r make sense. There are lots of sections, arranged in no apparent order, some only a paragraph and some several screens long. The sections really need to be overhauled, with a focus on consistent, logical organization.
• Refs are a little shaky. Some sections are well-cited, but some have no references at all.
• I'd really like to see more on pre-Gallilean concepts of the moon. You don't have to point out every myth about the moon, but it was pretty darn important to some cultures, and needs a more serious treatment.

Additionally, note that the peer review/FA track might be more relevant for such a long article. Twinxor t 10:39, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

Any feelings on the correct capitalisation of this term and its opposite? See Talk:Full moon#Capitalisation. --Guinnog 11:40, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

I removed the following paragraph because all but the first sentence is incorrect. Please see discussion in Lunar mare. There is no known mechanism by which tidal forces could create a nearside-farside asymmetry in crustal thickness. If you think you can do this, then you will be able to publish this result in Science or Nature!

"At that time the Moon was much closer to the Earth and strong tidal forces deformed the once molten sphere into an ellipsoid, with the major axis pointed towards Earth. When the Moon started to cool a solid crust was formed along its surface, but its molten interior remained displaced in the direction of the Earth. Due to this effect, the crust on the near side was much thinner than on the far side. Especially during the late heavy bombardment, around 3.8 to 4 billion years ago, many large meteorites were able to penetrate the thin crust of the near side but only very few could do so on the far side. Where the crust was perforated the hot lavas from the interior oozed out and spread over the surface, only to cool later into the maria (or seas) as we know them today. This explains the lack of maria on the far side."

Lunokhod 11:38, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

I had to remove the following sentences

"This hypothesis is bolstered by two main observations: First, the composition of the Moon resembles that of Earth's crust, though it has relatively few heavy elements that would have been present if it formed by itself out of the same material from which Earth formed. Second, through radiometric dating, it has been determined that the Moon's crust formed between 20 and 30 million years after that of Earth, despite its smallness and associated larger loss of internal heat, although it has been suggested that this hypothesis does not adequately address the abundance of volatile elements in the Moon.^[1]"

The composition of the Moon does not resemble that of the Earth's crust, and the age of lunar crust has nothing to do with this problem (indeed, there are very few radiomentric ages for the ancient lunar anorthosites). Lunokhod 16:37, 30 October 2006 (UTC)