It's possible for you to look directly at it with your own eyes. You can see it nearly every night of the year. People write songs and poems about it. It figures into all of our legends and myths. And it's one of the most mysterious things we've ever encountered.
Isaac Newton, father of calculus, creator of the Three Laws of Motion, guru of gravity, and the original Apple dude, said that he could explain the motions of the entire known Universe, except for the Moon. Isaac Asimov, creator of the Three Laws of Robotics and all-around great sci-fi writer, said there was no greater mystery than the Moon. And with all our super-computers and space telescopes and even having walked around up there, we still can't figure it out.
Bet you thought the Moon was the least of our problems, didn't you?
Just so you know, I have had a deep and abiding interest in astronomy and manned space exploration since I can remember. I studied astrophysics under Dr. Larry Pinske at the University of Houston and brought home straight As. So I know a little bit about these things. I can tell you that all the self-assured statements about where the Moon came from are not worth the hot air they are made with.
The prevailing dogma at the Church of Our Lady of Know-It-All, is that the Moon was formed when an 'extra' Mars crashed into Earth, and the resulting rubble pile coalesced into the Moon, roughly 4 billion years ago. All fine and good, except no one seems to be able to explain how an 'extra' Mars was flying around loose defying all of Kepler's Laws of Orbital Dynamics.
The idea is that the Earth formed around 4.5 billion years ago, and we get that number because that's the oldest rock we've ever found on Earth. One teeny-weeny little problem: some of the rocks the astronauts brought back from the Moon are a billion years older than that, AND the dirt they were sitting on is a billion years older than that! AAANNNDDD, some of the rocks don't match the general composition of the Moon or the Earth, meaning they don't come from either.
"Oh, pshaw," you say, "The astronauts didn't go to the Moon. It was all faked by Stanley Kubrik at Disney Studios."
Well, remember Dr. Pinke? He did studies on the astronauts helmets. There were microscopic pits and spikes inside the helmets made by cosmic rays striking the material. The astronauts all complained of transient flashes of light INSIDE their eyeballs, which later was confirmed to be cosmic rays striking small particles inside the liquid of the eyes. Also, a number of the moon-walkers have died of rare cancers. All of these data points add up to men who have been outside the van Allen radiation belts.
I'm willing to entertain the idea that PARTS of the Moon transmissions were faked by Stanley, though, to cover the times when the astronauts were messing with things we aren't allowed to know about.
There's many other problems, too.
The astronauts left a bunch of expensive equipment all over the place, among which were seismographs. They measure, naturally, Moon-quakes. Just to get some readings, NASA crashed a lot of stuff into the Moon, like left-over craft and rocket parts. Guess what? The Moon rings like a bell when you hit it. One particular instance occured when Apollo 13's third stage hit the Moon, causing it to ring for several hours.
Oh, and it turns out that the Moon is really hard, too. The astronauts had a hell of a time trying to get core samples. One, I don't remember who, nearly fell down trying to turn the drill. Related to that is the fact that none of the Moon's craters are deeper than 3 kilometers, despite being hit with some pretty big 'somethings.' So, even big pieces of 'space stuff' can't get very deep into the surface.
One of my favorites is that the Moon dust brought back has lots of little iron balls in it. That's not necessarily weird, but the fact that they don't rust is. There's also a bunch of elements and compounds that are vanishingly rare on Earth, including iridium and uranium-237. Sure, we can make it in the lab, but lying around on the ground? That's a toughie.
In general terms, the Moon is 1/4 the size of Earth, which is pretty damn big, as moons go. It also happens to be the exact right size and in the exact right orbit to have nearly the exact same apparent size as the Sun, so we get things like solar eclipses. The chances of that happening completely by random chance are, well, virtually nil.
The Moon is also in a near-perfect circular orbit almost exactly over the Earth's equator, even though the Earth is tilted 23-degrees to the side. Again, don't bother calculating the odds on that, since most calculators don't have that many places right of the decimal.
Few people remember this, but when the astronauts went to the Moon, there was concern that they would sink in the dust that had accumulated on the surface of the Moon over the billions of years it had sat there. "Scientists" did all these calculations and came up with the idea that there should be at least a couple of feet of powder on the surface. Well, guess what? There was only inches, meaning the Moon was either far younger than anyone thought, or some other force had been in play.
Another interesting tid-bit...when the US and USSR were fighting to be the first to get to the Moon, both sides kept missing. Their toys either flew off into the Great Unknown, or they smacked into the Moon. Now, orbital dynamics were pretty well established by Isaac Newton. In fact, Newton could have orbited the Moon if rocketry had been advanced enough. So why did all that hardware keep missing?
Werner von Braun let that cat out of the bag in an interview with Life Magazine. He told us that the Moon's center of gravity was not at the center of the Moon, but quite a bit further out, meaning that the Moon's gravity well started about 5,000 miles sooner than anyone expected. That can play hell with your trans-orbital insertions, bub. Interestingly, about two weeks after von Braun let that out, he was 'retired' and all the toys on both sides started getting to the Moon with no problem. Hmmm...
There's plenty more: transient gas releases from certain craters, water vapor clouds floating around, magnetized rocks on a planet with no magnetic field. The list goes on. And here's the problem...none of these things fit any of the theories, or can be explained by any 'natural' means, at least that 'scientists' are willing to entertain at the moment.
The Moon is, in fact, one of the greatest mysteries in physics, astronomy and chemistry. There's a lot of posturing by 'scientists,' like they've got it all sussed, but in fact they don't have a clue. The Moon is nothing like the Earth in composition, is much older than Earth by any measurements we have taken, and has characteristics that don't match any other natural phenomenon we have observed to date. It shouldn't exist is about all anyone can truly conclude, if they are honest and weight the facts, not their personal pipe dreams or the paradigm currently being paid for by grants from the National Science Foundation.
Not to mention that something about the Moon scared the hell out of NASA, and they haven't been back in 40 years. Don't believe a word of all that 'budget' crap. For what they've spent on space stations and shuttles and interplanetary robots, they could've built a small city on the Moon with regular tourist runs each month. Hell, it's only three days away by 60s technology, using computing power that didn't come close to your smart phone today.
The conspiracy theory is not the facts that I have laid out. NASA has published the information, though they hide it pretty well. The conspiracy is the truth about the Moon and why humans haven't been back there in 40 years.
Ain't it about time we started getting some real science, and real answers, for all those billions of dollars we keep shooting into space? If not, then can't we put that money to better use down here?
No comments:
Post a Comment
Feel free to leave your own view of The Far Side.