5 Very Strange facts About MOON.. I didn’t know that!!!

Views: 903

moon

1- Turtles were the first to orbit the moon

Sure, you knew about the roles of Armstrong and Aldrin. But the first thing you didn’t know about the moon is the role of the steppe tortoise.

In 1968, the Soviet Union launched the Zond 5 return probe, which became the first circumlunar probe to return safely to earth. It happened to be carrying a biological payload of turtles (steppe tortoises), wine flies, meal worms, seeds, and other life forms. When the Soviets retrieved it following splashdown in the Indian Ocean, they found the animals to be healthy (the turtles had lost 10% of their weight), giving them the distinction of being the first earthly life forms to orbit the moon.

Other firsts of the Soviet Lunar Program include Luna 2 (first probe to impact the Moon), Luna 3 (first flyby and image of the lunar farside), Luna 9 (first soft lunar landing), and Luna 10 (first lunar orbiter).


2- The lunar shadow moves faster than sound

During a solar eclipse, the moon casts a shadow on the Earth, the surface speed of which is relative to the observer’s position on Earth. Speed is slowest at the equator, where the shadow moves at 1,074 mph. Near the north pole, that speed can reach 5,000 mph. These speeds dwarf the speed of sound (768 mph). If shadows could actually make sounds, a solar eclipse would produce a sonic boom on earth.

The shadow’s surface speed would be significantly faster if the Earth’s rotation and the moon’s orbital motion weren’t heading in the same angular direction. As it is though, the shadow is fast enough, and it’s said to be awe-inspiring. Astronomer Mabel Loomis Todd described it like “a tangible darkness advancing almost like a wall, swift as imagination, silent as doom.”


3- The moon was formed by the “Big Whack”

Another thing you didn’t know about the moon is where the hell it came from. Don’t worry, you’re not alone: Scientists, astronomers and dreamers alike have been hypothesizing about the origins of the moon for centuries, but the current reigning theory is known colloquially as the “the Big Whack.” Here’s how the Big Whack works:

Sometime about 4.6 billion years ago, the Earth and another similarly-sized celestial body were involved in a fairly routine galactic hit-and-run. The impact vaporized some rocks on Earth, sending that cloud into orbit around our planet. Over time — over a long, long time — that cloud cooled down and condensed into a ring of small, solid rocks. The ring continued to condense until there was only one rock left — the moon.

 
4- “Blue moons” were born by an enormous Earthly cataclysm

We say “once in a blue moon” to refer to rare events, but a blue moon — the second of two full moons appearing in a single calendar month — isn’t all that rare, occurring once about every three years. The term itself has a much more exceptional and violent origin.

In the summer of 1883, a volcano called Krakatoa erupted on a 15-square-mile tropical island also called Krakatoa nestled between the Indonesian islands of Sumatra and Java. It was the fifth largest volcanic eruption known to have occurred in the last 75,000 years. In Krakatoa: The Day the World Exploded, author Simon Winchester writes that the final cataclysmic eruption hurled six cubic miles of ash and debris 130,000 feet high. According to NASA, among a host of oddities created by that atmospheric dust was the blue appearance of the moon, a phenomenon that lasted for almost two years.


5- The moon undergoes frequent “earthquakes”

The last thing you didn’t know about the moon is that it has earthquakes.

Well not exactly ”earthquakes” (those can only occur on Earth), but moonquakes. The seminal Apollo XI lunar landing included more than just a flag, a plaque and a small step for a man; astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin had work to do. This included the Passive Seismic Experiment, which confirmed for NASA that the moon had a crust, a mantle and a core, and that moonquakes were frequent — just like at home.Look in list of All Top Movies




Latest Posts

  Posted on Monday, August 24th, 2009 at 12:34 PM under   जबर जानकारी | RSS 2.0 Feed
Start Discussion!
(Will not be published)
(First time user can put any password, and use same password onwards)
(If you have any question related to this post/category then you can start a new topic and people can participate by answering your question in a separate thread)
(55 Chars. Maximum)

(No HTML / URL Allowed)
Characters left

(If you cannot see the verification code, then refresh here)