New York vs. Chicago (style pizza that is)

[neufer]

[b][color=#0000FF]The thickness of the moon's crust as calculated by NASA's GRAIL mission. The near side is on the left-hand side of the picture, and the far side on the right. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/S. Miljkovic[/color][/b]

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Moon’s Blotchy Near Side Has Bigger Craters Than Expected
by Elizabeth Howell on November 13, 2013

<<The familiar blotches that make up “the man in the moon”, from the vantage point of Earth, happened because the moon’s crust is thinner on the near side than the far side to our planet, new research reveals.

The twin GRAIL spacecraft provided the most accurate sizes yet of lunar impact craters on the moon, providing more insight into what happened when Earth’s closest large neighbor was hammered with meteorites over billions of years. “We know the dark splotches are large, lava-filled, impact basins that were created by asteroid impacts about four billion years ago. GRAIL data indicate that both the near side and the far side of the moon were bombarded by similarly large impactors, but they reacted to them much differently.”

The moon’s near side is easily visible in a telescope, but it’s hard to measure the size of the impacts because lava is obscuring their dimensions. The GRAIL spacecraft, however, peered at the internal structure of the moon and also produced information showing how thick the crust is. This showed that there are more, bigger craters on the closer side of the moon to us than the further side. “Impact simulations indicate that impacts into a hot, thin crust representative of the early moon’s near-side hemisphere would have produced basins with as much as twice the diameter as similar impacts into cooler crust, which is indicative of early conditions on the moon’s far-side hemisphere,” stated lead author Katarina Miljkovic of the Paris Institute of Earth Physics (Institut de Physique du Globe de Paris).

As is common with research projects, learning more about the moon is revealing a new mystery that needs to be examined. It’s commonly cited that the moon was walloped during something called the late heavy bombardment, a period four billion years ago when it was believed that more meteorites impacted the moon.

“The late heavy bombardment is based largely on the ages of large near-side impact basins that are either within, or adjacent to the dark, lava-filled basins, or lunar maria, named Oceanus Procellarum and Mare Imbrium,” NASA stated. “However, the special composition of the material on and below the surface of the near side implies that the temperatures beneath this region were not representative of the moon as a whole at the time of the late heavy bombardment. The difference in the temperature profiles would have caused scientists to overestimate the magnitude of the basin-forming impact bombardment.”

A research paper on the topic recently appeared in Science. GRAIL successfully concluded its mission last year after nine months of operations, flying into the side of a mountain as planned.>>

[Beyond]

So they had GRAIL wholly commit moonicide. I wonder if they'll ever send up a rover to dig/drill through some of the thinner crust places?

[neufer]

So they had GRAIL wholly commit moonicide.

• That would be lunacide and it would actually refer to killing the Moon.

I wonder if they'll ever send up a rover to dig/drill through some of the thinner crust places?

• That would be to cut/slice through some of the thinner crust places:

[b][color=#0000FF][size=150]2001 Moon bus with mezzaluna skids[/size][/color][/b]

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<<A mezzaluna is a knife consisting of a single or double curved blade with a handle on each end. It is often used for cutting pizza. Mezzaluna means "half moon" in Italian, after the curved shape of the blade, and is the most common name used in the UK.>>

[b][color=#0000FF]8 sectors: yellow area = purple area[/color][/b]

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<<In elementary geometry, the pizza theorem states the equality of two areas that arise when one partitions a disk in a certain way.

Let p be an interior point of the disk, and let n be a number that is divisible by four and greater than or equal to eight. Form n sectors of the disk with equal angles by choosing an arbitrary line through p, rotating the line n/2 − 1 times by an angle of 2π/n radians, and slicing the disk on each of the resulting n/2 lines. Number the sectors consecutively in a clockwise or anti-clockwise fashion. Then the pizza theorem states that:

The sum of the areas of the odd numbered sectors equals the sum of the areas of the even numbered sectors (Upton 1968).

The pizza theorem is so called because it mimics a traditional pizza slicing technique. It shows that, if two people share a pizza sliced in this way by taking alternating slices, then they each get an equal amount of pizza.

The pizza theorem was originally proposed as a challenge problem by Upton (1968); the published solution to this problem, by Michael Goldberg, involved direct manipulation of the algebraic expressions for the areas of the sectors.>>

[Beyond]

Well, "my" theorem on pizza slicing for two people, depending on the size of the pizza, is to slice it from side to side, into 4, 6, or 8 slices and only eat half of the number of slices. That way both get half the pizza. No fancy non-understandable algebraic expressions or numbering of slices needed

[geckzilla]

Sounds fair to me. I'll cut it like that purple and yellow circle there and you get the lower half.

[Beyond]

Hmm... shudder kept my keyboard unplugged on that one. As I'm the only one here, the slicing pattern doesn't matter. I get to eat da whole thing YUM

[Nitpicker]

So they had GRAIL wholly commit moonicide.

That would be lunacide and it would actually refer to killing the Moon.

Perhaps a wholly committed, planned, failed attempt at lunacide?

I've read that article twice now, and I'm just not getting anything more out of it, than news of more accurate measurements of the Moon's crust, showing that the near side crust is typically thinner than the far side (which I thought was already known). The rest of the article does not seem to go anywhere, or even suggest possibilities one way or another. Does anyone have more insight? Am I missing something?

[Beyond]

Well, IF a rover or something ever goes to the moon to dig through the crust, all the thinnest parts are now known. They're the dark purple spots.

[Nitpicker]

Thanks Beyond. I was asking more about the potential consequences for our understanding of the Late Heavy Bombardment, and all that might follow on from that.

[neufer]

I've read that article twice now, and I'm just not getting anything more out of it, than news of more accurate measurements of the Moon's crust, showing that the near side crust is typically thinner than the far side (which I thought was already known). The rest of the article does not seem to go anywhere, or even suggest possibilities one way or another. Does anyone have more insight? Am I missing something?

It is one thing to assume that the crust is thicker where there are mountains (rather than mare)
but it is another thing to actually measure it.

Also no one had an exact measurement of the size distribution of near side impact craters before (due to the lava flooding).

[Nitpicker]

I've read that article twice now, and I'm just not getting anything more out of it, than news of more accurate measurements of the Moon's crust, showing that the near side crust is typically thinner than the far side (which I thought was already known). The rest of the article does not seem to go anywhere, or even suggest possibilities one way or another. Does anyone have more insight? Am I missing something?

It is one thing to assume that the crust is thicker where there are mountains (rather than mare)
but it is another thing to actually measure it.

Also no one had an exact measurement of the size distribution of near side impact craters before (due to the lava flooding).

You're right. Tis more a criticism of the article. The article hints that the results of the study (crust thickness, basin size distribution, etc) might have a number of consequences for things like the mystery of the LHB. I'm left wondering what the consequences might be.

[THX1138]

As pizza goes I like the cheese and the toppings so thin crust rules and thick crust is a scam, if I wanted to get full on dough I would buy a loaf of bread.

I’d like to see us mining on some asteroids “ rather than drilling holes in the moon “ That is before I go the way of all flesh