Timeline for How to wrap the Moon in plastic to make her a giant, supported by the atmospheric pressure, greenhouse
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
10 events
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| Aug 13, 2017 at 6:03 | history | edited | Thucydides | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
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| Apr 26, 2016 at 19:44 | comment | added | Thucydides | Most human Empires last between 2-400 years, and even civilizations only endure for @ 2000 years, so tens of thousands of years is very "appreciable" (at least twice as long as recorded history). | |
| Apr 26, 2016 at 19:38 | comment | added | Random832 | @MartinCarney Well, on the time scale most people think about - the one that explains why it doesn't have an atmosphere - tens of thousands of years isn't "appreciable". | |
| Apr 7, 2016 at 14:34 | comment | added | Thucydides | Not at all; the article uses the Russian announcement as the stepping off point. Gregory Benford is a respected astrophysicist who is on the faculty of the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of California, Irvine. He is also a contributing editor of Reason magazine, as well as a science fiction author, so he isn't just pulling stuff out of his back pocket. There are many other articles about the possibility of terraforming the moon, many starting with his calculations. | |
| Apr 7, 2016 at 14:04 | comment | added | Level River St | @Thucydides I just realised my calculation is out by a million - we'd actually need a million halley's comets to get a (theoretical) 12 bar pressure. But even that would be only 3E20kg, which is still 1/200 of the mass of the moon, not enough to drastically impact the moon's rotation, even if delivered perfectly. I would accept this if it were presented as fiction, but your linked article presents this as if it were something the Russians might do in the foreseeable future. | |
| Apr 7, 2016 at 12:34 | comment | added | Thucydides | Adding enough energy and momentum will change the rotation of any body (the Earth's rotation was radically changed when a giant protoplanet impacted it and created the Moon in the first place). It is all a matter of scale. | |
| Apr 7, 2016 at 12:29 | comment | added | Level River St | @Martin carney Most of the article is rubbish, eg. the idea that we could change moon's rotation by crashing comets into it. But lunar surface gravity & escape velocity are about 1/6 earth's. Moon probably can hold an atmosphere for 10000 years, given that Earth has done so for billions. But the mass that would be required to create and maintain an atmosphere it is huge. If we crashed a large comet like halley's comet (3E14kg) into the moon and it all vaporised (which it wouldn't) it would give about 12 bar pressure. You best not make a mistake steering something that big close to earth! | |
| Apr 7, 2016 at 0:42 | comment | added | Thucydides | slate.com/articles/technology/future_tense/2014/07/… | |
| Apr 6, 2016 at 22:29 | comment | added | Marsh |
the Moon has enough gravity to hold an atmosphere for tens of thousands of years on its own Source? I always assumed it didn't have enough gravity to hold an atmosphere on any appreciable time scale. Holding an atmosphere for thousands of years would be a game changer.
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| Apr 6, 2016 at 16:43 | history | answered | Thucydides | CC BY-SA 3.0 |