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posted by janrinok on Monday June 11 2018, @04:47PM   Printer-friendly
from the anthropogenic-lost-records dept.

Science Alert has a story about a long running Lunar temperature measurement that apparently was lost and forgotten for decades.

Between 1971 and 1977, Apollo scientists conducting experiments on the Moon discovered that the surface of our li'l satellite buddy got mysteriously warmer. But the data from 1974 onwards went missing, and the strange warming phenomenon remained an enigma. The experiment was called the heat flow experiment, and it was designed to determine the rate at which the interior of the Moon loses heat.

Astronauts with Apollo 15 and 17 drilled holes into the lunar surface, up to depths of 2.3 metres, and probes measured the temperature at several depths in the holes.

These were long-term experiments, left in place after the astronauts departed, and transmitting data back to Earth.

The measurements revealed that the temperature of the moon at all measured depths got warmer from the date the experiment started in 1971 all the way till measurements ended in 1977.
That's a relatively short period of time on a planetary time frame. A rate of warming that rapid would have the moon surface incandescent well before we were began squabbling over who got to live in the best caves.

Various theories were put forth, but in the end people pretty much agreed it must be our fault.

In typical NASA fashion, the data was archived on tape, filed in the tape vault, and promptly forgotten, lost, moved, etc. Decades later, someone went looking for it. Some 440 tapes were found, (less than 10%) badly degraded over time. Some were recovered, Logs (written ones on that old unreliable medium: Paper) were found and when combined these sources recovered significant portions of the long lost data.

After 8 years of analysis, the data showed that the warming continued, all the way through until the end of observations in 1977. It also showed that, closer to the surface, the warming was more pronounced; and the warmth reached the shallower depths sooner, suggesting that the warming was occurring from the surface down, rather than radiating out from the Moon's interior.

So were the astronauts doing that? The researchers believe that their movements were disturbing the dirt on the lunar surface.

"Recently acquired images of the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera over the two landing sites show that the regolith on the paths of the astronauts turned darker, lowering the albedo," they wrote in their paper.

"We suggest that, as a result of the astronauts' activities, solar heat intake by the regolith increased slightly on average, and that resulted in the observed warming."

In other words, when they stomped about and drove lunar rovers all over the landing sites, the Apollo astronauts overturned the topsoil, exposing darker regolith underneath. Darker surfaces don't reflect as much light; instead, they absorb it.

So this darker lunar surface at the Apollo sites absorbed more of the Sun's heat, raising the Moon's surface temperature by a few degrees.


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  • (Score: 2, Interesting) by Sulla on Monday June 11 2018, @06:13PM (4 children)

    by Sulla (5173) on Monday June 11 2018, @06:13PM (#691519) Journal

    Wildfires are a tricky thing to use as evidence because of differences in how forests were managed over the decades. Wildfires were necessary to have on a small scale to clear the deadwood to keep massive fires from occuring, by cracking down and eliminating as many small fires as necessary it leaves our forests full of ready-to-burn fuel ready to go.

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  • (Score: 2) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Monday June 11 2018, @06:16PM (3 children)

    I Am Absolutely Serious:

    Increased rainfall during the winter and spring led to increased undergrowth in Washington's and Oregon's forests a few years ago. When summer came much of that undergrowth dried out, resulting in lots of tasty fuel for hungry arsonists.

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    • (Score: 2) by HiThere on Monday June 11 2018, @11:47PM (2 children)

      by HiThere (866) Subscriber Badge on Monday June 11 2018, @11:47PM (#691667) Journal

      You left out the pine beetles.

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      • (Score: 1) by Muad'Dave on Tuesday June 12 2018, @11:41AM (1 child)

        by Muad'Dave (1413) on Tuesday June 12 2018, @11:41AM (#691858)

        Pine beetles don't burn particularly well. :-)

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 15 2018, @09:49AM

          by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 15 2018, @09:49AM (#693410)

          Pine pitch in dead pines sure does, though.