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posted by takyon on Wednesday June 12 2019, @08:00AM   Printer-friendly
from the get-yer-pickaxe dept.

Submitted via IRC for Bytram

Please be aliens, please be aliens, please be aliens... Scientists discover mystery mass beneath Moon's biggest crater

[A] Baylor University study [DOI: 10.1029/2019GL082252] [DX], published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, combined data from NASA's Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory (GRAIL) and Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) missions and found the huge blob lurking over a hundred miles beneath the South Pole-Aitken basin.

The mass, which isn't immediately obvious on the surface, appears to be dragging down the lunar landscape above it by around half a mile. In terms of size, lead author of the paper, Peter B. James, compared it to a pile of metal five times the size of Hawaii's big island.

[...] The scientists have a number of theories for where this mass could have come from, including one that involves the solidification of an ocean of lunar magma.

The leading theory posits the mass comes from an asteroid with an iron-nickel core that smacked into the lunar surface four billion years ago. Scientists calculated that a sufficiently dispersed impactor core could remain suspended in the Moon's mantle rather than sink to the core.


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  • (Score: -1, Disagree) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 12 2019, @08:08AM (26 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 12 2019, @08:08AM (#854561)

    The moon got hit by a stream of liquid metal debris ejected from the sun. This is far more likely than an asteroid impact.

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 12 2019, @08:14AM (5 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 12 2019, @08:14AM (#854564)

    sad comment :(

    • (Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 12 2019, @08:53AM (4 children)

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 12 2019, @08:53AM (#854576)

      I'm just a fanatic for the truth.

      • (Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 12 2019, @09:58AM (3 children)

        by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 12 2019, @09:58AM (#854591)

        I'm just a fanatic for the truth.

        Yeah. You, Kelly Anne Conway and her ever-so-obsessed with fact boss are all on the same page, I'm sure.

        Have you considered volunteering for the Trump 2020 campaign. You have just the skills they're looking for.

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 12 2019, @10:02AM (1 child)

          by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 12 2019, @10:02AM (#854593)

          Lol, the political drivel erupts forth! You couldn't hold it in any longer, like a nasty case of diarrhea of the mouth!

          Damn Im good.

          • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 12 2019, @10:22AM

            by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 12 2019, @10:22AM (#854601)

            Lol, the political drivel erupts forth! You couldn't hold it in any longer, like a nasty case of diarrhea of the mouth!

            {heavy,}metals may be from supernova, but that crap is proof Hawking Radiation is real.

        • (Score: 4, Interesting) by Phoenix666 on Wednesday June 12 2019, @05:22PM

          by Phoenix666 (552) on Wednesday June 12 2019, @05:22PM (#854725) Journal

          I haven't responded to this trope before, but I will here. Let's suppose there's a rectangular box sitting in a field. Observer A sees it from a diagonal to the long axis. Observer B sees it end-on. Observer A reports seeing a rectangular solid. Observer B reports seeing a two-dimensional square. Are they both reporting facts, or is Observer B just a fucking liar and a complete goddamn idiot?

          Another scenario: There is a burning building with 1000 people inside. A fireman runs in and out for a half hour carrying them out. He saves 999 of them, but 1 person, an old woman, perishes. Observer A reports that the fireman failed to do his job and save an old lady from a burning building. Observer B reports that the heroic fireman saved almost everyone single-handedly. Are they both reporting facts, or is Observer B just a fucking liar and a complete incompetent idiot?

          In both scenarios, one might even say Observer A was reporting facts, and that Observer B was reporting alternative facts. Are Observer B's facts damnable lies because they are false, or because we don't like them?

          Now, this whole meme began with the attendance at Trump's inauguration. There was a difference on the reported crowd size. The media swore, swore, swore that Trump's people had it wrong. Trump's people insisted more were there than the media would allow. I can't say how many people were there because I wasn't there, myself. But I also can't say because estimating crowd size is notoriously inaccurate and skewed according to political bias.

          For example, in every mass protest I have ever attended the media has always, always pooh-poohed the numbers unless it was a message that fit their narrative. You can see it in the photos they publish in the newspapers or show on the TV. Every conservative protest is shown to be puny and pathetic, with photos showing a pitiful few in an empty street because they found the ragged edge of the crowd far from its epicenter. Poorly-attended progressive protests, if they fit the narrative the reporter or publisher is pushing, take the photos from a low angle, front and center to hide the true numbers.

          Journalists themselves call it "lying with facts."

          When my progressive friends and I went to the UN to protest the invasion of Iraq after 9/11, the media reported "tens of thousands." But starting on Lexington Avenue, several avenues away from the UN, there were already people filling that avenue as far as the eye could see in both directions, and the closest we ever got to the UN was 3rd Avenue because there were too many damn people to move. In short, there were millions and millions of protesters on the East Side of Manhattan that day, but the media only said "tens of thousands" in order to minimize it, because it was inconvenient to Bush & Cheney's bloodlust.

          So, yeah, when that same set of media outlets tell me there weren't many people at the inauguration that day, it's possible they were right, but I personally don't trust them further than I can spit.

          --
          Washington DC delenda est.
  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 12 2019, @08:48AM (3 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 12 2019, @08:48AM (#854575)

    HAH! It's the space nazi base.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 12 2019, @09:41AM (2 children)

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 12 2019, @09:41AM (#854587)

      > Sudden particle emissions, in which our star repeatedly hurls large amounts of charged and uncharged particles into space, are still a mystery. Some of these particle flows are accompanied by violent solar flares, a sudden and local increase of the Sun’s brightness, and contain up to 10,000 times more helium-3 and up to 10 times more iron than the Sun's atmosphere. Why is this extremely rare helium isotope accelerated into space so efficiently? And why iron? How does the Sun supply these particles with the necessary energy to catapult them into space?

      https://www.mps.mpg.de/Magnetic-coil-springs-accelerate-particles-on-the-Sun [mps.mpg.de]

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 12 2019, @10:04AM (1 child)

        by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 12 2019, @10:04AM (#854594)

        How does the Sun supply these particles with the necessary energy to catapult them into space?

        It's called the Electromagnetic (EM) Force. It's really strong. Billions of times stronger than gravity, in fact.

        Atoms are actually mostly empty space, yet we perceive collections of atoms as "solid." That's the EM force at work.

        I know you don't believe in such things, but I can prove it to you.

        Go up to the top of a tall building and jump off. The whole mass of the earth has distorted space-time to pull you to the center of it. But, as you'll find out just before you die, a few hundred pounds of mostly empty space held together with the EM force will stop your descent to the center of the Earth.

        Why don't you go do that now?

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 12 2019, @10:07AM

          by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 12 2019, @10:07AM (#854597)

          That question was asked by solar physicists at the max planck institute, not me. Go back to Reddit.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 12 2019, @09:28AM (7 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 12 2019, @09:28AM (#854585)

    Which states that in the absence of any analysis or research, the answer is always "Star Jizz."

    Do you even read the stuff you post?

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 12 2019, @09:32AM (6 children)

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 12 2019, @09:32AM (#854586)

      According to occam's razor we would skip the asteroid part, it is unnecessary complexity that adds nothing. Metal created in star, then ejected and hits moon, and finally it cools down and solidifies.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 12 2019, @09:55AM (3 children)

        by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 12 2019, @09:55AM (#854590)

        Oh, I see you missed the actual point, which was that you're talking out of your ass and it smells that way too.

        • (Score: 0, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 12 2019, @10:00AM (2 children)

          by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 12 2019, @10:00AM (#854592)

          I can tell from your posts that you spend most of your day spewing political drivel. Just the total lack of curiosity and latent negativity makes it obvious.

          No one wants to read that shit.

          • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 12 2019, @10:07AM

            by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 12 2019, @10:07AM (#854595)

            No. I just find your ridiculous (and scientifically unsupported) claims laughable. So I mock you. I suspect you get that a lot.

          • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 12 2019, @10:09AM

            by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 12 2019, @10:09AM (#854598)

            No one wants to read that shit.

            That's essentially my point. Your absurd blather has no basis in a theory or hypothesis that has any evidentiary support.

            So yeah. No one wants to read your ridiculous bullshit.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 12 2019, @10:39AM (1 child)

        by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 12 2019, @10:39AM (#854604)

        Stop shitting all over this discussion. The ridiculous crap you're spewing detracts from worthwhile discussion.

        The adults want to have a conversation. Why don't you go to your room and play with yourself?

        • (Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Wednesday June 12 2019, @05:23PM

          by Phoenix666 (552) on Wednesday June 12 2019, @05:23PM (#854726) Journal

          Just mod them down, or browse at a higher level. The real strength of our Slashdot inheritance is that they solved that problem a long time ago.

          --
          Washington DC delenda est.
  • (Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 12 2019, @10:18AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 12 2019, @10:18AM (#854600)

    True stars are into jpop/kpop these days, heavy metal is obsolete.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 12 2019, @10:26AM (5 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 12 2019, @10:26AM (#854602)

    Given that what's being reported is a large excess of mass in the Moon's mantle under the South Pole‐Aitken basin. This anomaly has a minimum mass of 2.18 × 1018 kg and likely extends to depths of more than 300 km. Plausible sources for this anomaly include metal from the core of a differentiated impactor or oxides from the last stage of magma ocean crystallization, [wiley.com].

    Please explain how such a mass could form from ejected plasma, especially given the large mass and density of coronal mass ejections and the relative concentration of their elemental components. [semanticscholar.org]

    If you can't square your inane blather with observed phenomena, it (and you) are wrong. Which means you're talking out of your ass. But I repeat myself.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 12 2019, @10:42AM (4 children)

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 12 2019, @10:42AM (#854605)

      If anyone cares, I already answered this with a quote/link interspersed with this ACs trolling elsewhere in this thread.

      CMEs as described in the parent's link seem to be an entirely different phenomena than the much rarer Fe and He3 rich ejections under discussion. And we've observed so few of those we have no idea what the distribution of mass and concentration looks like.

      Anyway what could have been an interesting discussion was ruined by a political troll because I'm done.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 12 2019, @10:49AM (3 children)

        by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 12 2019, @10:49AM (#854606)

        Anyway what could have been an interesting discussion was ruined by a political troll because I'm done.

        Thank goodness for small favors.

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 12 2019, @11:20AM (2 children)

          by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 12 2019, @11:20AM (#854616)

          Looking at you proudly ruling over the shithole you created.

          • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 12 2019, @11:57AM (1 child)

            by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 12 2019, @11:57AM (#854627)

            Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.

            You've made the former, yet provided none (not even ordinary evidence) of the latter.

            Who's shitting all over this?

            • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 12 2019, @03:19PM

              by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 12 2019, @03:19PM (#854670)

              I'm just trying to read something about nvidia and your ilk is all over that thread too. Political morons are ruining the internet.

  • (Score: 2) by DavePolaschek on Wednesday June 12 2019, @01:27PM

    by DavePolaschek (6129) on Wednesday June 12 2019, @01:27PM (#854644) Homepage Journal

    I thought heavy metal was created in Norway [liveabout.com].