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Discovery of a Massive, 198 Kilometer-Wide Crater on the Moon

posted by janrinok on Friday March 20 2015, @01:04PM   Printer-friendly
from the it-was-there,-hiding,-all-the-time dept.

kaszz writes:

The Lunar and Planetary Science Conference announced on 2015-03-16 that a 198 km wide crater has been found on the moon using the GRAIL spacecraft that uses gravitational field mapping. This enabled the discovery of craters below the surface. It's been named the Earhart crater. Nice gravitational photos can be found in the links.

 
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  • (Score: 4, Touché) by MrGuy on Friday March 20 2015, @03:14PM

    by MrGuy (1007) on Friday March 20 2015, @03:14PM (#160430)

    A crater can't be "massive." I am literally being pedantic right now.

    How much dirt is there in a hole 10 feet wide, 10 feet long, and 10 feet deep?

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  • (Score: 2) by GreatAuntAnesthesia on Friday March 20 2015, @03:29PM

    by GreatAuntAnesthesia (3275) on Friday March 20 2015, @03:29PM (#160433) Journal

    Touché indeed. I wonder if there should be both "+1 pedantic" and "-1 pedantic" mod options.

  • (Score: 1) by rondon on Friday March 20 2015, @03:35PM

    by rondon (5167) on Friday March 20 2015, @03:35PM (#160437)

    1,000 cubic feet minus the volume of the body at the bottom, I presume. ;)

    Why else would you dig that hole in the first place?

  • (Score: 3, Informative) by bob_super on Friday March 20 2015, @04:20PM

    by bob_super (1357) on Friday March 20 2015, @04:20PM (#160454)

    If you have an atmosphere, you could argue that the amount of air contained inside the crater is massive.

    But in this case you're wrong, because TFS is about a crater below the surface. So its content is massive.

  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by DeathMonkey on Friday March 20 2015, @05:35PM

    by DeathMonkey (1380) on Friday March 20 2015, @05:35PM (#160493) Journal

    Can a Canyon not be Grand, then?

  • (Score: 2) by tathra on Friday March 20 2015, @10:27PM

    by tathra (3367) on Friday March 20 2015, @10:27PM (#160600)

    its the absolute value of the mass that's missing due to the fact that there's a crater/hole there (since the mass is missing we give it a negative, then use the absolute value since there's no such thing as negative mass).

  • (Score: 4, Touché) by wonkey_monkey on Friday March 20 2015, @11:03PM

    by wonkey_monkey (279) on Friday March 20 2015, @11:03PM (#160608) Homepage

    I am literally being pedantic right now.

    I think you mean "at the time of writing."

    Unless you're also being pedantic now. Which you probably are.

    --
    systemd is Roko's Basilisk

  • (Score: 1) by KiloByte on Saturday March 21 2015, @12:29AM

    by KiloByte (375) on Saturday March 21 2015, @12:29AM (#160630)

    The word "massive" doesn't imply "mass", they merely share etymology. In fact, out of four definitions given by WordNet, only one speaks of mass at all -- the other ones being "imposing in size/bulk", "solid", "imposing in scale/scope/degree/power". The crater isn't solid either, but two other definitions apply to it just fine.

    --
    Ceterum censeo systemd esse delendam.