SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
The Fine print: The following are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
Journal by khallow
While reading the recent story about the Chinese lunar rover examining a boulder at close range, I thought of an interesting question. How much would lunar boulders move over billions of years and what would be pushing them around? It seems like an appropriate model would be a very warped billiard table covered in a layer of thick sand with the boulders more or less loose on the top. The sand corresponds to lunar regolith which is a thick layer of meteorite-caused dust that covers the entire moon.
Slight vibrations shouldn't move them much because they would be nestled in that regolith. But enough occurrences of large forces say from nearby earthquakes or asteroid impacts could move them a great distance over those long periods , I guess it depends on whether the regolith rapidly absorbs the energy of the boulder or not.
It seems like a random walk computer model that one could run with modest resources once one can characterize how the forces would act on these boulders.
Distribution of boulders and boulder tracks might well inform us of how common and how big such disruptive forces are as well as the locations of any repetitive forces (say from a fault zone).
While I don't think it's likely, even the heat/freeze cycle of lunar day/night might move these things around.
So what do you think?
Slight vibrations shouldn't move them much because they would be nestled in that regolith. But enough occurrences of large forces say from nearby earthquakes or asteroid impacts could move them a great distance over those long periods , I guess it depends on whether the regolith rapidly absorbs the energy of the boulder or not.
It seems like a random walk computer model that one could run with modest resources once one can characterize how the forces would act on these boulders.
Distribution of boulders and boulder tracks might well inform us of how common and how big such disruptive forces are as well as the locations of any repetitive forces (say from a fault zone).
While I don't think it's likely, even the heat/freeze cycle of lunar day/night might move these things around.
So what do you think?
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
(1)
(1)
Do not use if foil seal is broken.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 12 2022, @11:40AM
I don't see any tracks indicating movement, so unless it was pushed up from underground it seems to me to be a piece of ejecta from a different impact. That smaller crater to the left seems to me to be a likely source, or where it bounced before coming to rest at its current position.
(Score: 2) by Gaaark on Wednesday January 12 2022, @11:45AM (1 child)
https://www.nps.gov/articles/deva-moving-rocks.htm [nps.gov]
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday January 12 2022, @02:40PM
You aren't going to find much of that on the Moon. Still it may be analogous. Conditions that cause such rocks to move might happen once every few millennia or much longer. AC noted no obvious boulder track to this one, so it might never have moved in millions of years. That might be long enough for normal energetic events to hide a trail.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 12 2022, @12:18PM (1 child)
no atmosphere to speak of, no tectonic activity as far as I know.
so I'd guess most boulders on the moon are either very old, from the time of active volcanoes, or they were formed during asteroid impacts.
there are those reports of ice, and ice melt/freeze cycles could affect soil enough to move rocks a bit, but any boulders on the moon are probably in stable equilibrium points and at most they'll wiggle a bit, possibly settling better into the dust.
on Earth though, like the other poster says, there are a lot of moving rocks https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=89-AFHieDpM [youtube.com] (if you pay attention, you'll note an early instance of "remote interview").
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday January 12 2022, @02:46PM
The moon still gets earthquakes. But the entire moon is quiet enough and rigid enough that NASA could detect rather small meteorite impacts with the seismometers brought with the Apollo missions (apparently five were brought over). For example, the Apollo 11 seismometer measured [nasa.gov] 100-200 meteorite impacts over a three week period (including some time out of action due to lunar night).
(Score: 3, Informative) by Mojibake Tengu on Wednesday January 12 2022, @04:29PM (2 children)
Some days ago I noticed this one particular examined boulder is described honorably as 神秘小屋 ShénMì XiǎoWū and this particular selection of characters caught my attention.
The first character 神 Shén[1] represents spirituality, in classical art is often used as a class specifier of supranatural entities, like gods, spirits, immortal spirit masters, saints, fairies, sky people (legendary Feng nation), soul or higher magical stuff (as opposed to lesser, demonic magic).
Then next character 秘 Mì represents secret or mystery. The 小 Xiǎo means something small, little, and 屋 Wū stands for a room, cabin, hut.
Conclusively, the translation of the original name only as "Mystery Hut", commonly found in current English press, deliberately fails to convey first critically important factor: a meaningful hint of possible relation to higher, non-human entities. Nothing in this name refers a 'stone'.
My own theory is rather mechanistic: it's an elevator shack/penthouse.
[1] https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E7%A5%9E [wiktionary.org]
The edge of 太玄 cannot be defined, for it is beyond every aspect of design
(Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Wednesday January 12 2022, @07:56PM
Maybe a mystical hut instead of a mystery hut?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 13 2022, @10:03AM
The rover is named after the Jade Rabbit, so calling the rock "Moon Rabbit's House" would have been redundant, and the cultural reference got lost in translation.